Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers was reportedly asked to be provocative in speaking last Friday to the National Bureau of Economic Research conference in Cambridge, Mass., and he delivered.
Summers discussed the notion some subscribe to that women overall tend to do less well than men in math and science careers because of innate differences between the sexes.
One woman left in a huff. Four others were critical, although five others among the 50 people invited to the confab were not.
A Boston Globe reporter did a story on Summers’ talk which, between its lede and headline, could fairly be described as playing up the potential for a gender-bias uproar, at least for headline skimmers and conclusion jumpers.
A complete and careful reading of the Globe’s story makes a couple of essential points quite clear — points that should take all the fun out of castigating Summers for being some kind of neanderthal male chauvinist jerk.
“Summers told the Globe he was discussing hypotheses based on the scholarly work assembled for the conference, not expressing his own views. He also said more research needs to be done on the issues.
“Conference organizers said Summers was asked to be provocative, and that he was invited as a top economist, not as a Harvard official.”
Conservative talk-radio commentator, blogger, author and huckster Hugh Hewitt weighed in, revealing himself to be something of a headline skimmer (or not terribly careful reader) and conclusion jumper. This is from Hewitt’s post on this incident:
“Here is the story (links to Globe story) on Harvard President Larry Summers’ assertion that innate differences between the sexes could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.
“Bottom line: It isn’t playing well with the feminist left, and probably won’t play well with every parent in America who had hoped that their daughter would have every opportunity that their son did.”
First Hewitt shoots from the hip, charging Summers’ asserted the innate differences business himself. In fact, Summers put forth the hypotheses of others, as stated in the Globe story.
Then, Hewitt jumps at the chance to label women taking exception to those hypotheses and, apparently, Summers’ repeating of them, as “the feminist left.” But nowhere in the Globe story is anyone identified as being a feminist or being “left.” Does objecting to the notions Summers discussed make a person a left winger and a feminist? By any reasonable measure, that’s an unwarranted conclusion.
Bottom line: This is depressingly typical of the scatterbrained, erroneous bloviating and labeling pumped out every day by members of the right-wing propaganda industry. Accuracy only seems to matter to Hewitt and his peers when its absence can be used to savage enemies on the hated left or in the equally despised mainstream media, such as Dan Rather and CBS News.
PS: We would’ve called Hewitt’s errors to his attention, but as is true of most other right-wing talk-radio hosts who also blog that we know of, his site doesn’t take comments. Maybe ignorance is more blissful, especially when you’re making good money with it.
