Sex Differences Above the Neck
31st July 2026
In January 2005, at a private conference hosted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard President Lawrence Summers violated a central taboo of liberal discourse. In a discussion of why men were overrepresented in tenured science and engineering positions at top universities, he suggested that one possible cause was genetic differences between the sexes.
Summers offered this as one hypothesis among others, including bias against women, the different socialisation of the sexes, and women’s lesser willingness to trade off parental care for time-consuming jobs. His point was that we must understand the causes of unequal representation before trying to change it.
But Summers’s even-handed approach was ignored in the feeding frenzy that followed. The mere suggestion that sex differences in aptitude might be innate—based on genes—was a red line crossed: Summers had raised the spectre of “genetic determinism”. Innate sex differences in aptitude or preference, according to liberal logic, will inevitably produce bias, bigotry, and discrimination—in this case against women—finally yielding inequity: unequal representation of the sexes in valued jobs.
Foolish mortal. He ought to have known better—after all, he dealt with these rabid Wokerati every day.