Brian Rosenthal's Weblog

The following is a response to a recent debate surrounding comments that Larry Summers, President of Harvard, made about differences between men and women.

I just want to say that I hate the concept of censorship, and I’d like to see more open debate on these things (the changing role of women in families and jobs, how women have been able to handle the burden of having to think about both and be happy, when women should have children if they want to balance a family and a career, etc.)

So many women I know are dealing with this particular issue and need support thinking about all of these things. When I was at Harvard, many women told me that when they wanted to talk about balancing work and family, they were looked at as if they were deviants. Family? They should have gone to another university.

Summers is right on target for the need for this debate.

He’s right. I know more men than women that are interested in working 80-100 hour weeks. Of the professionally successful people I know, I know more unhappy women than men. Women do disproportionally gravitate away from the hard sciences, especially math and physics (although, I know a lot of brilliant women mathematicians and physicists).

I’m disappointed in the faculty at Harvard for not taking Larry Summers’ comments and using them to foster a rich, intelligent debate about how women can be happier.

And, isn’t that what a good leader should do, provoke important discussions?

Some friend and I just signed this petition in support of Larry Summers

http://www.alumniforharvard.com

The following is a response to a recent debate surrounding comments that Larry Summers, President of Harvard, made about differences between men and women.

Larry Summers has been a wonderful President of Harvard. He has encouraged students to travel, made the basic math and sciences Harvard offers more rigorous, and opened access to Harvard for more people by increasing financial aid packages and starting programs to help widen access to college from underprivileged communities.

But, a small but vocal number of people have decided that not matter what the good things he has done, because he believes that we should entertain the notion that women and men may have different genetic strengths, he isn’t a good President.

Forget aout whether we should censor important topics from debates, although it’s a shame that Summers’ comments were not used as a starting point to engage in a debate about how women can receive more support, so that women can better realize their potential.

It upsets me to see people not looking at Summers wholistically.

The argument, “Summers cannot be a good president because he brought up this issue, and it’s not politically correct” is simply lazy. Let’s talk about Summers’ record (which includes policies that support hiring more tenured women faculty members).

It’s like when people criticized the Boy Scouts of America for being a terrible organization because they had a discriminatory policy disallowing gay scout leaders. I mean, it was a stupid policy. But, the Boy Scouts of America volunteer tens of thousands of hours a week to help foster homes, old age homes, and hospitals. They teach young children to be honest, hard-working leaders. Scout troops do not teach discrimination, in any way, and are in fact involved in anti-defamation organizations. How can you criticize them without keeping that in mind?

Rally behind an argument without wholistically keeping a big-picture view of the situation is really dangerous because there is an assumption that other people are making the counter-arguments, and I just don’t think that is necessarily true.

It’s why the working poor vote, detesting instances of social immorality, vote for Republicans, or why first-amendment supporters found themselves all of a sudden opposing advancing democracy in Iraq. We need as a society to develop more wholistic political viewpoints, recognizing that people on both sides of most debates are well-intentioned and need to better understand that single issue politics on any issue is distorting to the truth.