greenpass

Worrying

Hello, back again. Haven't posted in any substantial way for about a year because I had other things going on in the real world (college, graduation, moving across the pond, looking for a job, etc). Also, there's something that has begun to profoundly worry me about the blogosphere, namely, the old statistician's problem of an unbiased sample.

Here's what I mean: a lot of commentators have held up the advent of the blogosphere as the rise of individual voices that tell us what America (and the rest of the world) are really thinking, on all sides of every issue. However, the sample of blogs is spectacularly biased, if only because bloggers are self-selecting - most importantly, you need to have the time and energy to post. People like my father, who are extremely politically aware and have strong views on everything under the sun, are simply too busy to make his voice heard on the internet. When I read threads on Atrios and Kos I think, "Yes! There are like-minded people out there - we're going to drive a revolution in American politics." But the best explanation for why denizens of the blogosphere overwhelmingly supported candidates like Dean, Kucinich and Clarke, and then Kerry won the primaries, is because the vast majority of these voters doesn't have the time or energy to read or write blogs.

So, instead of blogging, I'm going to go back to studying my LSAT book to hopefully get into a good law school and then go into politics after that. That's why I won't be posting much any more, probably - I'll be working in the real world to make things that I care about happen. This doesn't mean I am tearing the blogosphere down, or that I don't think it has a very, very important function for the people who are able to support themselves blogging or have the time to do so. I just think I can make more of a difference personally by concentrating on the real world for a change.

Safe Space!

In a nod to the Harvard BLGTS Association's campaign to get people to put "BLGT Safe Space" signs on their doors, my downstairs neighbours have started a "Stand up for academic freedom" Larry Summers Safe Space campaign. I may disagree with much of Summers' style and attitude, but I will say again - if he is to be ousted, it should be on legitimate and obvious terms with none of the underhanded fishy backstabbing that has so characterized some of the faculty's dealings with the problem so far. So Larry, if you're reading this and you want to go somewhere where everyone knows your name...Kirkland B-43 is a safe space for you. For the moment.

UPDATE: Check out Students For Larry (not an endorsement as yet, as I haven't had time to look around the site).

Summers apologizes to the Officers

Yesterday, Larry Summers sent this to officers of the university (not students, but hey, we don't vote in faculty meetings).

At the request of Professors Grosz, Hammonds, Skocpol, and others, I am making available a transcript of my remarks at the January 14 conference as well as the questions and answers that followed. Although I had intended them as informal and speculative, and was reluctant to reopen wounds, I want to be responsive to the concern expressed on Tuesday that our new task forces be in a position to move past the discussion of my remarks and move on with their important work. Links to the transcripts of my NBER remarks and my opening remarks at Tuesday's Faculty meeting are attached at the bottom of this message.

As I said at our Tuesday meeting, if I could turn back the clock, I would have spoken differently on matters so complex. Though my NBER remarks were explicitly speculative, and noted that "I may be all wrong," I should have left such speculation to those more expert in the relevant fields. I especially regret the backlash directed against individuals who have taken issue with aspects of what I said. In this University, people who disagree with me--or with anyone else--should and must feel free to say so. I know of no community as committed to free inquiry as this one, and no institution with a greater responsibility to uphold it.

As I now know better than I did a month ago, the matters I discussed at NBER are the subject of intense debate across a range of disciplines. Colleagues from these fields have taken time to educate me further. My January remarks substantially understated the impact of socialization and discrimination, including implicit attitudes--patterns of thought to which all of us are unconsciously subject. The issue of gender difference is far more complex than comes through in my comments, and my remarks about variability went beyond what the research has established. These are dynamic areas of inquiry, which will no doubt continue to engage scholars in the years ahead.

For now, if any good can come out of the recent controversy, I hope the intense attention on issues of gender can provide us with an opportunity to make concrete progress in the time ahead. It is vital that we aggressively implement policies that will encourage girls and women to pursue science at the highest levels, and that we welcome and support them in our faculty ranks.

Difficult as our most recent meeting was, I appreciate the honesty and recognize the intensity of the concerns expressed. This University faces a crucial set of opportunities and challenges, and I am committed to working together with this Faculty and the other Faculties to set and achieve common goals.

The transcript is here.

It's patently obvious from his opening sentences ("(the organizers) wanted some questions asked and some attempts at provocation", "(let's) just try to think about and offer some hypotheses as to why we observe what we observe without seeing this through the kind of judgmental tendency that inevitably is connected with all our common goals of equality" etc etc etc ad nauseam) that he was speaking not as the President of Harvard, but as someone who was asked to summarize some papers and make some provocative remarks.

