Summers Storm

IN the course of an informal, off-the-record talk before a group of academics, Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, unwittingly touched the third rail of university politics: He speculated that innate differences between the sexes might be one reason there are fewer women than men at the highest echelons of math and science. That gender is “socially constructed” by the patriarchy is a not-to-be-questioned tenet of campus ideology. And here was Summers daring to raise doubts about it.

Camille Paglia, University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, describes the intellectual climate of today’s academy: “Rigid social constructionism so remains the dominant dogma in American humanities and social-sciences departments that to question it even an iota brings the thought police out in shrieking mobs to your door.” Now the mobs, in full cry, are after the president of Harvard University.

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Christina Hoff Sommers

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IN the course of an informal, off-the-record talk before a group of academics, Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, unwittingly touched the third rail of university politics: He speculated that innate differences between the sexes might be one reason there are fewer women than men at the highest echelons of math and science. That gender is “socially constructed” by the patriarchy is a not-to-be-questioned tenet of campus ideology. And here was Summers daring to raise doubts about it.

Camille Paglia, University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, describes the intellectual climate of today’s academy: “Rigid social constructionism so remains the dominant dogma in American humanities and social-sciences departments that to question it even an iota brings the thought police out in shrieking mobs to your door.” Now the mobs, in full cry, are after the president of Harvard University.