Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Quantifying Political Correctness

In a previous post I talked about how Larry Summers was being forced from his post as President of Harvard University by the faculty of the Arts & Sciences department for some "controversial" comments he made regarding innate gender differences and their possible correlation to the lack of women in the upper eschelons of science.

Last year, as part of a sentence handed down for insider trading in his own company's stock in 2001, Larry Ellison of Oracle was required to donate $100 million to the charity of his choice. He chose to donate $115 million to the Harvard University Global Health Initiative. One year later, the money has been slow to come, and no deal had yet been signed outside of his pledge. Now we know why:

Sources familiar with the deal claim Ellison delayed the project because of controversy embroiling economist and then-Harvard President Lawrence Summers.
The sources, who asked to remain anonymous because they feared losing their
jobs, said only Summers had the international clout needed to roll out such an
ambitious project, which involved tracking how health care dollars are spent and
what impact they have in the developed and developing worlds.
Summers resigned in February, amid faculty uproar over comments suggesting that differences in "intrinsic aptitude" may explain why fewer women than men succeed in math and science.

Mr. Ellison said he plans to give the money that would have gone to Harvard to a charity that trains teachers and educates impoverished children in the developing world. He didn't identify the institution or elaborate further.

I wonder how the Arts & Sciences Department feels about this?

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