Sucks President Resigns

[www.thecrimson.com]

Looks like they do want to copy us after all. At least it might be a karma payback for this Saturday.

But they both resigned for completely different reasons, of course. Summers did not have the support of the Harvard faculty, held more conservative views, and was not an ice hockey fan (at least not to my knowledge)...

min
...and was not an ice hockey fan...

Huh. You'd have thought he'd fit right in at Harvard...

Apparently there is quite the little pissy fit going on about this at Hubris University, because Summers in effect got forced out solely by the Arts faculty, whereas everybody else wanted to keep him. The other faculties are now saying, in effect, "who died and made the Lit Crit crowd king?"

Shrug. If the President resigns, does the Provost get a 4.0 for the semester? Oh, that's right, EVERYBODY gets a...

I agree with Mr. Summer's statement. How many women physics majors do you know at Cornell, what about math majors. It isn't a bad thing that they don't exist, it is just how it is. Everyone needs to grow up. If women get bent out of shape over this we should not let them out of our kitchens. They are just embarrasing themselves.

Facetimer
I agree with Mr. Summer's statement. How many women physics majors do you know at Cornell, what about math majors. It isn't a bad thing that they don't exist, it is just how it is. Everyone needs to grow up. If women get bent out of shape over this we should not let them out of our kitchens. They are just embarrasing themselves.

Well, I'm about to marry one - in fact, she was a double major, in math and physics. Two of my good undergrad friends were female math majors.

But those are just anecdotes - and they all talked about how it was strange that everyone in their majors knew who they were. So yep, not too many women in those fields. But I pretty much agree with you - so what? I think the opportunity is there these days, so what's the problem if proportionally fewer women choose those fields? Any actual discrimination, of course, should be taken seriously and eliminated, but any discussion of discrimination should focus on process and not results.

Robb

Facetimer
But I pretty much agree with you - so what? I think the opportunity is there these days, so what's the problem if proportionally fewer women choose those fields? Any actual discrimination, of course, should be taken seriously and eliminated, but any discussion of discrimination should focus on process and not results.

The so what is that diversity in thought prevents group think and brings in other perspectives which are vital to any creatives process including (and I would maybe even say especially) science, math, and engineering. People with different life experiences produce different perspectives on problems and contribute to the diversity of thought and problem solving methods. It produces better, more efficient, and more creative solutions to problems.

So even lacking any single drop of discrimination, having a field which lacks diversifiation - and not just in gender, race, but in all aspects of life - status/hierarchy, experience, education, region, etc - is a negative for that field and for whatever that field impacts.

Furthermore, everyone has natural, inherent biases. If you don't think that's true, ask yourself how likely you are to hire someone, versus how likely you would be to hire the same person if you found out they were a Cornellian... or even now a Cornell hockey fan. We completely naturally tend to like people more with whom we have more in common, or who remind us of ourselves. White males without an drop of intentional malovelent bias of any kind would still tend to gives a job to a college graduate who fits their mold since they remind them of themselves. Which just feeds the diversity-of-thought problem above.

Even without discrimination, its still a problem and its still a bias, and for the betterment of everyone and everything we do, its a problem that needs to be addressed.

DeltaOne81

Robb

Facetimer
But I pretty much agree with you - so what? I think the opportunity is there these days, so what's the problem if proportionally fewer women choose those fields? Any actual discrimination, of course, should be taken seriously and eliminated, but any discussion of discrimination should focus on process and not results.

The so what is that diversity in thought prevents group think and brings in other perspectives which are vital to any creatives process including (and I would maybe even say especially) science, math, and engineering. People with different life experiences produce different perspectives on problems and contribute to the diversity of thought and problem solving methods. It produces better, more efficient, and more creative solutions to problems.

So even lacking any single drop of discrimination, having a field which lacks diversifiation - and not just in gender, race, but in all aspects of life - status/hierarchy, experience, education, region, etc - is a negative for that field and for whatever that field impacts.

Furthermore, everyone has natural, inherent biases. If you don't think that's true, ask yourself how likely you are to hire someone, versus how likely you would be to hire the same person if you found out they were a Cornellian... or even now a Cornell hockey fan. We completely naturally tend to like people more with whom we have more in common, or who remind us of ourselves. White males without an drop of intentional malovelent bias of any kind would still tend to gives a job to a college graduate who fits their mold since they remind them of themselves. Which just feeds the diversity-of-thought problem above.

Even without discrimination, its still a problem and its still a bias, and for the betterment of everyone and everything we do, its a problem that needs to be addressed.

