Hello folks:
After following this discussion, I couldn't resist the opportunity to
plug a paper I have coming out in the Syracuse Law Review in February.
The title is, "Under the Radar: The Resistance of Promotion Biases to
Economic Market Forces." The paper focuses on the trouble black men
have in advancing in corporate and organization hierachies. Our data
focus is football and basketball coaches. We try to explain why black
coaches are more successful in basketball than in football even though
both sports are dominated by black athletes. One intriguing observation
is that college promotion records are worst than the pro's with college
football being particularly dismal.
Clearly minority and female advancement in professional careers are
related. Invariably someone raises the "innate differences" argument
because it is difficult to explain the different success rates using
easily observable variables. Some economists have spent entire careers
arguing that discrimination cannot exist in free-market economies, the
implication being that lack of success rates must be due to innate
differences.
Yet, there are multiple psychological biases including stereotypes,
decision frames and attributions that work subconsciously against
individuals with characteristics that different from those shared by
members of the mainstream.
The impact of these "unintentional" biases on promotions has not been
fully investigate. Unfortunately, while innate differences may have
roles in observed success differences, the attractiveness of resorting
to such factors can and does obscure psychological factors that have
greater explanatory power.
As Ginny mentioned, even if there are innate differences, the
distribution of abilities between populations do overlap. Students at
Harvard are on average smarter than students at Univ. of Florida. Yet,
there are many students at UF who are competitive with the best and
brightest at Harvard (for fans of standardized testing, UF typically
gets one or more 1600 SAT students each year). However, it is an
enticing trap to believe that there is something innately better about
students who attend Ivy league/type schools than students who attend
public universities. These beliefs in some instances become
self-fulfilling prophesies.
Until the biological sciences identify some genetic sequence that is
tied to success in academia and industry, I think it is highly dangerous
and counterproductive for social scientists to travel the innate
differences road.
Robert Thomas
Bill Shaw wrote:
> While "first impressions" still has everyone's attention, what about
> "innate differences between the sexes?" Maybe Harvard doesn't want a
> president who would say this, but surely it's correct. If women in
> math and science are underrepresented, and if it is not because of any
> lack of intellectual resources, doesn't it make sense to open up on
> the issue and try to figure out why? If family and child-care is not
> a plausible explanation, is it entirely a male bias?
>
> Maud Lavin, who graduated from Harvard in the class of 1976, was one
> of the first women to take a demanding theoretical math sequence, Math
> 11 and Math 55, and is an associate professor at the School of the Art
> Institute of Chicago. Ms Lavin said in an interview yesterday that she
> would not donate any more money to Harvard as long as Mr. Summers was
> president, after firing off an angry e-mail message to him.
>
> This quote was lifted from the end of the article. Wouldn't
> universities kill to hire someone like that?
>
> *==========*
> *
> *
> *No Break in the Storm Over Harvard President's Words
>
> **By SAM DILLON and SARA RIMER
>
> *Published: January 19, 2005
>
>
> embers of a Harvard faculty committee that has examined the recruiting
> of professors who are women sent a protest letter yesterday to
> Lawrence H. Summers, the university's president, saying his recent
> statements about innate differences between the sexes would only make
> it harder to attract top candidates.
> Advertisement
>
> The committee told Mr. Summers that his remarks did not "serve our
> institution well."
> "Indeed," the letter said, "they serve to reinforce an institutional
> culture at Harvard that erects numerous barriers to improving the
> representation of women on the faculty, and to impede our current
> efforts to recruit top women scholars. They also send at best mixed
> signals to our high-achieving women students in Harvard College and in
> the graduate and professional schools."
> The letter was one part of an outcry that continued to follow remarks
> Mr. Summers made Friday suggesting that biological differences between
> the sexes may be one explanation for why fewer women succeed in
> mathematic and science careers.
> One university dean called the aftermath an "intellectual tsunami,"
> and some Harvard alumnae said they would suspend donations to the
> university.
