Larry Summers is not "politically incorrect" because he is a "superior mind." He is a misogynistic ass who should be totally unemployable in any respect. The fact that Slate would suggest that he should be Secretary of Treasury shows how Slate thinks about women scientists and engineers. It is truly disgusting that his name is still even out there.

And what exactly did he say about women that was so horribly offensive?

He gave 3 possible reasons why women are underrepresented in math and science fields, and the final possibility he mentioned, which he stressed was the least likely, was that while women and men are equally good at math and science overall, women may be more likely to be in the middle of the math/science curve, while men may be more likely to be exceptionally smart or exceptionally stupid.

If he had said the exact opposite of that, I have no doubt that the same people would be outraged. "He said that women are more likely to be exceptionally stupid at math and science than men are!" would be the catchphrase used by the most radical Harvard professors.

The only asses are the ones who get so exercised about what Summers said.

I am afraid that I agree with Jake.

Please tell me what is mysagonistic about the following (context: he was speaking in a discussion about how to increase diversity in the science and engineering workforce):

"If one supposes, as I think is reasonable, that if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it's not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. But it's talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations above the mean in the one in 5,000, one in 10,000 class. Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out."

He added:

"So my sense is that the unfortunate truth-I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true-is that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem."

Its easy to hate people for perceived wrongs. Its quite a bit harder to look for truth in real and troubling problems.

The point is not that he is misogynistic but that he made inflammatory comments while in his official capacity as president of Harvard about a subject of which he possesses no professional expertise. he is not Geneticist. He is not a Psychologist He also claimed that women were not at the top of these professions because they were not willing to work as hard as men. Replace his remarks about women with blacks and see how long he would have lasted.

As far as his judgment is concerned which is more relevant to whether he deserves to be Secretary of the Treasury, he was against the regulation of derivatives and opposed any effort by Brooksley Born of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to regulate the Credit Default Swaps. Talk about being on the wrong side of History.

How about appointing someone who actually predicted the financial mess, someone like Nouriel Roubini

mlang46:

The point is not that he is misogynistic but that he made inflammatory comments while in his official capacity as president of Harvard about a subject of which he possesses no professional expertise.

No, the point is that the comments were not even "inflammatory" except to those already prone to overheating. But you are right about what really is the point: his qualification for the cabinet post.

Thank you Jake, and others. Summers' comments were meant to be provocative and at that he succeeded, but they were not misogynistic, sexist, or otherwise.

People are so quick to take offense at even the slightest suggestion of an un-PC idea these days. God forbid we openly and honestly discuss inner-city violence or immigration without being branded racist, or Israeli foreign policy without being called anti-Semitic, or try to hypothesize about the persistent lack of tenured female professors in the sciences without being called misogynistic.

Believing that we are all equal does not make it so, and ignoring the fact that some problems are more prevalent in certain demographic groups than others will not make them go away.