Now that Harvard has released the full transcript of Larry Summers' notorious speech, the guesswork about his intentions can be laid to rest. We can all make our summary judgments on this one: I think William Saletan at Slate continues to get it right. He points out that Summers got into hot water by elaborating on his original thoughts in a clumsy way (he is no expert in this field, and it shows) that seems to be a product of an intellectual hubris not particularly connected to sexism - that's the way he is with everyone and everything. But the transcript also I think proves that much of the original scattershot criticism was based on simple misrepresentation of what he said. BTW, I can't help but add that walking around with a fat smug grin doesn't help PR-wise when you're trying to avoid charges of condescension.
Posted by Alan Allport at February 21, 2005 05:59 AMEchidne has an excellent point here: that Summers did appear to be saying he thought biological difference to be a more important factor than discrimination. Which is one hell of a leap.
BTW someone's going to accuse me of hypocrisy any minute now for lambasting Summers over one speech while honoring Hunter Thompson, who for all his fine qualities was in multifarious ways a sexist pig. I guess the differences are these: (1) Hunter Thompson was never (thank heavens) in charge of a major university, and (2) In all seriousness I'd guess Thompson did recognize that women are fully qualified to be human beings. For example his reporting on the McGovern campaign's betrayal of the Women's Caucus at the '72 convention is a straight description of political realpolitik, approached with seriousness rather than contempt.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at February 21, 2005 03:19 PMEchidne has an excellent point here: that Summers did appear to be saying he thought biological difference to be a more important factor than discrimination. Which is one hell of a leap.
Nope, she's made the same basic misinterpretation that it appears a lot of other people did (actually I'm being generous, because in many cases I don't think critics stopped to actually check what Summers said at all: you can't misinterpret what you never read in the first place). In any case, Saletan deals with this:
When he said discrimination was the least of three factors in women's underrepresentation, he was talking about discrimination in academic hiring, not discrimination earlier in life. The transcript shows him describing the third factor as "different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search"—i.e., the search for a new faculty hire. Earlier accounts suggested he blew off discrimination as a factor on the grounds that there weren't enough qualified women to hire in the first place. But the transcript shows him drawing a different conclusion from the inadequate pool of female candidates: He and his audience should be "thinking about this as a national problem rather than an individual institutional problem."
Thompson did recognize that women are fully qualified to be human beings
... Which Larry Summers presumably does not, based on a dubious reading of a single ex tempore speech. Which is, as they say, one hell of a leap.
Posted by: Alan Allport at February 21, 2005 03:29 PMTo be fair, Alan, he never mentions any sort of pipeline problem in his three factors. Anyone familiar with the problem and with attempts to address it would be listening for it in his speech.
That's one of the reasons it's so easy to mishear his third factor -- it sounds very much like what is widely acknowledged as the most important issue, and it's listed third.
It is distressing that he doesn't mention any sort of discriminatory cultural filter occuring before future applicants ever enter higher education. He's already set up a reasonable framework for it in his speech, he's claiming that the shortage of faculty reflects a shortage of applicants — all of this can be more easily explained by the middle-school filter theory than job stresses.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at February 22, 2005 06:31 AMI agree that the transcript shows Summers to have not defended his argument particularly well or coherently, which doesn't rehabilitate the fallacious criticism to which he's been subject but does suggest that he wasn't well-prepared for what was obviously going to be a controversial topic. In that sense Summers could be said to be the architect of his own troubles.
I'm reminded a little of the Bellesiles scandal, which we touched upon a week or so ago. I'm still amazed that someone who was so obviously going to be the target of severe critical scrutiny could be so casual in the use of his sources. In my professional life I don't deal with subjects that arouse a great deal of public controversy, and so to that degree I'm sheltered: I'm one of the lucky ones defended by apathy. But Bellesiles chose to write about a hot-button issue. I know that if I was going to do the same, I'd make damned sure that every one of my references was watertight.
Posted by: Alan Allport at February 22, 2005 08:09 AMAnd I'll admit that if Summers had redeeming features I'd go a lot easier on him over this speech.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at February 24, 2005 12:15 PM