Hysteria in Cambridge

[thebin]

This is George Will's best and most important piece in years in my opinion. The irony factor of world class female scientists having emotional reactions/panic attacks at Harvard President Larry Summers now infamous suggestion is off the charts. Larry my man- the only time it is acceptable to suggest that males and females might be different is when you propose those areas where women are innately superior! What, you thought Harvard was a place for unmolested free exchange of ideas? Silly man. It is I think beyond debate that university faculties and administrators are so monolithic in political perspective that they can't be reasonably trusted to tolerate real intellectual dissent within their ranks and meet it with rational counterargument rather than insults and accusations of bigotry.

First half of the piece, followed by the link.


"Hysteria — A functional disturbance of the nervous system, characterized by such disorders as anaesthesia, hyperaesthesia, convulsions, etc., and usually attended with emotional disturbances and enfeeblement or perversion of the moral and intellectual faculties.

— Oxford English Dictionary

WASHINGTON — Forgive Larry Summers. He did not know where he was.

Addressing a conference on the supposedly insufficient numbers of women in tenured positions in university science departments, he suggested that perhaps part of the explanation might be innate — genetically based — gender differences in cognition. He thought he was speaking in a place that encourages uncircumscribed intellectual explorations. He was not. He was on a university campus.

He was at Harvard, where he is president. Since then he has become a serial apologizer and accomplished groveler. Soon he may be in a Khmer Rouge-style re-education camp somewhere in New England, relearning this: In today's academy, no social solecism is as unforgivable as the expression of a hypothesis that offends someone's "progressive" sensibilities.

Someone like MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, the hysteric (see above) who, hearing Summers, "felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow." And, "I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill." She said that if she had not bolted from the room, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

Is this the fruit of feminism? A woman at the peak of the academic pyramid becomes theatrically flurried by an unwelcome idea and, like a Victorian maiden exposed to male coarseness, suffers the vapors and collapses on the drawing room carpet in a heap of crinolines until revived by smelling salts and the offending brute's contrition.

Hopkins' sufferings, although severe, were not incapacitating: She somehow found strength quickly to share them with The Boston Globe and the "Today" show, on which she confided that she just did not know whether she could bear to have lunch with Summers. But even while reeling from the onslaught of Summers' thought, she retained a flair for meretriciousness: She charged that Summers had said "that 50 percent" of "the brightest minds in America" do not have "the right aptitude" for science.

Men and women have genetically based physical differences; the brain is a physical thing — part of the body. Is it unthinkable — is it even counterintuitive — that this might help explain, for example, the familiar fact that more men than women achieve the very highest scores in mathematics aptitude tests? There is a vast and growing scientific literature on possible gender differences in cognition. Only hysterics denounce interest in those possible differences — or, in Hopkins' case, the mere mention of them — as "bias."

Hopkins' hysteria was a sample of America's campus-based indignation industry, which churns out operatic reactions to imagined slights......"



www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/national/will/story/12135295p-13005500c.html

[kchoya]

Why am I not surprised about the response to Summers's remarks - remarks I believe he preaced by saying they might be controversial (or something to that effect).

I find nothing wrong with what Summers said. Anyone have a problem with his comments?

[thebin]

The only thing about the whole event that I find reprehensible is that Summers has been forced to make several apologies. It reminds me of the gentleman (can't remember where but in government) who was fired for using the word "niggardly" because some didn't know what it meant.

[kchoya]

I think that it was somebody in DC, maybe in Mayor Williams's office?

I always type and search later. Here's an old WP article:

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/williams/williams020499.htm

[jerseyhoya34]

kchoya said:

I think that it was somebody in DC, maybe in Mayor Williams's office?

I always type and search later. Here's an old WP article:

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/williams/williams020499.htm

It was, in fact, an aide in Mayor Williams' office. I vaguely remember reading that Williams later re-hired the aide once the salience and attentiveness of public opinion declined.

[Deleted]

That guy has since left Mayor Williams' office (again). He's now with the Anacostia Development Corporation (or something like that), a planning organization whith primary responsibility for the development of the area where DC's new baseball stadium (Go Nationals!) will be built....

[tgo]

excelled article by Will

thebin said:

Nancy Hopkins ... "felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow." And, "I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill." She said that if she had not bolted from the room, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

that is too funny, you cant make stuff like that up.