> Perhaps the most outraged were prominent female professors at Harvard.
> "If you were a woman scientist and had two competing offers and knew
> that the president of Harvard didn't think that women scientists were
> as good as men, which one would you take?" said Mary C. Waters,
> chairman of Harvard's sociology department, who with other faculty
> members has been pressing Mr. Summers to reverse a sharp decline in
> the hiring of tenured female professors during his administration.
> At the center of the storm, Mr. Summers posted a statement late Monday
> night on his Web page, saying that his comments at the National Bureau
> of Economic Research, a nonprofit economic research organization in
> Cambridge had been misconstrued and pledging to continue efforts to
> "attract and engage outstanding women scientists."
> "My aim at the conference was to underscore that the situation is
> likely the product of a variety of factors and that further research
> can help us better understand their interplay," he said. "I do not
> presume to have confident answers, only the conviction that the harder
> we work to research and understand the situation, the better the
> prospects for long term success."
> Mr. Summers also received support from Hanna H. Gray, a former
> president of the University of Chicago and a member of the Harvard
> Corporation, the university's governing body. Dr. Gray said she
> believed that Mr. Summers's remarks had been misinterpreted.
> "I think that Larry Summers is an excellent president of Harvard,
> firmly committed and deeply respectful of the role of women in
> universities and one who is anxious to strengthen and enhance that,"
> she said.
> At Friday's conference, Mr. Summers discussed possible reasons so few
> women were on the science and engineering faculties at research
> universities, and he said he would be provocative.
> Among his hypotheses were that faculty positions at elite universities
> required more time and energy than married women with children were
> willing to accept, that innate sex differences might leave women less
> capable of succeeding at the most advanced mathematics and that
> discrimination may also play a role, participants said. There was no
> transcript of his remarks.
> His remarks caused one professor to walk out and another to openly
> challenge them.
> In their letter to Mr. Summers, the standing committee on women,
> reproached him for thinking that he could speak as an individual and
> an economist at a small, private conference without it reflecting on
> the university.
> They said it "was obvious that the president of the university never
> speaks entirely as an individual, especially when that institution is
> Harvard and when the issue on the table is so highly charged."
> On and off the campus, Mr. Summers's remarks were the subject of
> heated debate yesterday.
> Denice D. Denton, the dean of engineering at the University of
> Washington who confronted Mr. Summers over his remarks at the
> conference, said that her phone had not stopped ringing and that she
> had received scores of e-mail messages on the subject. She said Mr.
> Summers's remarks might have put new energy into a longstanding effort
> to improve the status of women in the sciences.
> "I think they've provoked an intellectual tsunami," Dr. Denton said.
> Howard Georgi, a physics professor and former chairman of the
> department, sent an e-mail message to Mr. Summers, saying he made a
> mistake in judgment in accepting the invitation to speak as a
> provoker. Dr. Georgi also sent a note to his students assuring them
> that they were appreciated.
> Maud Lavin, who graduated from Harvard in the class of 1976, was one
> of the first women to take a demanding theoretical math sequence, Math
> 11 and Math 55, and is an associate professor at the School of the Art
> Institute of Chicago. Ms Lavin said in an interview yesterday that she
> would not donate any more money to Harvard as long as Mr. Summers was
> president, after firing off an angry e-mail message to him.
> "I am offended and furious about your remarks on women in science and
> mathematics," Ms. Lavin wrote. "Arguments of innate gender difference
> in math are hogwash and indirectly serve to feed the virulent
> prejudices still alas very alive and now even more so due to your
> ill-informed remarks."
> Students were also discussing the remarks. Thea Daniels, 21, a Harvard
> senior majoring in sociology said she and her roommates spent Monday
> evening talking about them.
> "We were just upset," Ms. Daniels said. "It's disconcerting that the
> man who is supposed to have your best interest in mind and is the
> leader of your education community thinks less of us."
>
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