It is clear from the way that this has been reported that Summers is being set up for a fall. I know that there are systematic problems at Harvard with gender diversity - there is at every institution of higher learning in the sciences in this country at the moment. But if you have a problem with that, you attack Summers directly, and this whole sorry business of his remarks at that meeting is an embarassing underhanded way to get at him that Theda Skopol et al should be ashamed of themselves for using as an excuse.

When I first arrived here Neil Rudenstein was still President, and I sang at Summers' inauguration as President in the fall of my freshman year. Rudenstein was the classic university president - just raise the money and stay well clear of anything else that's going on. Whether or not Summers has overstepped his bounds as President is another question entirely, but it's one that should be addressed head on and not in this shameful underhanded way. I don't usually find myself in agreement with Harvey Mansfield, but in this we agree - Summers is being set up, and it makes me feel very, very uncomfortable. If the case against him was so strong, it should stand on its own merits without any of this backstabbing.

Go Pats, etc etc

I think I have lived through the four greatest years in Boston sports history in my time here. When I arrived my freshman year, the Patriots had never won a Superbowl, the Curse lived, and basketball and hockey weren't even on the radar screen. My freshman year, the Patriots won the Superbowl and a car was destroyed in Harvard Square. Junior year, they won again. Now it's senior year, we've reversed the Curse (my dad can die a happy man) and the Pats have done it yet again. By Chinese standards, it's not much of a dynasty, but I guess American sports fans don't define their dynasties by generations.

When I graduate, I predict that everything in Boston sports will go all to hell again.

I must admit I find football extremely entertaining to watch, and I admire the coach of the Pats extremely for using statistical and economic analysis to optimize the salaries and the number and proportion of players on the roster. It just goes to show that those who can crunch the numbers win every time :-)

Kafka-esque

It looks like Haruki Murakami has finally taken on all the critics who repeatedly compare him to Kafka, by taking the bull by the horns and titling his new book "Kafka on the Shore". I can't wait to read it. Last year I took a class with Jay Rubin, one of Murakami's translators and also a professor at Harvard in the East Asian Languages and Civ department, which started my and my boyfriend's current obsession with Murakami.

I think the only book I haven't read is "Norwegian Wood", and that's only because it was both sold out at the Harvard bookstore and not available at the library. If you have a taste for the slightly phantasmagorical, with a large dash of pop culture and a nebbishy hero, I highly recommend anything by Murakami, especially "The Wild Sheep Chase" and "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World".

The class was actually fascinating, with an emphasis on how much modern Japanese literature has in common with classical Japanese literature in terms of themes, characterization, and imagery. There's no equivalent in Western literature - it would be like picking up characters from Chaucer or stanzas from Dante in the middle of "The Devil Wears Prada".

It's course time again...

It's my last semester here, which means I get to take a lot of fun classes. Here's my shopping list - cheers and jeers welcome:
Spanish Bab. Intensive Spanish. 7 hours a week, counts as two courses. This way I'll be able to speak four of the most widely spoken languages on earth: English, French, Spanish and Mandarin.
Music 180. Chamber music performance. Monday nights, 7-10pm - if I get in, I'll take the class I've been too scared to audition for since freshman fall, and sing Faure art songs for Robert Levin.
L&A C-40. The Chinese Literati. This sounds seriously cool:
"Examines from literary, philosophical, and historical perspectives the creation in later imperial China of an enduring national culture, which flourished through dynastic change and foreign conquest. Particular attention is given to the role of the literati and their work as poets, essayists, novelists, painters, moral philosophers, and political thinkers. Themes include the relation of culture to political authority, the search for grounds for individual responsibility, the literary and artistic representation of the self, growing ambivalence toward political service, and the rise of individualism. Introduces Chinese approaches to interpreting literary, artistic, and philosophical works."
East Asian Studies 130. The Tang A definite possibility, especially if I do apply for a masters in Chinese Literature or Politics somewhere like SOAS. Depends on the professor though.
Linguistics 110. Intro to Linguistics. I'll probably take this one pass/fail since it looks interesting but a bit more work than I'm willing to put into an elective, especially in a semester with so many interesting classes.
Gov 1300. The Politics of Congress Could be heavy going, but I'll shop it and pick up the syllabus. It's always worth learning more about how the government works from a theoretical standpoint.
Gov 1350. Political Parties and Interest Groups. This looks very cool, although I can't figure out why it only meets once a week for two hours. That looks suspiciously like there's a whole lot of reading assigned. Definitely one to shop.

