This would be funny if this guy weren't in charge of a large research institution. An institution that is often considered a model for other American universities. That makes it sad.

Also, I'm wondering what makes this statement very different from saying that black people have less innate ability in academics. Or that Asians are innately better at math and science.

It is sad. Makes you wonder how many advisors at universities have similar opinions and inadvertently (or maybe even advertently) try to sway the goals of female students.

Since I direct enrolled as a math major, my first math professor was assigned for my advisor at OSU. I soon left him for a better advisor. Later I heard a story where he told a female student not to worry about her troubles in his class (which I would suspect came from him being an awful teacher, in my experience) because "Women usually just don't get this stuff."

This is such a harmful attitude because it allows teachers to ignore women, since they won't get it anyway. No one excels where they are ignored.

Makes me so angry I could spit.

Everyone knows women are no good at spitting. ; )

I cannot imagine my advisor telling me "women usually just don't get this stuff." Luckily, I never had to deal with that since I was in the English department and that, as we all know, is where women rightly belong.

On a tangentially related note, Karen, you missed some excellent math department drama when a long-time tenured (I think) professor recently sent out a department-wide email stating that students who couldn't pass the quals the first go-round (in this particular year, it was all female students) should be promptly kicked out of the graduate program. Also, they shouldn't be allowed to form study groups. I wonder if it was your former advisor.

Oh yeah, I heard about that. I know who that professor was, and he was a real jerk. He was the guy who nearly started a fist fight at a grading party that Adam was at once. And he was constantly sending out obnoxious emails to the whole department. A real winner.

Are we talking about the math department at Ohio State? Fill me in on the gossip, I worked for the math department for two years.

Yes. I think it was Paul Ponomarev, but I'm not positive. My understanding was that a group of students who had not passed their quals had formed a study group to prepare for the next round. Ponomarev observed this and apparently that they were up to no good. Basically, it seems that he was spying on them whenever he could. And eventually he wrote an email to the whole department denouncing this group of students (without naming names, but everyone knew) and proposing that students who don't pass their quals the first try should be booted.

I'm not sure, he may have also been the guy who was romantic involved with a graduate student (not his student) who went off the deep end and was stalking him or something. But that may have been someone else. But go here and look him up. I just can't trust a man with a mustache like that.

Indeed, it is the math department at OSU. Mityagen (I'm sure I misspelled it) likes to send out these really obnoxious emails on occassion, usually talking about how disappointing the graduate students are. Last year, when a group of female grad students failed the quals, he took the opportunity to send out a lengthy email about how they shouldn't be allowed in the grad school, they aren't capable, blah blah blah. He seriously wanted them kicked out, effective immediatley. The chair responded that he himself had failed the quals twice, and I think M. said something obnoxious about that, and so on. I only think he's tenured because I can't imagine someone without tenure being sassy with the department chair.

Anyway, he is an asshole.

Ah, I got it wrong. Those Russian jerks are easy to mix up.

Hahaha! That guy. I see him everywhere. He is always wearing white tennis shoes.

I looked up Mityagin. He looks pointer than I expected. I am still kind of shocked that he was all pissed off about study groups. Damn grad students with their initiative and self-motivation.

"I was wrong to have spoken in a way that has resulted in an unintended signal of discouragement to talented girls and women," Summers said in a letter to the Harvard community posted on his Web site and dated Wednesday. "Despite reports to the contrary, I did not say, and I do not believe, that girls are intellectually less able than boys, or that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of science."

Summers thanks you for that bit of damage control.

Following the story on the wires at the office today because my boss knows him, I think his forced apology is evidence of the power of the well-deserved outrage expressed (here, for example) in response to his remarks. The L.A. Times stopped just short of calling for his resignation, but those op-eds are probably not far off. I can't help but notice as well though that, for the record, they were untranscribed and were part of Q&As. Are updates unwelcome?

Of course updates are welcome but it is not suprising that he is covering his ass, especially in the light of recent complaints regarding the tenure of women at Harvard during Summers' reign.

[Bloomberg] The gender controversy erupted for Summers in June, when Harvard faculty members sent him a letter protesting a decline in the number of women hired as professors, said Lizabeth Cohen, a history professor at Harvard. Since Summers became president in 2001, the number of women granted tenure, or a permanent faculty position, has fallen to 12 percent of all appointments in 2003- 2004 from 26 percent in 2001-2002.

Can you believe Clinton appointed him to Treasury?! Oh wait, Lewinsky was a 24-year-old intern...yeah.

I think he should resign because regardless of what he actually said, newspapers reported that that president of Harvard thinks women have less innate ability in certain subjects. I think that's a very damaging message and I think it's his fault.

Apparently he was trying to be provocative. I don't understand why. It makes sense to be provocative when trying to raise awareness or invoke action, but he was at a conference on women in mathematics and science, for Pete's sake. In the end, it has become clear to me that Mr. Summers really doesn't know diddly squat about what he was preaching on. He's an economist and he was speaking far out of his field.