Clueless in Academe

The Chronicle Online

The title of this article is richly ironic. Stanley Fish thinks Larry Summers was being "clueless" when he recently opined that women may be underrepresented in math and science because of innate gender differences.

That, of course, is thoughtcrime, doubleplus ungood. Mustn't go against the liberal academic dogma that states that men and women are exactly the same in all respects.

Dogma or not, anyone who has actually met real men and real women - or had significant interaction with children of both genders - knows that there are in fact many innate differences between the genders, and those will be expressed no matter how many dolls and tea sets you give Jack and how many trucks and tool chests you give Jill.

It's Fish who is the clueless one, and like a fish unaware of the water, he doesn't even know how clueless he is.