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Lawrence Summers, women, and math

Lawrence Summers is the former Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton and is now the president of Harvard University.

I can’t help but notice that the two most emailed news stories from the NY Times are articles about his remarks at an academic conference in which he suggested that men might be innately better at math than women.

This was not a slip of the tongue. Sometimes dumb people like pro athletes or Hollywood movie stars make gaffes, but a guy like Summers who has been appointed to high level positions knows how to talk the politically correct talk. He wouldn’t have said what he said unless he wanted to say it.

You will also notice that he is trying to spin his remarks as meaning “I don’t really know if innate differences cause men to be better at math, but I’m just saying that it should be investigated.” However, he knows that it’s a politically incorrect statement, he would never have said unless he really was already convinced.

My conclusion is that Lawrence Summers is personally familiar with research studies in this area, and he has drawn his own conclusion that they prove that there are innate differences between men and women related to mathematical ability.

posted Wednesday, January 19, 2005