Alternatively, a little booklet was put into my doorbox tonight that may solve my shopping problems. Entitled "FAS Courses of Instruction emergency addendum", it includes such courses that I think you'll recognize as very much related to my past blogging interests:

Science A-75. Time, Space, the Universe, Maths, and Our God, Jesus Christ
Rev. Evan J. Lushing
M., 1:30-5:30 EXAM GROUP: 8,9
A brief overview of various sciences and maths, taught with the understanding that God is the creator of all things.

General Education 6. Teamwork and Excitement
Corporal Jonathan Murdstrom
M., Tu., W., Th., F., Sa., Su. EXAM GROUP: 8,9
How would you like to fly in a real plane? Do you enjoy working with others in a cooperative and efficient manner? How are your reflexes? Average? Over the course of this ten semester course, you will get the chance to take a variety of field trips to exotic locations like Mosul, Iraq and South Mosul, Iraq. No courses may be taken in conjunction with General Studies 6.
Prerequisites: Age 16 or higher. Actually, 15. We will take 15-year-olds.

Linguistics 85. Crazy Talk

And my personal favourite:
Economics 00. Economics for Women
Larry Summers
M., W. at 3 EXAM GROUP: 8,9
Awww, that's adorable. You want to take e-co-no-mics? This course involves no previous knowledge of economics, mathematics, or words. It will be taught entirely in pictures and/or Barbies.

You gotta hand it to the Lampoon. They may have been around forever and write incomprehensible screeds called "Jester, Ibis, Blot" and have parties where startling amounts of illicit substances are consumed, but when they bother they are hilarious.

In defense of Larry

I decided to put this one under "Science" because I think it's really a case of people reacting badly to an empirical study. As a statistician, it's true that women routinely (and statistically significantly) score in the mid to upper percentile range on tests, including maths and science tests. It's also true that men score at the very high and very low percentiles. Just because you say this out loud doesn't mean you think that women are in any way better or worse at maths and science. However, as scientists and statisticians we should be allowed to speculate on why this is. Are women genetically worse at maths? Does society lead them to doubt their abilities in the numerical arts? (from personal experience, this is a big YES.) Do women get shunted out of maths and hard sciences early on in high school and then find it impossible to catch up? (Also a YES - story to follow).

I honestly believe Summers was set up for a fall here. Here is my evidence:

--Last year there were far too few tenure offers made to women at Harvard. However, this isn't something that you can just change immediately - you can't send the departments back to the drawing board to ask them to submit more women in a week's time. The tenure process is a long one based on publication, teaching, and general scholarship, and if you want more women to get tenure you take more of them into PhD programs and post-docs and assistant professors. You can't suddenly give undeserving women tenure too early in the hope of redressing your statistics. This hurts both the students, by possibly giving them unworthy professors, and the professors themselves by leaving them wide open to accusations of insufficient scholarship and preparation. To emphasize again - the low number of women tenured ISN'T Summers' fault. (In fact, since he doesn't pick the professors who get tenure at all, if it's anyone's fault, it's the departmental chairs.)

--Summers also has a history of butchering his words, although this doesn't excuse any potential gaffes he may make.

--Knowing this, someone asked Summers to speak at this conference about women in academia. According to the Crimson, Summers was assured:
a) that it was a scientific conference
b) that it would be completely off the record precisely because of worries that comments would be misconstrued
c) that he would be there in his capacity as an economist, and not speaking as the Harvardian mouthpiece.

What actually happened was:
a) he summarized the contents of a paper that was about to be presented at the conference, which had valid statistical findings with regards to women underperforming in the sciences
b) his comments were reported in the Boston Globe
c) his comments were taken as his personal view of women
d) his comments were construed to explain the low rate of women getting tenure at Harvard
e) only one or two of the conference participants actually took offence, and that seems to be because they believed c) and d) above. Everyone else (who was actually there, unlike the preponderance of pundits who commented on the situation) thought it was totally unfair to criticize what Summers said.

Needless to say, it was an unfair witch-hunt blown completely out of proportion by the fact that he happens to be the president of Harvard. I agree that he was stupid to think that he could somehow decouple his academic persona from his administrative persona, and that he probably mangled what he meant to say and came off sounding terrible. But I also think that the conference organizers should be ashamed of themselves - if you get Summers to come by telling him it's off the record, it should be just that - off the record. It's shameful that the Globe was able to report his comments at all and had any sort of access to the proceedings.

