[LM_NET] OT: Harvard president's comments re: women's aptitude

[Ellen Taylor <ellen.taylor@CMCSS.NET>]

For those of you who may have caught NBC news this evening, you may be interested 
to know that according to Lawrence Summers, Harvard President, women are 
under-represented in math and science due to "aptitude", as well as unwillingness 
to work 80-hour weeks and the desire to have children. Here is the beginning of an 
article and the link to the rest, in case you want to follow up...
 
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Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers has triggered criticism by telling an 
economics conference Friday that the under-representation of female scientists at 
elite universities may stem in part from "innate" differences between men and 
women, although two Harvard professors who heard the speech said the remarks have 
been taken out of context in an ensuing national media frenzy. 

MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins '64 said she felt physically ill as a result of 
listening to Summers' speech at a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) 
luncheon, and she left the conference room half-way through the president's 
remarks. 

"For him to say that 'aptitude' is the second most important reason that women 
don't get to the top when he leads an institution that is 50 percent women students 
- that's profoundly disturbing to me," Hopkins said. "He shouldn't admit women to 
Harvard if he's going to announce when they come that, hey, we don't feel that you 
can make it to the top.""

The rest of the article is at

http://www.thecrimson.com/today/article505349.html

 

BTW, Summers has twin daughters, 13-year-old Pam and Ruth.

 

I emailed my opinion to him at lawrence_summers@harvard.edu 
<mailto:lawrence_summers@harvard.edu>  
 
 
Ellen Taylor, LMS
Rossview High School
1237 Rossview Road
Clarksville, TN 37043
 

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