The Summers Saga

Now that former Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is part of President Obama’s inner circle, you’d think that bygones would be bygones. But Dr. Summers’ mea culpas, issued after his blasphemous comment about women and math while serving as president of Harvard, have not persuaded feminists that he is worthy of redemption, noted Anthony Paletta in a recent posting on mindingthecampus.com.

After being disinvited from a speaking engagement at the University of California, he was referred to as a “speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia.”

But this is nothing compared to the litany of sins thrown at him by Amy Siskind, co-founder of a women’s activist group called The New Agenda.

According to the Boston Globe, Ms. Siskind apparently believes that Dr. Summers’ hatred of women is so intense that it might have helped inspire the current global financial meltdown.

The Globe reported that while serving as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Dr. Summers apparently ignored a warning from then-chairwoman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission that regulation of derivatives was needed.

“It was Larry Summers who called her up and screamed at her,” said Siskind, who argued that “the financial meltdown might have been averted if Summers had listened” to her.

Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.

Deborah Lambert