Illustration by Holly Randall

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.

But whether Summers should lose his post for comments that appear to subvert the "important, common goals of equality" (his words) is an uninteresting question with an obvious answer. The questions Summers posed, and the debate he attempted to initiate, are far better fodder for a discussion of the goal of diversifying the country's colleges.

Caitlin Hall Columnist

Since most people now criticizing Summers' speech undoubtedly have not listened to or read a transcript of it, here's a rundown: The lack of gender-based diversity in certain branches of academia is, according to Summers, not largely due to discrimination in hiring practices or the "socialization" of men and women into different professions. Instead, it has its deepest roots in the fact that fewer women than men are willing to commit to 80-hour work weeks, and in a disparity in ability among the top fractions of a percent of men and women - in other words, a difference in innate ability.

So why can't we dismiss hiring differences as a matter of discrimination?

It stands to reason that if the women who apply for professorships at universities are as qualified as the men who apply for them, and women are hired for 20-30 percent of the positions - as women in science and math are - then there is a surplus of highly qualified women in the job market. In the demonstrably liberal field of academia, one that constantly strives to increase diversity, why aren't there universities that capitalize on the large and untapped resource of highly qualified women?

To put it another way, if fewer, equally qualified women were being hired for university positions, the average woman in the applicant pool would be more qualified than the average man. Why isn't there a single university that has tried to hire all of these above-average women, at enormous benefit to itself in terms of quality of faculty and students, as well as ranking?

The so-called socialization hypothesis fares little better - it's no longer the case, as it was 30 years ago, that far fewer women are entering science, math and engineering. Nearly equal numbers of men and women earn

undergraduate degrees in science, but men are far more likely to stay in school long enough to pursue graduate degrees.

So it seems we have to look elsewhere to completely explain hiring disparities. According to Summers, one part of such an explanation is the fact that women are, on average, far less willing than men to devote long hours to their professions, for reasons that are almost completely reducible to family commitments. The other part of Summers' explanation is that, while the means for such tests are almost identical, there is a significant disparity between the top men's and top women's scores on science and math aptitude tests.

Put more simply, Summers' speech suggested a rather unradical idea: The smartest men and smartest women in the world tend to do best at different things. Lest you think his speech was purely anti-woman, Summers also suggested that men have a much higher propensity for criminality.

It is encouraging to see that so many people took note of Summers' comments, but disheartening to see that the debate over them continues to be misinformed and improperly focused.

Summers cautioned his audience that "we all need to be thinking very hard about how to do better on these issues and that they are too important to sentimentalize rather than to think about in as rigorous and careful ways as we can" - one part of his speech that his detractors seem to have overlooked.

If we want to address hiring disparities in a meaningful way, it is important that we not dismiss out of hand explanations that we find distasteful or inconvenient. Summers knew he was walking into an intellectual minefield when he gave his speech; his bravery warrants a real debate, not a political ambush by his opponents.

Caitlin Hall is a molecular and cellular biology senior. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.