Lawrence Summers: The Final Chapter

Thanks to Mark of Braving the Elements and to Canis Major who both sent me the transcript of the infamous Lawrence Summers speech, which you, too, can find here.

I've read it twice, but not with notable care. It's mostly pretty general, and there's a good bit of hand-waving and conjecture, but that seems to be the kind of talk he was aiming for. I have to say, in my two admittedly relatively incautious readings of the thing, I haven't seen anything that changes my mind on this matter. There just doesn't seem to be anything in the speech that comes anywhere close to supporting the kinds of criticisms that have been launched against Summers. He may be wrong, but there is absolutely nothing in the transcript that supports charges of sexism so far as I can tell.

In fact, Summers's comments seem to me to be unusually sober and cautious. They are comments that reasonable people might disagree with, but they are not comments that a reasonable person could take to be sexist. If those on the left continue to make a fuss about this matter, it will be to their great shame.