Harvard University President Lawrence Summers gave a provocative talk last Friday on innate gender differences and the reasons for the dearth of female professors in science and engineering at elite universities.

According to the Boston Globe, the first point Summers touched on was the reluctance or inability of women who have children to work 80-hour weeks. The second point was that fewer girls than boys have top scores on science and math tests in late high school years. Summers’ third point addressed discrimination. Summers noted that if discrimination was the main factor limiting the advancement of women in science and engineering, then a school that does not discriminate would gain an advantage by hiring away the top women who were discriminated against elsewhere.

Because that doesn’t seem to be a widespread phenomenon, Summers said, according to the Globe, ”the real issue is the overall size of the pool, and it’s less clear how much the size of the pool was held down by discrimination.”

Summers made clear that he was simply throwing out theories, summarizing scholarly research, and not himself endorsing any particular hypothesis. So, how did women academics respond to a challenging intellectual discussion? By having a collective emotional snit fit unbecoming of any self-respecting representative of the ivory tower. From the Globe:

Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out on Summers’ talk, saying later that if she hadn’t left, ”I would’ve either blacked out or thrown up.”

If that is how Professor Hopkins is training her female students to respond to rigorous academic debate, the fewer of them the better.

Update: Harry Forbes, who monitors the Boston Globe, comments here and has a related book recommendation at Blogcritics.

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