A little more than a month ago, Harvard president Lawrence Summers incited the wrath of his audience at a conference on diversifying science and engineering by suggesting that differences in the hiring rates of men and women in academia are in part due to differences in the intrinsic aptitude of male and female candidates.

Many have rushed to Summers' side, insisting that though his comments were of course bigoted and unsupported, the vitality of freedom of expression in our nation's universities hinges on his being allowed to remain at the helm of Harvard's ship. There are also, as usual, the brainless battalions of PC police calling for Summers' ouster. [Read article]

What's wrong with the following analogy? The Massachusetts Minutemen of the American Revolutionary War is to the British Army as a volunteer vigilante group is to illegal immigrants who cross the Arizona-Mexico border.

If you believe the Minuteman Project Web site, stopping the influx of illegal immigrants coming in from Mexico is tantamount to fighting for independence from an oppressive monarchy. Last time I checked, the British aristocracy wasn't exactly sneaking across the pond to wash the colonialists' dishes or landscape their front yards. [Read article]

Reactions, statements don't compare

In his Monday column, columnist Matt Gray compares the reactions among faculty against Harvard University president Lawrence Summers to University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill. He argues that academics pressuring Summers to resign from his presidency while supporting Churchill to stay in his tenured professorship have a double standard. This is hardly the case. There is pressure on Summers to resign from his presidency, not from his tenured professorship. Ward Churchill resigned from his department chair position soon after the controversy broke out, at his own will, because he didn't want his views to be associated with his department. Summers, by not resigning from his position as a university president after having expressed his views, is risking questions that may be raised about the decisions made under his presidency regarding hiring women faculty in science and engineering departments at Harvard. Comparing the faculty reactions to Professors Summers' and Churchill's statements is like comparing apples to oranges. [Read article]