Harvard Faculty Revolt

Maybe I am reading this wrong, but this looks like a pretty big kick in the balls to Larry Summers.

I have honestly tried to avoid this whole thing (I will have to admit that I am really not that interested) but posting here on it now obligates me to comment I guess...

My gut reaction: There might very well be some intrinsic differences (damn near anything and everything has a genetic component), but my guess is that environmental factors and other externalities play a much much bigger role here. Are women encouraged to study math and do well in engineering and related fields? I would say no. Are women who do study those fields as free as their male counterparts to advance to high places in their fields? I would say hell no. You could potentially go on for a while like that, and actually Summers did mention a lot of these things.

Rather, I think the big issue here is that Summers was such a retard for bringing up the issue in such a ham-handed manner... I mean, he might have well told all the female faculty that their respective asses looked fat with the clothes they wore. He just was not conscience about the power of his position and how other people might regard his thoughts and questions; as such, he was feeding into the reasons why women aren't encouraged to pursue hard science careers, etc. He sure didn't seem to do well in the post-comment trials either.

But despite all that, I don't really think that warrants a resolution about a lack of confidence... seems a little overboard to me.