...hoping he would change," Dr. West said in an interview. "It's clear he hasn't changed. I feel bad for Harvard as an institution and as a great tradition. It was good to see the faculty wake up. The chickens have come home to roost."
So says Cornell West, (formerly of Harvard University, who, according to today's New York Times, "promptly decamped" to Princeton upon Dr. Summers' arrival in Cambridge) in one of the more surreal comments in the entire Larry Summers affair.
Summers, succumbing to pressure, ("at the request of Professors Grosz, Hammonds, Skocpol, and others") released the full 7,000 word transcript of the speech he delivered about a month ago at a conference exploring the shortage of women professionals in science and engineering.
I read the transcript. First of all, it's dense. The material is presented in one of the least readable forms possible: continuous sentences in very long paragraphs. Makes it hard to follow. I don't believe this is Dr. Summers' doing, but somebody should have edited this thing for presentational quality.
But, I digress.
Second, it does not, in my opinion, contain any bombshells. Anyone who'd read the previously available material on the matter would not have been surprised by the details revealed in the complete transcript. Yes, Summers mentions specific examples of category underrepresentation I hadn't seen cited before, like farming Jews or Catholic investment bankers, but the gist is the same: genetically-derived aptitude differences and personal life style choices account for the majority of the variance in gender balance within science and engineering positions. Socialization is a less influential third factor.
Summers recants some of those opinions in his letter to the Faculty announcing the release of the transcript:
As I now know better than I did a month ago, the matters I discussed at NBER are the subject of intense debate across a range of disciplines. Colleagues from these fields have taken time to educate me further. My January remarks substantially understated the impact of socialization and discrimination, including implicit attitudes - patterns of thought to which all of us are unconsciously subject. The issue of gender difference is far more complex than comes through in my comments, and my remarks about variability went beyond what the research has established.
Man, you could have found that out by reading Gladwell.
Reading the transcript solidified my suspicion that this affair is a big-time case of "gotcha!" And, Dr. West's remarks add further evidence to that belief.
Just as in Carly's case, Summers deeply offended something in the Harvard culture. West left, others grumbled, and Summers crowed. Sounds like more than a little hubris has found its way into Dr. Summers character, and hubris-wars in Cambridge are bloody.
Like Dr. West said, "It was good to see the faculty wake up."
It remains to be seen whether Summers can survive this flap. My guess is he will not, but I'm no expert reader of these tea leaves.
Suffice it to say that when Cornell West says the Crimson chickens are coming home to roost, you're probably talkin' about a lot of chickens.
I love that Cornel West is commenting on his former boss (and not being dismissed as a disgruntled former employee)instead of the reverse. Seems to me a fine example of personal power trumping positional power. Real trumps unreal.
From his position of power, Summers defines power and success as 80 hour work weeks, intensity, etc. That's a macho one-eyed definition if I ever heard one. As women achieve parity in what is a male dominated institution, he's likely to notice new definitions of success and power taking hold.
Year after year, the women in Fortune's annual issue of the fifty most powerful women in business have defined success more broadly than men. They aspire to successful lives, not just careers. They also define power differently... as having control over their own lives, not employees.
They not only don't want his job, they laughed out loud at the question of whether women will achieve parity at the CEO level in their lifetimes. (Ms. Carly was the only interviewee who took that question seriously.) Summers' numbers about women leaving the professions are not new information, but they are news if we listen to what women are telling us. Women are not trying to succeed on men's terms. They're working on succeeding on their own terms.
And speaking of laughing matters. Instead of continuing the tired old conversation about single career women, how about we discuss married CEO's and their girlfriends/mistresses. Do they really count as married w/ children if they are awol? Last week's NYT article about brokers finessing apartment purchases was very very funny. Who knew Central Park South was mistress row?
Posted by: Connie Sartain | February 18, 2005 at 02:50 PM