Some readers of The Choice may be too young to remember the brush fire that Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of Harvard University, touched off in 2005, when he suggested that innate differences might explain why women are less successful in science and math careers than men.  In an article just published on The Times’s Web site, my colleague Tamar Lewin finds that five years later, “Harvard is, in some ways, a different place.” Or, as Martha Minow, dean of the law school, tells Ms. Lewin: “This is not your father’s Harvard.” As Ms. Lewin tells it:  In the wake of the furor over his remarks, Dr. Summers — now the senior economic adviser to President Obama — resigned and was replaced by Drew Gilpin Faust, the first woman to lhead the university.  Universitywide, slightly more than a quarter of Harvard faculty members are women, an all-time high, with senior faculty accounting for most of the increase. Women also lead the engineering school, the law school, the education school, Harvard College and the Radcliffe Institute. And while Harvard extended 4 of its 32 tenure offers to women in the year before Dr. Summers’s speech, last year, tenure offers went to 16 women and 25 men.  Since Dr. Summers’s resignation in 2006, Harvard has also poured millions of dollars into child care centers and family-friendly programs for faculty — including research-enabling grants that let junior faculty take their babies and nannies on field trips.  But, in an indication of more ominous days ahead, Ms. Lewin writes:  Harvard has changed in another way, too: Its endowment has lost $11 billion. And with budget cuts now high on the agenda, Dr. Faust acknowledged that changes may be coming in its spending on such programs.  Are readers of The Choice persuaded — based on the evidence presented here, or perhaps on first-hand experience — that Harvard has fostered a kinder, gentler atmosphere for female faculty and other women on campus? Please use the comment box below to let us know.
An increase in tenure offers to women, among other indicators, suggests that Harvard is making amends for a former president's suggestion that men had an inherent advantage in math and science careers.