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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
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Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Sept. 19, 2007 /7 Tishrei 5768

After Summers Comes The Fall

By John Leo


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | So former Harvard president Lawrence Summers is once again paying for his sins, this time having a dinner speech canceled by the board of regents of the University of California. The regents caved because feminists circulated a petition announcing that Summers "has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia."


This is the most devastating charge that can be leveled in a university setting, since the modern campus is deeply obsessed by race and gender, and not much else, apart from canceling speakers who think improper thoughts about race and gender.


"None of us go looking for a fight," said University of California (Davis) professor Maureen Stanton, a leader in the effort to get Summers banned. "We were just deeply offended." This is a sensitive person's veto — if you are likely to hurt our feelings, why should we let you speak?


Stanton, an evolutionary ecologist, must understand what happens when politics intrudes on science. But intrusion sometimes comes from the left, as it did when feminists denounced Summers for his brief reference to research on sexual differences in the famous Harvard controversy of 2005.


Columnist Stuart Taylor, Jr, wrote at the time, "Until his disgraceful capitulation to the power of political correctness, Summers was making a much-needed effort to break the self-serving feminist-careerist stranglehold on honest discussion of gender imbalances."


For three decades, researchers have shown that the bell curve for male math skill is much flatter than the curve for females, meaning that males account for more off-the-chart high achievement at one end of the curve and an equal amount of unusual non-achievement at the other.


Most girls do as well as most boys in math and science, but among the extraordinarily gifted, boys prevail. Vanderbilt's Camilla Benbow, a commanding researcher in the field for years, reports sex differences in mathematical precocity before kindergarten, differences among mathematical reasoning ability among intellectually gifted boys and girls as early as the second grade and pronounced sexual differences among intellectually talented 12- to 14-year-olds. Yet Summers, in capitulating to feminist anger, announced that "the human potential to excel in science" has nothing to do with gender. That isn't true. At the very top of the profession, where the geniuses reside, there will be more males than females — absent political pressure and arguments about "underrepresentation," that is.


Research on sexual differences is still the elephant in the room that no one who cares about academic advancement is supposed to notice. Meanwhile the successful banning of Summers by the board of regents raises the possibility that ordinary McCarthyism may now escalate into a one-man blacklist. If he can be banned as a racist-sexist by the board that oversees the entire University of California system, other colleges around the country may take the hint and ban him too.

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