Larry Summers & the Thought Police

Kathleen Parker talks about the thought police.

The latest smack-down of former Harvard President Lawrence Summers should extinguish any remaining doubt that political correctness is the new McCarthyism.

Summers, you’ll recall, was driven out of his university post in 2005 after he suggested at a conference that gender differences might account for an underrepresentation by women in science, math and engineering. …

For thinking improper thoughts, Summers the Blasphemer was banished into the outer darkness. There’s no debating that he was punished for saying something that made a special group feel bad — the new blacklisting offense. To be called a sexist, racist or homophobe today is tantamount to being a communist sympathizer 50-60 years ago.

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Fast-forward to this month. Summers was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the University of California Board of Regents bimonthly board meeting.

And then he wasn’t.

Maureen Stanton, an evolution professor at UC Davis, was “stunned and appalled” when she learned of Summers’ upcoming speech and circulated a petition to have his invitation withdrawn.

Sinning against the sisterhood not only isn’t forgotten, apparently it isn’t ever forgiven.

I have never been one to be rude just to be rude, but I am also not one to call something by a made-up name just to appease some consituency. An African American is some one who was born in Africa and came to America, it is not a black American.

Likewise, one does not need a Harvard degree is sociology to be see that there are more men enrolled in math an engineering programs than women, one only need to be able to travel to college campuses, be able to count and be able to distinguish between male and female members of the human race.

The demise of Larry Summers is not only tragic but apparently unforgiveable (not that he has anything to be forgiven for). As Parker concludes, the way to prove Larry Summers wrong is to prove him wrong.

The concept of diversity on college campuses is not about diversity of thought, but of cosmetic diversity. Everyone is expected to think the same way. Some diversity.



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