Nine US University Presidents Pledge to Put A Diamond Cutter to the Glass Ceiling. (December 8, 2005)

    On July 14, 2004 Harvard's President Lawrence Summers spoke to an off-the-record meeting of the National Bureau of Economic Research at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Science reported, "Summers argued that women typically do not work the 80-hour weeks common to professions like law, business, or science. And while noting that socialization and bias may slow the progress of women, he cited the gender variation in test scores as a possible explanation for the larger number of men at the top of the professional ladder."

The fury that ensued has been well documented and was used as a springboard in attempt to oust the driving and rather feisty Summers from the Harvard Presidency. It failed, but now there the seems to be the beginning of progress on the front to create a "welcoming environment" for women in the faculties of leading US universities.

Back in February this year Stanford’s President John Hennessy, together with the presidents of MIT and Princeton Susan Hockfield, and Shirley Tilghman respectively wrote an op-ed for The Boston Globe as a rebuttal to Summers’ remarks. They said in part, "The question we must ask as a society is not 'can women excel in math, science, and engineering?'— Marie Curie exploded that myth a century ago — but 'how can we encourage more women with exceptional abilities to pursue careers in these fields?'"

Now the presidents of nine leading universities, including Summers, have issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to the “full participation of women” among their faculty ranks.

While considerable progress has been made since 2001, we acknowledge that there are still significant steps to be taken toward making academic careers compatible with family care giving responsibilities.

Our goal as research universities is to create conditions in which all faculty [in] academic fields throughout higher education are capable of the highest of academic achievement. Continuing to develop academic personnel policies, institutional resources, and a culture that supports family commitments is therefore essential for maximizing the productivity of our faculty.

In addition to Hennessy, Hockfield, Summers and Tilghman the statment was signed by CalTech's David Baltimore, UC Berkeley's Robert Birgeneau, UMich's Mary Sue Coleman, UPenn's Amy Gutmann, and Yale's Richard Levin.