I don't see how one can prove that gender and racial diversity provides a measurable benefit, especially in math and science. NASA has been accused of group think in the more recent shuttle era. I'm guessing the problem is not diversity but rather the internal culture the organization fosters.

nyc94
NASA has been accused of group think in the more recent shuttle era. I'm guessing the problem is not diversity but rather the internal culture the organization fosters.

But if they were bringing in people of various backgrounds (of all types), don't you think you would more likely to break that group think by bringing in new perspectives? Or does that makes too much sense?

DeltaOne81

nyc94
NASA has been accused of group think in the more recent shuttle era. I'm guessing the problem is not diversity but rather the internal culture the organization fosters.

But if they were bringing in people of various backgrounds (of all types), don't you think you would more likely to break that group think by bringing in new perspectives? Or does that makes too much sense?

Not to me. To me it smacks of being an untestable platitude. Guess what? There are women and minorities who will go along with the crowd, and there are white males who (gasp) think differently from other white males - e.g. I don't exactly seem to be agreeing with you right now. Diversity for diversity's sake makes no sense whatsoever to me - all people are created equal, and we should be judged on the content of our character, not the color of our skin. You are assuming certain traits about people (they'll think differently) based SOLELY on their physical appearance - sounds like stereotyping to me.

DeltaOne81

nyc94
NASA has been accused of group think in the more recent shuttle era. I'm guessing the problem is not diversity but rather the internal culture the organization fosters.

But if they were bringing in people of various backgrounds (of all types), don't you think you would more likely to break that group think by bringing in new perspectives? Or does that makes too much sense?

I just don't think race and gender is a good place to go looking for diversity in thought process. Especially in science I engineering I would think that a person's educational and employment background would be a better indicator. There might be a historical bias in where women and minorities attended college but that gap has certainly eroded. In my mind the largest problem is income inequality and the resulting disparities in the quality of education prior to college. That a disproportionate amount of the poor are minorities is somewhat incidental.

I recently read something that said that either the mean or median (I don't remember which) family income of African American students at Harvard was somewhere in the high $80,000s, just below the same number for white students. So Harvard is simply taking the minorities whose families have achieved success and declaring their campus to be diverse. If I were sitting in a classroom that was 50% women, 12% African American, 11% Latino etc and everyone's parent was a doctor, lawyer, or investment banker I would fail to see what they have really accomplished. I would certainly question whether I was being exposed to different thouught processes.

It would be useful to see a quartile distribution of income - among minorities, what's the average of the bottom quarter, second quarter, etcetera. There are probably a lot of black or Hispanic students at Harvard (Cornell, too) whose parents are doctors, lawyers, own car dealerships, etcetera.

If the average income is $80K, that's still half your income tied up in tuition and fees, were there no scholarship money. And when you're sittng on a $26B nest egg, there's a bit more flexibility in providing financial largesse.

One of Cornell's great diversity tools is the state colleges. That allows a lot of kids of truly middle class families (average US family income is about $45K) to go to an Ivy school. All races.

---

Sad thing about Harvard is that the university may be headed toward anarchy if no one can lead (read: manage (read: control (read: reign in))) the factions. Could it be that someone else usurps Harvard's role as America's and the world's dominant university? Summers was a breath of fresh air. I probably wouldn't feel that way if I were a tenured philosophy professor.

billhoward
If the average income is $80K, that's still half your income tied up in tuition and fees, were there no scholarship money. And when you're sittng on a $26B nest egg, there's a bit more flexibility in providing financial largesse.

That's what saving and investing are for.

You guys keep saying that gender and race aren't the key to diversification. I agree. If you read what I said, I explictly talked about diversification in all walks of line, including non-physical characterists. In no way am I talking "solely" about physical charactersics, and I named several others

I don't see how you can claim to be diverse without physical diversity, but I do see how there's much more to it in that - and how companies/universities/fields can be diverse in physical characteristics but not really be diverse much at all.

DeltaOne
The so what is that diversity in thought prevents group think and brings in other perspectives which are vital to any creatives process including (and I would maybe even say especially) science, math, and engineering. People with different life experiences produce different perspectives on problems and contribute to the diversity of thought and problem solving methods. It produces better, more efficient, and more creative solutions to problems.

I suppose that's possible, but if it were true, why aren't there some "diverse" companies out there kicking the crap out of Big Honky, Inc? If diversity were really the key to producing better, efficient, and creative solutions to problems, the market (i.e. major corporations) would have embraced it long, long ago. Most of those people would sell their own grandmother to get another percentage in their stock price - I truly don't believe that they say to themselves, well, we could create much better products if we had a more diverse workforce, but I'd really rather not because of my own prejudice.

