Contrarian view of Summer's gaffe

As a graduate of Harvard's women's studies department (well, it's not a department, it's a commitee, and my major major was actually 'Religion, Comparative Study of', also a committee), I've felt my failure to comment on the Summers thang as a positive deriliction of duty. But I just couldn't get it up about the whole thing. Why would someone so smart say something so dumb? I thought. And then moved on to thinking about torture.

However, here's a Boston Globe article on what came out of the uproar:Harvard aims to spur advancement of women

In response to the outcry that followed Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers's remarks on women in the sciences, the university announced yesterday the creation of two task forces to develop concrete ways to better recruit women and support the careers of female scholars at Harvard, especially in science and engineering.

Harvard also announced plans to create a senior position in the central administration to focus on the recruitment and advancement of women on the faculty.

Now, imagine you're a senior administrator at a powerful institution, trying to control a bunch of ornery cats who think they know better than you. Some of those cats think all this gender bias crap is bullshit. Everyone's fighting over money, initiatives of all sorts are started and then flounder in committees, and people think you're a crazy motherfucker anyway. Say you really do think there's a problem with gender bias in the academy, but am getting nowhere with your efforts to get your staff to take it seriously.

What if you said something so outrageous to a bunch of other university presidents that the ensuing uproar practically forced your institution to take positive steps toward correcting the problem? People would scream and shout and call you a pig, but the net result would be progress.

Who knows what Larry Summers was really thinking when he said that? Who, however, can doubt that the result will probably be good for women at Harvard?