[SFHoya99]

The professor's reaction does seem a bit overboard, but...

1) Is that just her free-speech reaction to the president's comment? Why can't she have that reaction without getting mocked?

2) I know I'd be pretty annoyed (though not physically ill) if my boss told me he thought an Asian woman (for example) could do my job better than me for genetic reasons. Honestly, white males like myself have rarely encountered this type of situation. I doubt George Will knows how it feels.

Either way, I understand the general sentiment that we can't seem to have a discussion on this (race, gender, whatever) in an intelligent manner.

Of course, Will isn't helping anything with the mocking tone of his article. He is guilty of the same thing the professor is. He labels the "hysteria" of the left -- failing to acknowledge individual actions. He's helping to cause the divisiveness right there. Nothing new for political pundits, left and right.

He could have written an article that detailed the silliness of applying generalities, backed up by science or nor, to individuals. But he'd rather rail on a pet topic.

[thebin]

1. Has anyone called on the professor to be silenced? You are aware that your free speech rights most certainly DO NOT include the right not to be mocked right? Summers not only has a right to speak freely- he has a right to offend. Somehow you have managed to turn the tables on the professor in question- perhaps because it is so evident even to you that she made an ass out of herself. She isn't the one being made to apologize for her speach- Summers is. Stay on point.

2. You are mis-characterizing what Summers actually said. There is no point in me re-hashing it. This is a straw man retort- go re-read what Summers did and didn't say.

Will is doing his job- bringing his opinions to light in an entertaining way. The professor's job in the instance in question was to either continue listening politely or to meet a hypothesis she doesn't agree with with a counter-arguement in the spirit of intellectual inquiry and academic freedom, not the emotional blackmail of "I almost threw up...I was physically ill, etc."

[SFHoya99]

thebin said:

1. Has anyone called on the professor to be silenced? You are aware that your free speech rights most certainly DO NOT include the right not to be mocked right? Summers not only has a right to speak freely- he has a right to offend. Somehow you have managed to turn the tables on the professor in question- perhaps because it is so evident even to you that she made an ass out of herself. She isn't the one being made to apologize for her speach- Summers is. Stay on point.

2. You are mis-characterizing what Summers actually said. There is no point in me re-hashing it. This is a straw man retort- go re-read what Summers did and didn't say.

Will is doing his job- bringing his opinions to light in an entertaining way. The professor's job in the instance in question was to either continue listening politely or to meet a hypothesis she doesn't agree with with a counter-arguement in the spirit of intellectual inquiry and academic freedom, not the emotional blackmail of "I almost threw up...I was physically ill, etc."

The professor does sound like an ass. I just have a hard time bashing someone for her feelings re: something that could be perceived as a direct attack on her competency.

Furthermore, if you read more articles, it is apparent she and the other offended members were offended partially because there has been significant research into this area, and much of it has pointed to social differences (at least according to them). So some of their quotes are a bit out of context.

Re: Summer's speech, I've seen a lot of quotes afterwards, but have not seen a transcript. Do you have one? His comments afterwards seems unoffensive in a scientific light, but I have no idea exactly what was said to elicit such a reaction. I would like to see the context for him as well.

Either way, Will's article is sensationalistic. He's trumping up something into a national trend because it fits his point of view. Yes, it is his job, but it ain't helping. The last thing this country needs is politics as entertainment. Unfortuantely, that's all we've got.

Did he really use this incident to write this? "The vehemence of the political left's recoil from this idea is explained by the investment political radicalism has had for several centuries in the notion that human beings are essentially blank slates. What predominates in determining individuals' trajectories — nature or nurture? The left says nature is negligible, nurturing is sovereign. So a properly governed society can write what it wishes on the blank slate of humanity. This maximizes the stakes of politics and the grandeur of government's role. And the importance of governing elites, who are the "progressive" vanguards of a perfected humanity."

Does anyone really believe that a liberal believes in a tabula rasa to forward the role of governing elites? The connection is extremely tenuous.

[thebin]

Will is pointing out what so many of us have thought for years. The faculty at most elite American universities are so monolithic in their partisan composition that they meet arguments with emotional histrionics rather than rational counter-argument. Why? The dissent is so rare, they can usually get away with this and silence the offending speaker by calling him or her a bigot. They don't have much actual dissent coming even vaguely from the right so when they see it they act like children and call names at the temporary breach of their intellectual monopoly. There is no place for such sensitivty among scientists. Campuses have become the realm of groupthink- not free inquiry. Its a problem-a very real one- and I for one am quite glad someone like Will is writing about it.


