Larry Summers

soon-to-be ex-president of Harvard University

was Treasury Secretary for the last year and a half of the Bill Clinton administration.

• friend of Enron during that time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

controvery over his remarks about Women and science

• Jan14'2005 made (transcript) Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce

  • one summary of his remarks and what followed

• Jan17 article covering his "outing" by NancyHopkins of MIT. Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out on Summers' talk, saying later that if she hadn't left, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

  • bits summarizing Summers: He offered three possible explanations, in declining order of importance, for the small number of women in high-level positions in science and engineering. The first was the reluctance or inability of women who have children to work 80-hour weeks... The second point was that fewer girls than boys have top scores on science and math tests in late high school years. "I said no one really understands why this is, and it's an area of ferment in social science," Summers said in an interview Saturday. "Research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialization weren't" due to socialization after all... This was the point that most angered some of the listeners, several of whom said Summers said that women do not have the same "innate ability" or "natural ability" as men in some fields... Summers' third point was about discrimination. Referencing a well-known concept in economics, he said that if discrimination was the main factor limiting the advancement of women in science and engineering, then a school that does not discriminate would gain an advantage by hiring away the top women who were discriminated against elsewhere. Because that doesn't seem to be a widespread phenomenon, Summers said, "the real issue is the overall size of the pool, and it's less clear how much the size of the pool was held down by discrimination."

• Feb12 joint statement issued by the presidents of MIT, Princeton and Stanford (John Hennessy is a computer scientist and president of Stanford University, Susan Hockfield is a neuroscientist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Shirley Tilghman is a molecular geneticist and president of Princeton University.)

• Feb17 he issued an apology

• Feb21'2006, Summers announced his intention to step down effective June 30, 2006.