 |
 |
|
|
|
|||
|
|||
 |
|||
Newsday: Summers’ remarks hurt efforts to address gender equality in math, science
Harvard president Larry Summers, by suggesting at a January 14 academic conference that women innately are ill-equipped to succeed in math and science, “has done real damage” to efforts to bridge the gender gap in those areas, according to Caryl Rivers, a COM journalism professor, and Rosalind Barnett, a Brandeis University social scientist, in a January 20 Newsday op-ed. Summers’ remarks, which he has retracted and apologized for, were “dead wrong, but how many undergraduates will steer away from math because of the power of his position?” write Rivers and Barnett. “How many mothers and fathers will remember the headlines, and discourage their high school daughters from taking hard math classes?”
Research indicates that the disproportionately low numbers of women in engineering and computer programming today likely result from gender stereotypes, Rivers and Barnett argue, as well as from teachers’ and parents’ failure to encourage girls’ interest in math or science. “With a little bit of training, girls can improve their math abilities quickly, which could not happen if females were ‘hardwired’ to perform poorly at math,” they write. “Trend analyses of kids’ academic skills find that girls are rapidly closing the gap in math and science, most likely as a result of special programs set up in the 1990s to enhance girls’ performance. But such programs are facing cuts, and if they disappear, the stereotypes that start early will grow even stronger.”
MetroWest Daily News: Insanity defense requires top-notch lawyers
Defense attorneys for Richard Hartogensis, the Marlborough, Mass., man accused of killing his wife in early January, will have their work cut out for them if they argue that Hartogensis is insane, as they have indicated they might, says Daniel LeClair, chairman of MET’s applied social science department, in the January 13 MetroWest Daily News. “Getting an insanity plea is very, very difficult,” says the criminal justice expert. “It requires a very sophisticated lawyer to be able to pull that off.”
To prove that a defendant is insane, LeClair says, the defense typically must show that he or she didn’t plan the crime, didn’t know what he or she was doing, and didn’t understand the consequences. Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, who attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford in 1975, but failed to load her gun, “was absolutely crazy but she was found competent to stand trial,” LeClair says. “She was poor.” On the other hand, John Hinckley, who shot former President Ronald Reagan, was found not guilty by reason of insanity, although he is believed to have planned the assassination attempt. “He was from a prominent family,” LeClair says, “and hired a sophisticated defense team.”
Los Angeles Times: Americans are religious illiterates
“Since 9/11, President Bush has been telling us that ‘Islam is a religion of peace,’ while evangelist Franklin Graham (Billy’s son) has insisted otherwise,” writes Stephen Prothero, a CAS and GRS religion professor and department chairman, in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on January 12. “Who is right? Americans have no way to tell because they know virtually nothing about Islam. Such ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads.”
In contrast, when Americans debated slavery, almost exclusively on the basis of the Bible, Prothero argues, people of all races and classes could follow the debate. So how did “one of the most religious countries in the world become a nation of religious illiterates?” he asks.
“[M]ost of the fault lies in our elementary and secondary schools,” he writes. “Because of misunderstandings about the First Amendment, religious studies are seldom taught in public schools. When they are, instruction typically begins only in high school and with teachers not trained in the subtle distinction between teaching religion (unconstitutional) and teaching about religion (essential) . . . . And though the ACLU may rage, it is not un-American to bring religious reasoning into our public debates. . . . What is un-American is to give those debates over to televangelists of either the secular or the religious variety, to absent ourselves from the discussion by ignorance.”
28
January 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations