I would love to know if women are actually more agreeable in a vacuum. What resonates with my liver experience is that women are punished way more severely for being disagreeable than men are.
I definitely notice my gendered behavior in my workplace (academia, but a field where men out number women by around 4:1). Some of my conciliatory behavior on the committee I lead (otherwise all male and all more senior to me) I could potentially attribute to my temperment but a lot I attribute to my socialization: this is how I've been trained to get things done.
All these critiques of Helen Andrews are a nice distraction: I can read and comment on them without violating my ever-increasing anti-depressant "no news" days.
What pops up this time is that, sorry, Andrews just a youngster. "Woke" is rapidly becoming an obsolete and extremely dated term. In this quote from her article, from Michael Bloom “Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition.” you could just substitute "Christianity" for "wokeness" (Hello! These attitudes and ideas have been around for awhile!)
Indeed, it's interesting to follow the history of Christianity as it wrestles with this odd way of looking at the world, which I tend to see more as a major resistance to the base instincts that humanity amassed in its long quest for survival (also already covered in Genesis as original sin.) Luckily it's not just women who are capable of working towards higher ideals like justice, mercy, rights, essential human equality etc. (Even if some men have to bend Reason over backwards to get there.)
(That's just one aspect of what gets lumped into "woke"; there are others as well.)
As for how women currently act in the business world, well, culture comes and goes. Sometimes I wonder if social media is making it verboten for women to be more straightforward, firm, tough, or even bossy than a few decades ago. Back in my day I was reading articles on "Stop saying sorry!" (I did, and it helped.) I attended workshops in assertiveness (vs. aggressiveness.) I took to heart advice that "women tend to take things personally while men refuse to hold grudges and just keep working together" So, I quit holding grudges. Big deal. In a way I was just waiting for permission. That opens the door to politics, by the way.
1. Different companies have different cultures and that's ok. you should try to find a culture that matches your working style. Unfortunately as companies grow they partially compromise the culture and then you have different silos with competing cultures and more homogenization.
2. At early stage companies there is real value to a subset of traits from "toxic masculinity" especially from the CEO (not being a jerk or yelling but in having hubris and persistence)
3. It can be hard to distinguish changes in culture that are about "feminization", immigrant/cultural mixtures, employee age, and norms maturity (or technical changes).
I haven't done any work to find out, so I have no numbers, but I think you might find interesting thought material around the gender ratio within HR departments. The HR idea may have started out as a way to optimize employee management, but it has come a long way since the 1970's. It was especially notable watching over the last several years as HR seemed to take on political enforcement responsibilities within public and private institutions.
I heartily agree that the right's response to Andrew's book is much too swoony. I also think that the center/left should not dismiss its ideas out of hand.
How about using quotes when writing about the ‘“manly men” of the Trump administration’? There is nothing remotely manly or masculine about Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller, etc.
I made roughly this comment on CHH's article on the same topic, but the answer to "a preponderance of women has led to some new counterproductive workplace behaviors" should be to try to sanction these bad behaviors. Middle school-style gossip campaigns, for example, should get broken up by HR in the same way that men get hauled in for yelling at people. Andrews was basically advocating for allowing discrimination against women again as if that's the only thing that can stop women from doing these behaviors. It's just not! We can change our workplace norms to be pleasant for everyone!
I think this is because the insurgents especially populists, deal effectively in the currency of "common sense" while elites deal in "exclusive knowledge" which is inherently alienating.
Related thought: I met my wife at work. Most married couples we know met at work or in college/grad school. Is there a case to be made that women going to college and entering the workforce has accelerated our societal sorting?
Apparently Andrews doesn't know any female FBI agents or cops. Not a lot of seeking agreement there... Overall her post struck me as writing backwards from a conclusion, trying to cobble together support for a pre-determined landing. Matt hit most of the counterpoints accurately. I do want to add to the discussion around Larry Summers. Women scientists were among the first (if not the loudest) to dispute his conclusion. Their points were twofold. First, significant differences between the sexes in mathematical ability and/or spacial reasoning were not conclusively proven. Two, women entering hard sciences contended with an alarming level of sex discrimination and sometimes sexual predatory behavior that pushed some promising scientists out of their chosen fields. Since I worked in science I quietly asked my female colleagues and friends in medicine, biological sciences, engineering, chemistry, etc. I have yet to find one who didn't have at least one story of discrimination or sexual issues. This includes my stepdaughter (archeology) and wife (clinical laboratory). Summers could dispute the studies of innate math and spacial reasoning, but he plainly ignored confounding factors in his assessment of women as scientists.
There is an intersectionality of government bureaucracy and NIMBYism and the rise of femininity in the government. Women like to talk about stuff. This slows down building things. I believe they are also more prone to longer and redundant processes. Many women use bureaucracy as a kind of social tool. They are more likely to enjoy the process than getting a specific outcome. Process takes time and costs money.
Of course as Matt points out this is a distribution and individual men and women can be found across it.
But as women are more involved in things like local government planning (which they are now likely the majority), I believe you will see more public involvement and therefore more NIMBYISM. NIMBYism feeds on opening things that are already decided to discussion.
The bureaucracy was getting bad even before women started joining the workforce. Even then, women aren’t joining the planning or building code departments in significant numbers. (I don’t think this is true: "they are now likely the majority”.) Men are just as capable of being NIMBYs as women.
I agree with your take on building. I also agree guys engage in a lot of bureaucracy. Much of it is overdone. I think they engage with it differently. More deliberately and less socially.
I disagree on planning. Women are increasingly the majority of professional planners. I am uncertain about planning boards.
Men are definitely just as likely to be NIMBY’s. But as men and women engage socially differently they engage in Nimbyism differently. Women socialize development processes and that is a tool of Nimbyism. I know men engage in this too…this is a matter of degree. Men are more likely to go in front of a planning committee and just be angry and mad.
If your argument is that were women removed from the planning, bureacratic equation that NIMBYism would look different, then sure - most things would look different if you removed women from them. If the argument is that without women, there wouldn't be NIMBYism, then no, that doesn't make sense.
Planning departments don’t initiate NIMBYism but they do coddle it.
My argument is at the margins engaging in social processes as part of the requirements to build new housing makes building housing more difficult and expensive and take longer.
I connect this argument to what Matt wrote today and say women are more likely to want and require social processes to obtain development approvals.
In connecting these two things I conclude more women in the process contributes to increased NIMBYISM.
More women means more social engagement and that is detrimental to building things in high quantities.
I do not contend women are more likely to be NIMBY.
Meh, by that logic, women are typically more likely to compromise and collaborate than men suggests that they allow more projects than would happen otherwise.
Someone else pointed out how bureaucratic building departments are and they tend to be male. True.
But the difference is this. Building departments (masculine) have lots and lots of rules. But they don’t want to talk to you. They just demand you follow the rules. You know the rules from the start.
Planning Departments (feminine) also have lots of rules. Less than building departments though. But they want to talk. And they want you to talk to the public. And they want a collaboration.
Planning departments are often harder to get approvals from than building departments even with less requirements.
More public engagement slows down projects and adds commitments that otherwise wouldn’t be there. Your intuitions here are bad. I know this from experience.
Efficiency is knowing what is required as early as possible. Preferably from the beginning. Negotiations are time consuming and unpredictable.
>NIMBYism feeds on opening things that are already decided to discussion
This is just silly. Nothing is ever "already decided". Everything under the sun from tariffs to military on the streets to Presidents taking personal crypto bribes is open to discussion even though we thought it was settled. It has nothing to do with NIMBYism or being a woman.
The only thing that dictates whether something is "already decided" or is "open to discussion" is power.
Your comment is silly. This is why it is hard to build things like new homes. It really should be a predictable process where you know the rules going in. But when someone who just wants to kill a new housing project gets in front of a council and requests transportation studies that are already done and then says “but did we look at this, blah, blah, blah?” That means someone else has to pay more for a house. That’s bad.
Again, the idea that women are the only ones looking to open up settled arguments for discussion is just wrong.
NIMBYism's primary explanation is a problem with power distribution between incumbents and new comers. Trying to re-cast that as some kind of battle of the sexes is drunk uncle at Thanksgiving BS.
First, I didn’t start this discussion. Matt wrote this article. Second, yes the data on sex differences is scattered and breaks down into generalizations that have a lot of contradictory data. But still also has strong and consistent trend lines. Third, my comments are more directed to bureaucracy than specifically NIMBYism but NIMBY’s use bureaucracy to their advantage.
If a project is being discussed. It could be a private development or a public improvement or whatever. And the question arises - do we need a public meeting for this? My experience is females are more likely to say yes. Why? They are more likely to enjoy the social interactions and many think it’s good for them professionally to show their willingness to engage. They are probably right. Men would be more likely to say we know what the requirements are and having a public meeting takes time and creates risk that we will get off track. The public tends to ask for out of scope things. These gender general intuitions make a difference to projects getting built.
We are running into the problem of cherry picking here.
Liberal democracy is premised on the idea that all stakeholders can come to consensus via rational argument. If your complaint is that "do we need a public meeting for this?" prolongs the length of time allotted to rational argument on your pet issue namely NIBMYism you are certainly identifying a trade off which can sometimes slow down "progress" as you define it.
But that women are the ones using the "more rational discussion" excuse to slowdown progress because they like to hang out with each other falls apart very badly because we are right now living through a moment where the male dominated right has been calling for "more rational discussion" on all kinds of things like:
"Should women be forced back into the kitchen?"
"Was slavery really that bad?"
"Why shouldn't we force teaching of the ten commandments in schools"
"Should we just use tariffs for everything?"
"Why can't we just kill foreigners at will?"
...
...
and a whole host of questions liberals already thought were settled.
We are having to engage once again in all of these discussions because a segment of the population with power wanted to open them up. It has nothing to do with sex.
That you have to sit through additional NIMBY meetings is inconvenient for you I am sure, but welcome to democracy.
Most American cultural discourse has a rigor spectrum that ranges from "drunk uncle at Thanksgiving" to "stand-up comic with pithy insights". That is why Trump is president and Joe Rogan is the #1 podcast.
If 50% of the population getting out of oppression is a "threat to civilization" then maybe the issue is with your definition of "civilization".
It is so tiring to have to bend over backwards and engage these clowns on the 10% of their argument that has some merit even as they submerge you in a pile of utter BS on the 90%.
"To consider an obvious one, our entire public education system was structured around two assumptions. First, that moms would be available to care for children during the many days when schools are closed. Second, that women’s exclusion from most white-collar careers would give the education system access to the labor of the smartest and most motivated women at a discount salary."
And didn't these in turn rest on the assumption that a fully employed male would be able to support a family? The family wage is gone now, the victim of the destruction of unions, the stagnation of real wages, and the massive increase in economic inequality. In a word, neoliberalism.
A major part of the "assumption that a fully employed male would be able to support a family" was that there would be implicit and often explicit discrimination against women in general, and also against unmarried/childless men, to help prop up wages for men who were the "head of a household."
I don't think anyone has mentioned Hybristophilia, it isn't that common but you do find a small percentage of women who are really supportive of violent criminals for fetishistic reasons. In some criminal justice and activist spaces I think it is noticeable.
The Big Five splits the feeling of anger from the expression of anger.
The feeling is a subcategory of the neuroticism measure and the expression is a subcategory of the agreeableness measure.
The relevant Neuroticism subcategory you're looking for is N2:
N1: Anxiety
N2: Angry Hostility
N3: Depression
N4: Self-Consciousness
N5: Impulsiveness
N6: Vulnerability
The relevant agreeableness subcategory is A4:
A1: Trust
A2: Straightforwardness
A3: Altruism
A4: Compliance
A5: Modesty
A6: Tender-Mindedness
People quibble about almost all aspects of the Big Five (what to call it, how to group the traits etc.). They stick with it because it seems to pop out of statistical analyses in multiple different scenarios.
Just a quible bit: Larry Summers as president of Harvard unitversity (and not as a reasearcher in the field) engaged in unnecessary rank speculation that could not be more offensive to his immediate audiance. Whatever the merits of speculation it was neither the time nor the place. That is a fireable offence to any leader-especially the president of Harvard.
It’s true that the DOJ hasn’t destroyed any tech majors even though the desperate measures they took to increase URM share of headcount fell far short. But they did take some desperate measures, which were pretty straightforwardly discriminatory. I was there. The emails are still in my inbox. They weren’t secretive about it.
I would love to know if women are actually more agreeable in a vacuum. What resonates with my liver experience is that women are punished way more severely for being disagreeable than men are.
I definitely notice my gendered behavior in my workplace (academia, but a field where men out number women by around 4:1). Some of my conciliatory behavior on the committee I lead (otherwise all male and all more senior to me) I could potentially attribute to my temperment but a lot I attribute to my socialization: this is how I've been trained to get things done.
Fair point! But men are being socialized to be less disagreeable too. In a vacuum, we'd probably kill each other over relatively trivial things.
That being said, I also look for consensus on the academic committees I lead. I attribute it to my midwestern sensibilities.
All these critiques of Helen Andrews are a nice distraction: I can read and comment on them without violating my ever-increasing anti-depressant "no news" days.
What pops up this time is that, sorry, Andrews just a youngster. "Woke" is rapidly becoming an obsolete and extremely dated term. In this quote from her article, from Michael Bloom “Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition.” you could just substitute "Christianity" for "wokeness" (Hello! These attitudes and ideas have been around for awhile!)
Indeed, it's interesting to follow the history of Christianity as it wrestles with this odd way of looking at the world, which I tend to see more as a major resistance to the base instincts that humanity amassed in its long quest for survival (also already covered in Genesis as original sin.) Luckily it's not just women who are capable of working towards higher ideals like justice, mercy, rights, essential human equality etc. (Even if some men have to bend Reason over backwards to get there.)
(That's just one aspect of what gets lumped into "woke"; there are others as well.)
As for how women currently act in the business world, well, culture comes and goes. Sometimes I wonder if social media is making it verboten for women to be more straightforward, firm, tough, or even bossy than a few decades ago. Back in my day I was reading articles on "Stop saying sorry!" (I did, and it helped.) I attended workshops in assertiveness (vs. aggressiveness.) I took to heart advice that "women tend to take things personally while men refuse to hold grudges and just keep working together" So, I quit holding grudges. Big deal. In a way I was just waiting for permission. That opens the door to politics, by the way.
Some observations from working in tech:
1. Different companies have different cultures and that's ok. you should try to find a culture that matches your working style. Unfortunately as companies grow they partially compromise the culture and then you have different silos with competing cultures and more homogenization.
2. At early stage companies there is real value to a subset of traits from "toxic masculinity" especially from the CEO (not being a jerk or yelling but in having hubris and persistence)
3. It can be hard to distinguish changes in culture that are about "feminization", immigrant/cultural mixtures, employee age, and norms maturity (or technical changes).
I haven't done any work to find out, so I have no numbers, but I think you might find interesting thought material around the gender ratio within HR departments. The HR idea may have started out as a way to optimize employee management, but it has come a long way since the 1970's. It was especially notable watching over the last several years as HR seemed to take on political enforcement responsibilities within public and private institutions.
I heartily agree that the right's response to Andrew's book is much too swoony. I also think that the center/left should not dismiss its ideas out of hand.
How about using quotes when writing about the ‘“manly men” of the Trump administration’? There is nothing remotely manly or masculine about Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller, etc.
I made roughly this comment on CHH's article on the same topic, but the answer to "a preponderance of women has led to some new counterproductive workplace behaviors" should be to try to sanction these bad behaviors. Middle school-style gossip campaigns, for example, should get broken up by HR in the same way that men get hauled in for yelling at people. Andrews was basically advocating for allowing discrimination against women again as if that's the only thing that can stop women from doing these behaviors. It's just not! We can change our workplace norms to be pleasant for everyone!
I don’t remember where I saw this but, it’s a thought that may be relevant:
Elite gatekeepers get vilified if they get anything wrong but insurgents are celebrated if they get anything right.
I think this is because the insurgents especially populists, deal effectively in the currency of "common sense" while elites deal in "exclusive knowledge" which is inherently alienating.
Related thought: I met my wife at work. Most married couples we know met at work or in college/grad school. Is there a case to be made that women going to college and entering the workforce has accelerated our societal sorting?
I have heard that this is so, yes. I also met my husband at work, having studied in a female-dominated field.
Apparently Andrews doesn't know any female FBI agents or cops. Not a lot of seeking agreement there... Overall her post struck me as writing backwards from a conclusion, trying to cobble together support for a pre-determined landing. Matt hit most of the counterpoints accurately. I do want to add to the discussion around Larry Summers. Women scientists were among the first (if not the loudest) to dispute his conclusion. Their points were twofold. First, significant differences between the sexes in mathematical ability and/or spacial reasoning were not conclusively proven. Two, women entering hard sciences contended with an alarming level of sex discrimination and sometimes sexual predatory behavior that pushed some promising scientists out of their chosen fields. Since I worked in science I quietly asked my female colleagues and friends in medicine, biological sciences, engineering, chemistry, etc. I have yet to find one who didn't have at least one story of discrimination or sexual issues. This includes my stepdaughter (archeology) and wife (clinical laboratory). Summers could dispute the studies of innate math and spacial reasoning, but he plainly ignored confounding factors in his assessment of women as scientists.
There is an intersectionality of government bureaucracy and NIMBYism and the rise of femininity in the government. Women like to talk about stuff. This slows down building things. I believe they are also more prone to longer and redundant processes. Many women use bureaucracy as a kind of social tool. They are more likely to enjoy the process than getting a specific outcome. Process takes time and costs money.
Of course as Matt points out this is a distribution and individual men and women can be found across it.
But as women are more involved in things like local government planning (which they are now likely the majority), I believe you will see more public involvement and therefore more NIMBYISM. NIMBYism feeds on opening things that are already decided to discussion.
The bureaucracy was getting bad even before women started joining the workforce. Even then, women aren’t joining the planning or building code departments in significant numbers. (I don’t think this is true: "they are now likely the majority”.) Men are just as capable of being NIMBYs as women.
I agree with your take on building. I also agree guys engage in a lot of bureaucracy. Much of it is overdone. I think they engage with it differently. More deliberately and less socially.
I disagree on planning. Women are increasingly the majority of professional planners. I am uncertain about planning boards.
Men are definitely just as likely to be NIMBY’s. But as men and women engage socially differently they engage in Nimbyism differently. Women socialize development processes and that is a tool of Nimbyism. I know men engage in this too…this is a matter of degree. Men are more likely to go in front of a planning committee and just be angry and mad.
If your argument is that were women removed from the planning, bureacratic equation that NIMBYism would look different, then sure - most things would look different if you removed women from them. If the argument is that without women, there wouldn't be NIMBYism, then no, that doesn't make sense.
Planning departments don’t initiate NIMBYism but they do coddle it.
My argument is at the margins engaging in social processes as part of the requirements to build new housing makes building housing more difficult and expensive and take longer.
I connect this argument to what Matt wrote today and say women are more likely to want and require social processes to obtain development approvals.
In connecting these two things I conclude more women in the process contributes to increased NIMBYISM.
More women means more social engagement and that is detrimental to building things in high quantities.
I do not contend women are more likely to be NIMBY.
Meh, by that logic, women are typically more likely to compromise and collaborate than men suggests that they allow more projects than would happen otherwise.
Someone else pointed out how bureaucratic building departments are and they tend to be male. True.
But the difference is this. Building departments (masculine) have lots and lots of rules. But they don’t want to talk to you. They just demand you follow the rules. You know the rules from the start.
