The Education of Larry Summers in The American Conservative

"The Larry Summers Show" - My long article in the Feb. 28th American Conservative is available this weekend to electronic subscribers. An excerpt:

The first scientific challenge to academia's traditional assumption that men were smarter than women came in 1912 when pioneering IQ test researcher Cyril Burt announced they scored equally -- on average. Yet, as Summers noted, men are more variable, so they are more numerous among the extremely intelligent, such as Harvard professors and Nobel Prize winners (40 of whom have taught at Harvard).

The Nobel Prize lists show a striking pattern: the fuzzier the field, the better women do. Twelve women have won the most political and least intellectually rigorous Nobel Prize, Peace (13 percent of all individual winners), and ten have been Literature laureates (ten percent). In Physiology & Medicine, there have been seven female laureates (four percent). In Chemistry, three (two percent), and in Physics, the most abstract of the Nobels, just two (one percent).

What about mathematics, that most unworldly of subjects? The Fields Medal for mathematicians under age 40 is the equivalent of the Nobel. No women number among its 44 recipients.

But, surely, the trendline must be turning upwards as discrimination lessens?

That's true in Physiology & Medicine, where women won only once before 1977, but six times (nine percent) since. Yet, by aggregating Physics and Chemistry, we can see the opposite pattern: five women ranked among the first 160 Physics and Chemistry laureates, but over the last 40 years, not a single woman features among the latest 160 winners.

Overall, in the bad old days from 1901 through 1964, women won 2.5 percent of the hard science Nobels. Since then, they've declined to 2.3 percent.

Why hasn't the feminist era fostered more female scientific geniuses? Perhaps feminism persuaded the top women that they could have it all -- romance, children, and career -- rather than just the lonely celibacy society once demanded from them, and they spread themselves too thin. Moreover, feminism encourages women to indulge in self-pity and resentment, which distract from earning a Nobel.

My wife asked, "So why hasn't the Nobel Foundation bowed to feminist pressure and started the usual crypto-quotas to make women feel better about themselves?"

"Because they don't have to?" I speculated. "After all, they're the Nobel Foundation."

"Exactly," she shot back. "And Larry Summers is the President of Harvard. So why can't he too stand up to the feminists who want to make it harder for our sons to get a fair shot?