Fair Harvard! we join in thy Jubilee throng,
And with blessings surrender thee o’er
By these Festival-rites, from the Age that is past,
To the Age that is waiting before.
O Relic and Type of our ancestors’ worth,
That hast long kept their memory warm,
First flow’r of their wilderness! Star of their night!
Calm rising thro’ change and thro’ storm.
Farewell! be thy destinies onward and bright!
To thy children the lesson still give,
With freedom to think, and with patience to bear,
And for Right ever bravely to live.
Let not moss-covered Error moor thee at its side,
As the world on Truth’s current glides by,
Be the herald of Light, and the bearer of Love,
Till the stock of the Puritans die.
I dunno. Seems to me, what with the $50 million dollars that Harvard prez Larry Summers is throwing down the “diversity” sinkhole in an attempt to wash away his transgressions against political correctness, “moss-covered Error” is thriving at Harvard, even as “the stock of the Puritans” runs thin.
More seriously (at least by a little), enough of you sent me the link to this marvelous skewering of Summers/Harvard and the new Task Force Report on gender by Heather Mac Donald that I hardly need say anything about it, except to urge you to go read it.
Since it’s too well-done to summarize, I’ll whet the appetite of any of you who haven’t already read it by quoting just two passages:
For all its verbosity, the task force report never explains its central conceit:
McDonald stated the case perfectly. Professional diversity hucksters are being wrapped layer within layer, like a massive spoiled onion. Giving every rotten layer a different name, and a new budget, seems to placate the under 85 IQ crowd quite well. What? Only $50 million? You’d better do better next time you piker!
Well, why no thave black approaches to genome research excellence? We already have women’s ways of knowing that don’t rely on such patriarchal concepts as “logic” and “facts.”
On the other hand, I don’t think even the most ardent feminist would think of getting on an airplane that hadn’t been designed and built according to those outmoded white male concepts.
An open letter to Larry Summers:
Dear Larry:
For a step-by-step primer on hiring by gender/racial preferences,
go to
http://www.ithroughe.blogspot.com
$50 million should go a long way toward paying out bribes, I mean, “incentives” designed to entice current employees to send you “qualified” faculty candidates.
Heather Mac Donald doesn
Richard Nieporent wrote:
>>So wouldn
I was getting my Ph.D. in physics at the height of the Vietnam War (1970). One of my Lefty professors who did not want anyone to support the war effort asked us to pledge to not work in the defense industry. This was at a time that there were negative openings in the physics departments due large cuts in the NSF budget. I went to him and said I admire your dedication to your ideals. I would be happy to sign the pledge if you would resign and let me take your place on the faculty. For some reason he did not take kindly to my suggestion.