Andrew Sullivan had a good treatment of this "controversy" in the Times of London. In part.....

"But, honestly, what does it say that a leading academic finds the mere positing of an empirical theory of a complex problem something that makes her "physically ill"? And to leap immediately from Summers' subtle question to the crudest accusations of sexism is a form of emotional blackmail. It's an attempt to klll off discussion before it's even begun. It's a sublime example of the left-liberal academy's preference for feeling over argument. Harvard's brilliant scholar, Steven Pinker, put it better than I can: "Look, the truth cannot be offensive. Perhaps the hypothesis is wrong, but how would we ever find out whether it is wrong if it is 'offensive' even to consider it? People who storm out of a meeting at the mention of a hypothesis, or declare it taboo or offensive without providing arguments or evidence, don't get the concept of a university or free inquiry."

Is Summers' supposition outrageous? Hardly. Scientists are finding out more and more about the differences between the male and female brain. One thing that endures across culture and populations is a male edge at the very top of the bell curve for spatial and mathematical reasoning. Ever wonder why boys are far more likely to suffer from autism? Some researchers are investigating whether autism isn't an extreme case of exactly this kind of specialization. Scientists have also discovered clear correlations between certain behavioral traits and levels of testosterone. Testosterone exists in both men and women but it is far more plentiful among men. Among some of the testosterone-related characteristics: aggression, lack of focus, edginess.

No big surprise, then, that ninety-five percent of all hyperactive kids are boys; or that four times as many boys are dyslexic and learning-disabled as girls. There is a greater distinction between the right and left brain among boys than girls, and worse linguistic skills. These are generalizations, of course. There are many, many boys who are great linguists and model students, and vice versa. Some boys even prefer, when left to their own devices, to play with dolls as well as trucks. But we are talking of generalities here, and broad distributions over populations.

All of this debate is happening in the fields of biology, evolutionary psychology and, to a lesser extent, the social sciences. It's fascinating and may well lead to important new ways of tackling problems like autism or the growing failure of boys to compete with girls in schools and universities. All of it is debatable - and some of our current assumptions will almost certainly be overthrown. But the point is that it cannot be illegitimate to have this debate. In a university, it shouldn't be illegitimate to have any debate that is rooted in evidence, reason and argument. That's what universities are for."

[SFHoya99]

That response is a nice well, reasoned one I don't entirely disagree with. He still makes blanket statements, and I don't think he gives credit to someone having an immediate emotional reaction (as in, it happens).

But he also comments on both sides of the issue. Much better than the Will article.

[TrueHoyaBlue]

I think that Larry Summers has the right to speak, as does any other member of the American public. In his role as president of Harvard, however, he should remember that whenever and whatever he speaks about de facto represents and reflects on the entire institution.

There's a difference between a professor (or columnist) making a claim, and the leader of a multi-billion dollar institution. Does he have the right as an American? Hell yeah. But should he think a little harder about the statements he's making given his position? Probably.

[kchoya]

SFHoya99 said:

The professor does sound like an ass. I just have a hard time bashing someone for her feelings re: something that could be perceived as a direct attack on her competency.

How is this a direct attack on her competency? Summers did no such thing? In fact, he was asking why aren't there more like her? How is that attacking her?

[SFHoya99]

kchoya said:

How is this a direct attack on her competency? Summers did no such thing? In fact, he was asking why aren't there more like her? How is that attacking her?

KC, you and I can sit here rationally and say that. But I can entirely understand someone's initial reaction to his statements as an attack on her competency.

It's hard for me to give you an example for you, but if my boss said that I might have a genetic attribute that hindered me and people like me in my work, I'm not sure my immediate response would be wholly rational.

I'm not so much defending her viewpoint, because I think she's wrong, but rather trying to point out that people should actually try to understand her point of view instead of sanctimoniously bashing her reaction and holding it up as a reason why an entire group of people ("liberals") are wrong.

That doesn't help anything.

[kchoya]

The Washington Post editorial board weighs in on the subject:

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36631-2005Feb18.html