Grab the ankles, guys

And don't even bother applying for a position at Harvard without the right chomosomes and lifestyle. They've virtually taken the old "No Blacks or Jews Need Apply" signs and amended them to indicate the myopic need for women, gays and people of colour. Word is out that the new president of the Esteemed Ivy is Drew Gilpin Faust, who sports a long track record of reverse discrimination and molding young women to see themselves as All Victims, All the Time.

With typical feminist hypocrisy, Faust has managed to wield massive power even as she rues female powerlessness. She headed the Task Force on Women Faculty, created after the firestorm over Summers’s recklessly honest speculations about women in science, that strengthened the feminist hold on faculty hiring and promotions. The Task Force won a $50 million commitment to increase faculty “diversity efforts” at Harvard, notwithstanding that for decades the university has tied itself in knots trying to increase female and black faculty representation. Faust’s Task Force also muscled into existence a remarkable new bureaucratic sinecure: the Senior Vice Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development. This new official sits with the president, the provost, and the deans of faculties, in order to push “diversity” quotas in every corner of the university’s academic operations.

One example of the Task Force's goals is to push more women into the fields where they are more sparsely represented than men.

"It is crucial not only for Harvard, but for the nation, to attract talented women to careers in science. But to do so, women need to see careers in science as desirable and realistic life choices," said Task Force Chair Barbara J. Grosz. "Our proposals are designed to provide financial and other kinds of support at key points in the pipeline to enable individuals who have chosen scientific careers to sustain them and to demonstrate to others that such careers are viable. We can't afford to continue losing talent to obstacles that we have the means to overcome."

It's one thing to offer scholarships, but the reference to sustaining the career is nebulous. Why can't they be sustained? Even the women who begin to study and work in the given area fall to attrition -- is it possible they find they don't like it despite the money thrown at them? That the work doesn't mesh with other life's goals? That their vocation lies elsewhere? Perhaps it's not a "realistic life choice" unless life is rearranged beyong recognition. How exactly does a Task Force sustain you in your job that already has a serious paycheck and benefits? Maybe higher pay for women scientists? An explanation is necessary if we're not to draw this frightening conclusion.

Regardless, it's the Feminist Dream Come true -- that the oppressive patriarchy (The Enemy) invites the victim inside his Den of Iniquity, the very Halls of Power. Now she can scratch and claw and tear the drapes to punish him for, er, keeping her out, or threatening to, or, well at least she thought they always would. If she's feeling nice (and placated daily) she'll simply rearrange the furniture and not break the crystal. What backlash? Why would there be a backlash...?

Comments

[Dan S.]

"Summers’s recklessly honest speculations about women in science . . ."

Well, the second and fourth words are quite on target . . . Are you at all familiar with Richard Dawkins' most recent book, _The God Delusion_? It's generally agreed that he's pretty hot stuff as a scientist and science populizer, but when it comes to theology . . . Well, perhaps the main criticism - rightly or wrongly - is that he sort of lazily goggled around, tossed off a crude and simplistic sketch of extremely complex ideas, barely engaged them on the most simplistic of levels, ignored almost all of the vast body of work on the subject - giving, in fact, no indication he was even aware of it - all the while appearing to think that he had accomplished something clever. And, they add, if this implicit disregard for both topic and reader - especially for those who take the subject seriously, and have spent significant time and resources trying to understand it - wasn't insulting enough, he presented it in a way apparently guaranteed to offend.

Well, that's pretty much exactly what Summers did.

That last paragraph comes across to me as both hostile and . . . sneering? Mocking?
Why do you view feminism this way?

[gsk]

Dan, dear, why don't you ever read feminist literature? It would be quite an education. They don't hide their end-games, nor do they hide their distain for men and masculinity. They're a paint-by-numbers crowd and vicious when crossed.