Motus Mentis

In today’s Times, John Tierney calls our attention to the possibility that the government may soon be imposing “Title IX” requirements on university science departments, because there aren’t “enough” women going into fields like physics and engineering.

This is dangerous territory, of course; we all remember the shameful pillorying of Harvard president Lawrence Summers for merely suggesting that there might be innate reasons for the asymmetrical distribution of men and women in science. His perfectly reasonable remarks were taken as an outrageous and impermissible thought-crime, and he was hounded from his post.

Now the dispute turns on whether there might be fewer women physicists and engineers simply because women are inherently less attracted to these disciplines, or whether it is a symptom of a lingering and pernicious discrimination that must be remedied by intrusive government action.

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