If companies are not hiring people because of their race, that's discrimination and illegal. If companies hire people who they feel are most qualified regardless of race, then I have a hard time caring whether their workforce ends up looking representative of the general population.

And let's be honest - you may say that you care about more than race and gender, and you may even really care about more than race and gender. But what about a hypothetical case where a company diligently researches its applicants and comes to the honest conclusion that a particular group of 10 white males actually gives them better diversity of thought process, background, experiences, etc, than a group of 10 candidates who is of mixed gender and race? That company would still take a LOT of crap from the pro-diversity crowd if they hired the 10 white males.

I also don't buy the "bias" position (nyc94), that peoples' biases are so ingrained and subconscious that they can't be trusted to make their own decisions - someone has to watch out over them to be sure they do the right thing. Classic Big Brother liberalism, if you ask me. Saying that it's unintentional or subconscious is just a way to keep the argument going no matter what happens - blacks earning more money? Well, there's still bias. Women owning a greater and greater percentage of small businesses? There's still bias. Etc.

All that we are promised under the Constitution of this country is an equal opporunity for each individual, not equal outcomes across arbitrary "groups." I would find it to be incredibly bizarre and unlikely if the 500 CEOs of fortune 500 companies happened to have the same percentage of women, blacks, Hindus, atheists, gays, dwarves, etc, as the general population. So using that kind of metric as a target is just as bizarre to me.

Robb
I also don't buy the "bias" position (nyc94), that peoples' biases are so ingrained and subconscious that they can't be trusted to make their own decisions - someone has to watch out over them to be sure they do the right thing.

I wasn't the one that said that.

nyc94

Robb
I also don't buy the "bias" position (nyc94), that peoples' biases are so ingrained and subconscious that they can't be trusted to make their own decisions - someone has to watch out over them to be sure they do the right thing. Classic Big Brother liberalism, if you ask me.

I wasn't the one that said that.

I think you were referring to something I said that nyc94 tried to quote and messed up the formatting.

But once again, you're interpreting things I never said. Just like I never said that race and gender were the key to diversity, at no point did I suggest any government intervention or big brother liberalism.

The *only* thing I said is that lack of diversity in all walks of life (background, philsophy, religion, education, income level, geographical origin, race, and gender) *is* a problem. Period. I did not suggest any specific solution, and I certainly didn't suggest government involvement.

The *only* thing I was arguing was facetimer's point, and your agreement, that lack of diversity isn't an issue. I merely said its a problem and is something we should be aware of and concerned about.

Robb

DeltaOne
The so what is that diversity in thought prevents group think and brings in other perspectives which are vital to any creatives process including (and I would maybe even say especially) science, math, and engineering. People with different life experiences produce different perspectives on problems and contribute to the diversity of thought and problem solving methods. It produces better, more efficient, and more creative solutions to problems.

I suppose that's possible, but if it were true, why aren't there some "diverse" companies out there kicking the crap out of Big Honky, Inc?

First, what does "Big Honky, Inc" trade under on NASDAQ? I'd like to short them, considering that a close subsidiary recently turned in subpar quarterly numbers: [elf.elynah.com]

Secondly, "diversity in thought" has zippo to do with diversity of gender, race, family background, or hockey affiliation. One in (at best) 100 people actually operate from an original perspective, and that Talented Oneth is just as likely to be an aristo or a prole -- it's lightning, not social standpoint. The only reason why 40 white males in a board room likely all think the same way is that 40 *anybodys* in a board room likely all think the same way. True innovative thought is as rare as perfect pitch, and as defiant of prediction or classification.

We started "diversity" pushes in order to further the cause of The High Church of Meritocracy. It used to be that if you were a minority or a woman you were by definition (in all but a very few cases) powerless. Giving those people a shot required more than just allowing the wheel to grind happily onwards. So, race and gender obsession was born. All well and good.

The screw-up was identifying the biased-against groups by skin color and plumbing, rather than by privilege. We now assume that because we've got inclusion relative to those personal characteristics, we've become an equal opportunity society, whereas all we've done is taken the same rank-ordering that used to exist for the benefit of privileged white males and extended it so that children of privileged blacks now have a chance equal to children of privileged whites.

That may have been a necessary interim step, to get rid of all the misconceptions of innate ability (although I guess Summers demonstrates that even that isn't finished yet). But it is hardly the whole ballgame.

DeltaOne81
ask yourself how likely you are to hire someone, versus how likely you would be to hire the same person if you found out they were a Cornellian... or even now a Cornell hockey fan.

That depends - do I need them to work on Fridays?

Beeeej

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