Stereotypes vs. individual ability

How ironic it was to see Ashwin Bhirud’s lighthearted attack on stereotypes next to John Miller’s column justifying Harvard President Summers’ unsupported remarks about the relative inability of women to achieve in the sciences and in mathematics. If one thing needs to be made clear to Summers, Miller and many others, it is this: stereotypes and generalizations have no use in the context of intellectual achievement.

Harvard attracts gifted women scientists from around the world. What message does that University’s president’s statement send to those women about how their worth is perceived and how their work will be rewarded? What message does it send to their male colleagues and supervisors?

I received my A.B. from Harvard in 1988. Sexism was rampant, blatant, and tolerated at every level there at that time. I found myself on the butt end of negative remarks about my mathematical ability from male Harvard faculty, and about my unladylike athletic ability from members of the Radcliffe administration who believed themselves to be feminists. Summers’ statements are right in line with the Harvard culture that I remember, and I believe that such statements create and encourage an atmosphere in which individuals are belittled and discouraged.

And what we do at a university comes down to individuals. I don’t teach “women.” I teach Francesca and Janelle and April and Yu-Jin and many others. I judge each of them by their ability, their work, and what Martin Luther King called “the content of [their] character[s]” and the same is true of my male students. Because one Harvard professor judged me the same way, I became a scientist—with no slight quantitative ability. And because I believe that stereotypes stand in the way of scientific discovery and of individual achievement alike, I have become a non-donating Harvard alumna.

Anne Weil, Ph.D.

Research Associate

Biological Anthropology and Anatomy