Summers famously said that women and men have different inherent attributes, despite a vast literature that shows this is untrue when comparing performance of men and women across countries. His fixation with biological explanations of the distribution of abilities within and between sexes, in addition to being factually incorrect for cognitive traits, was deeply concerning given his position at Harvard and visibility in the sector. For transparency, Summers said the following: "It does appear that on many, many different human attributes—height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability—there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated—there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population. And that is true with respect to attributes that are and are not plausibly, culturally determined. If one supposes, as I think is reasonable, that if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it’s not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. But it’s talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations above the mean in the one in 5,000, one in 10,000 class. Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out."

Khosla has been central to the growth strategy of our campus in recent years. We’ve added thousands upon thousands of students, gained new buildings, and collected billions in donations. But is campus a better place? I’m unsure. Growth across divisions has been unequal, transparency about projects minimal, impact assessments over faculty retention and wellbeing completely non existent. Indeed, if anything, the feeling we are left with is that campus looks more and more like the new Target at Price Center, and less like a university interested in promoting knowledge across the board. This is particularly clear in discussions about critical moments and decisions. Faculty is only consulted after plans are leaked which leads to immediate discontent. Why not take advantage of the fact that there are so many engaged and bright minds on campus? I don’t know. Becoming a Target might be killing the bits of shared governance that remained on campus.