My story: when I was in 7th grade (Year 8 at good ol' Chinese International School in Hong Kong), my maths teacher sat my parents down and told them very gently that I was a very nice girl but that I was terrible at maths - not only could I not mentally arithmetize my way out of a paper bag, but I didn't know any of my times tables. The other children had been sent to Kumon every day after school and had memorized all these things, and I was far behind the class. Perhaps she should concentrate on English and reading? my teacher said kindly. My parents went home furious, but found to their chagrin that the teacher was right - I was indeed terrible at arithmetic and the times tables. However, the next semester I was taken in hand by a wonderful Hungarian man named Mr. Lazlo Varro (who I have never been able to trace to thank for his faith that anyone can learn to do maths) and taught calculus. I beat the pants off all the kids for whom maths was memorization and not actual understanding, and now I'm at Harvard having finished my statistics degree (yay electives this semester).

Conclusions: many girls can do maths very well. Some can't. Some boys do maths extremely well. Many don't. However, schools shunt girls out of maths to concentrate on the small percentage that do extremely well, because that's how teachers are evaluated, and also because girls are routinely pushed out of maths at all levels. I think girls need more encouragement in general to do stuff, although I don't know if this is a nature or a nurture thing. A study I read last year showed a similar imbalance in women seeking office - once women actually run for office, there's no inherent bias against them, but many fewer women even bother to run initially because they are far less likely than men to get support and endorsement from political parties. This is a very interesting study, and well worth a read (Lawless, Fox. "Why don't women run for office?" Taubman Center for Public Policy, Brown University, 01/04, and shockingly, it's online in pdf format.)

Shmevolution

According to the New York Times, even when evolution is on the syllabus, teachers are afraid to teach it because of the backlash from fundamentalist Christians. I have long thought that an excellent solution to this problem in highly conservative districts is to have a class where many different creationist stories are discussed, and then evolution is discussed with all the attendant scientific discoveries and how they favour evolution. If you're going to teach Genesis, then you sure as hell better teach Brahma creating the world out of a golden egg and the Chinese creation myths where people were made out of reeds and clay by gods and the Ancient Greek myths with the Sky gods and Gaia have sex and create the Titans. Just because Genesis happens to be in the Christian scriptures doesn't mean that there aren't other scriptures that have creation myths, and once the Christian stories are set next to these other ones it becomes clear that they're just as crazy. If you give the kids a chance to decide, 9 times out of 10 I bet they'll pick evolution as the clear winner.

This reminds me of my thoughts on homophobia. There are many cases where homophobic people are shown the error of their ways, either by getting to know a really nice gay person, or realizing that one of their kids is gay, or through other similar revelations. But I find it hard to believe that a tolerant person can ever be convinced into believing that a gay person is evil and responsible for societal evils (unless they become born again, in which case they cease making their own rational decisions). I similarly think that people can be convinced that evolution is right, but very seldom into thinking creationism is right. Given the evidence any rational person will choose evolution over any creation myth, be it Genesis, Brahma, Mother Earth, or even my personal favourite, the one invented by J.R.R. Tolkien in the Silmarillion. If they're going to teach creationism, they should definitely include Tolkien's - it's much better written than Genesis.

People will do anything

Ye gods. He's a Nobel prize winner who once managed to beat an 8 year old (my brother, years ago) at "Star Wars Monopoly", but got whupped at "Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit" by a 21 year old (me). Not a god. Although if he were a god, he'd be a very nice (and smart) one. And I suppose this makes Betsy a sort of domestic fertility goddess, as all the great divine consorts were (Eve, Fricka, Hera, etc.)

Off to New York with the Pitches. My hellish (but fun) semester is over, and I hope I have finally shaken off the spectre of Orfeo and can start blogging again next semester. These big projects are fun, but they do wreak havoc on your academics, long-distance relationships, job search (so far completely unsuccessful), other extra-curriculars (like blogging) and most especially your health. Ever since Orfeo I've been continually sick, although that could have something to do with the horrible Boston winter.

Opening night tonight...

It's the opening night of the opera tonight. We're all sold out for every single performance (possibly helped out by articles in the Harvard Gazette and the Crimson, both surprisingly crappy. Any publicity is good publicity, right?). But we got our first review this morning...