I've been looking for one of those.

I've been looking for one of those.
Now playing: Sheryl Crow, "Steve McQueen"

While we're at it: Over at UMass-Cambridge, there has been much hubbub about Larry Summers's remarks to the NBER on the difficulties surrounding the hiring of female faculty in the sciences at an elite research university. Zoe Vanderwolk claims the tea leaves tell her that he is now being set up to take the fall.

If Summers goes, it will be a real shame. His three most public attempts to shake things up at Harvard were (1) criticism of Cornel West for shirking his undergraduate teaching duties, (2) pushing the Law School to revamp its hiring process, and now (3) well ... making some poor public statements about gender issues in faculty hiring.

As an undergrad at a large (but not as large as Harvard) research university, one of my biggest frustrations was the apathy many science faculty had towards their teaching duties. There is little in the way of "continuing education for professors" training offered. Faculty compensation was not tied to student performance or review feedback in any meaningful way. On the otherhand, compensation was tied to the ability to bring in research grant money. Therefore, the quality of a class was basically based on two things: how much the professor cared about teaching, and how much innate talent he had for teaching. UMass-Cambridge has thousands of undergraduates paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend; they ought to get the attention of their faculty in exchange for such payment. West is not paid by the University to produce rap CDs and make movie cameos.

While I am not a Law School buff, this Leiter Reports blog entry summarizes what my thoughts are. UMass-Cambridge's law school is clearly losing ground to that of New Haven State University, and the faculty hiring process is as big a reason as any. I don't know if there is in fact a push by faculty to hire someone who meets their political demands, but if there were it would almost inevitably reduce quality since it reduced the applicant pool to those with acceptable (to the faculty)political views. I would also be curious whether Yale faculty now had significantly better contacts on the federal bench or with key large law firms, since those traits also drive law school applicants to different colleges. A third interesting avenue for the relative decline of Harvard may be the relative rise of several state law schools: notably, Michigan, UCLA, Cal, and UT-Austin are all now close to traditional powerhouse UVA in law school quality.

As for the recent brouhaha, Summers was probably out of bounds to conjecture that there is some innate biological difference between men and women affecting achievement in the sciences, no matter how much he tried to qualify his remarks as speculation. Such differences -- if there are any -- are almost certainly dwarfed by pressures from existing social structures steering women away from math and sciences.

Summers's gaffe has sparked a good discussion over at Mark A.R. Kleiman, who has received several suggestions on how to make the research university professor lifestyle accessible to those who are unwilling to work 60 to 80 hours a week.

While trying not to wade too deep into the mud pit (which will probably prove impossible), let me say the following.

Shorter conversation I've had with more than one female (Democratic) political operatives: "Do you think the work environment is too aggressive and discourages women from participating? -- No. It is what it is. Plus I feel like I get respect from my peers when it counts--when we are discussing strategy or operational improvements; I would rather that then feel like I was treated politely but not respected. Being in politics attracts a certain personality type. If you fit that personality type, and you're a woman, it's fine. If you're not, and you want to be in this business, you need to quite frankly grow a pair."

I was very to happy to hear the first part of her answer. After all, I would rather be respected than patronized.But If you think that my friend's last statement is a problem, then something ought to be done to make the political operative environment less hostile to those who don't want to "grow a pair", which doesn't necessarily strictly mean women.

I don't know if a similar environment exists in political opinion writing.

Drum's statement that the "food fighting nature of opinion writing", which I usually call the "chest-thumping nature of opinion writing", is unappealing to women is, I believe, being a bit misinterpreted. I believe it would be better put that the chest-thumping aspect would be less appealing to women--not that all women would dislike it, but that more would than men.

Like Drum, I am going to avoid making any conjectures as to the origins of this imbalance, be they social, biological or whatever.

The underrepresentation of women on the blogrolls of leading left-leaning bloggers is not unique; it could be said of African-americans, unions, schoolteachers, and many other groups that make up the backbone of Democratic party. The leading (in terms of traffic) part left-leaning blogosphere features all sorts of discussion on macroeconomic issues, microeconomic issues relevant to city life (crime, housing costs, fuel economy), farm-subsidy bashing, trying to understand working class white Christians so that they'll vote Democratic again, and political strategy. Issues like pay equity or family leave are rarely discussed directly. Race relations are discussed only at the abstract level of affirmative action and race-loaded issues like crime and poverty reduction, never in the concrete level of "how do we get along as individuals of different races". Unionization issues are almost completely ignored.

In short, overrepresented urban white professional bloggers might want to consider getting a bit out of their comfort zone of reading other urban white professional bloggers and try something else every once in a while. There are lots of respectable writers who don't fit that mold.

So if you'll excuse me, I have to update my blogroll now.

Last updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 10:31 23 February 2005
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I've been looking for one of those. Now playing: Sheryl Crow, "Steve McQueen"

I've been looking for one of those.
Now playing: Sheryl Crow, "Steve McQueen"