Following a tense faculty meeting that left in doubt Harvard professors' confidence in their leader, University President Lawrence Summers released for the first time Thursday a transcript of his controversial remarks on women in science. The Jan. 14 remarks, in which Summers suggested that biological differences may explain women's scarcity in the sciences, have made him the object of intense scrutiny for more than a month.
During the meeting, at which several high-profile professors attacked Summers to widespread applause, the faculty decided to meet against Tuesday to discuss holding a vote of confidence in Summers' leadership, The Harvard Crimson reported this week.
The remarks on women in science are the latest in a string of controversies throughout Summers' three-and-a-half-year tenure, including the stormy departure of Cornel West GS '80 to Princeton in 2002.
Last week, University President Shirley Tilghman joined the presidents of Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a written statement criticizing Summers' remarks for encouraging negative gender stereotypes.
Summers has publicly apologized multiple times, and launched two task forces to examine ways to improve the recruitment and retention of women faculty.
The ultimate decision on Summers' fate as president falls to the Harvard Corporation, not the faculty. The senior member of the seven-person Corporation released a statement Thursday strongly supporting Summers.
Transcript
Along with the transcript, Summers published an apologetic letter to the Harvard faculty Thursday.
"If I could turn back the clock, I would have spoken differently on matters so complex," he wrote. "My January remarks substantially understated the impact of socialization and discrimination, including implicit attitudes — patterns of thought to which all of us are unconsciously subject."
The transcript generally corroborates previous accounts of the remarks.
"So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity," Summers said at the Jan. 14 National Bureau of Economic Research conference in Cambridge, Mass.
"In the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination," he said.
Amid the controversy, some Harvard professors continued to defend their president Thursday.
"He clearly expressed regret over it and we should be more forgiving. What he said is not university policy and in fact will probably lead to the opposite policy — the hiring of more women faculty — which is great," Harvard University Physics Professor Cumrun Vafa GS '85 said in an email.
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