Ross Bender
Sun, 23 Jan 2005 03:32:26 -0800
Harvard Prexy Slams Women's Anatomy, Math Ability Jan 22 2005 by Ross Bender Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers has ignited a firestorm with his comments about women's brains and mathematical proficiency. Last week at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a small nonprofit organization in Cambridge, Summers reportedly said that "Science has shown that ladies' brains are actually proportioned quite differently from those of alpha males - the amygdala is on top of the medial frontal cortex - and this explains why the gals do so poorly at math and physics. Plus their tits get in the way when they try to operate supercomputers and particle accelerators." Summers' remarks brought an immediate outcry. Alumnae have vowed to cancel donations to Harvard, and the President's email box was overflowing with angry letters. Prominent female professors at Harvard have promised to launch an impeachment campaign, and surgeons on the medical faculty have openly offered to castrate the President "at no extra charge." Judith Rodin, the first female President of an Ivy League university, and now the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, called Summer's remarks "an outrage and an insult to women everywhere." Her successor at the University of Pennsylvania, Amy Gutmann, called the Harvard President a "jive meshugganah mother-[expletive deleted]." Gutmann, who received Ph.D.s in political science and astrophysics from Harvard, commented that it was well known that "Larry has the IQ of a water buffalo and a virile member which, when erect, which is not often, is the size of that of a raccoon or ferret." The embattled Harvard President explained on his website that his words had been taken out of context. "Actually, some of my best friends are women, and I'm doing everything in my power to find intelligent women to serve on the Harvard faculty. It's not my fault that there are so few qualified women, that women prefer to lie around and make babies rather than doing rigorous scientific work. But we are now offering a program of free hippocampal prostheses for any women accepted as faculty members at Harvard." http//www.deadbrain.com -- Ross Bender http://rossbender.org/deadbrain1.html ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the list named "Culture." To unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>.