Planning Departments (feminine) also have lots of rules. Less than building departments though. But they want to talk. And they want you to talk to the public. And they want a collaboration.
Planning departments are often harder to get approvals from than building departments even with less requirements.
Meh, totally wrong.
More public engagement slows down projects and adds commitments that otherwise wouldn’t be there. Your intuitions here are bad. I know this from experience.
Efficiency is knowing what is required as early as possible. Preferably from the beginning. Negotiations are time consuming and unpredictable.
>NIMBYism feeds on opening things that are already decided to discussion
This is just silly. Nothing is ever "already decided". Everything under the sun from tariffs to military on the streets to Presidents taking personal crypto bribes is open to discussion even though we thought it was settled. It has nothing to do with NIMBYism or being a woman.
The only thing that dictates whether something is "already decided" or is "open to discussion" is power.
Your comment is silly. This is why it is hard to build things like new homes. It really should be a predictable process where you know the rules going in. But when someone who just wants to kill a new housing project gets in front of a council and requests transportation studies that are already done and then says “but did we look at this, blah, blah, blah?” That means someone else has to pay more for a house. That’s bad.
Again, the idea that women are the only ones looking to open up settled arguments for discussion is just wrong.
NIMBYism's primary explanation is a problem with power distribution between incumbents and new comers. Trying to re-cast that as some kind of battle of the sexes is drunk uncle at Thanksgiving BS.
First, I didn’t start this discussion. Matt wrote this article. Second, yes the data on sex differences is scattered and breaks down into generalizations that have a lot of contradictory data. But still also has strong and consistent trend lines. Third, my comments are more directed to bureaucracy than specifically NIMBYism but NIMBY’s use bureaucracy to their advantage.
If a project is being discussed. It could be a private development or a public improvement or whatever. And the question arises - do we need a public meeting for this? My experience is females are more likely to say yes. Why? They are more likely to enjoy the social interactions and many think it’s good for them professionally to show their willingness to engage. They are probably right. Men would be more likely to say we know what the requirements are and having a public meeting takes time and creates risk that we will get off track. The public tends to ask for out of scope things. These gender general intuitions make a difference to projects getting built.
We are running into the problem of cherry picking here.
Liberal democracy is premised on the idea that all stakeholders can come to consensus via rational argument. If your complaint is that "do we need a public meeting for this?" prolongs the length of time allotted to rational argument on your pet issue namely NIBMYism you are certainly identifying a trade off which can sometimes slow down "progress" as you define it.
But that women are the ones using the "more rational discussion" excuse to slowdown progress because they like to hang out with each other falls apart very badly because we are right now living through a moment where the male dominated right has been calling for "more rational discussion" on all kinds of things like:
"Should women be forced back into the kitchen?"
"Was slavery really that bad?"
"Why shouldn't we force teaching of the ten commandments in schools"
"Should we just use tariffs for everything?"
"Why can't we just kill foreigners at will?"
...
...
and a whole host of questions liberals already thought were settled.
We are having to engage once again in all of these discussions because a segment of the population with power wanted to open them up. It has nothing to do with sex.
That you have to sit through additional NIMBY meetings is inconvenient for you I am sure, but welcome to democracy.
Who is the cherry picker? I think it’s obvious who the gaslighter is. Was slavery really that bad? Yes! 👍
Godspeed.
Most American cultural discourse has a rigor spectrum that ranges from "drunk uncle at Thanksgiving" to "stand-up comic with pithy insights". That is why Trump is president and Joe Rogan is the #1 podcast.
If 50% of the population getting out of oppression is a "threat to civilization" then maybe the issue is with your definition of "civilization".
It is so tiring to have to bend over backwards and engage these clowns on the 10% of their argument that has some merit even as they submerge you in a pile of utter BS on the 90%.
"To consider an obvious one, our entire public education system was structured around two assumptions. First, that moms would be available to care for children during the many days when schools are closed. Second, that women’s exclusion from most white-collar careers would give the education system access to the labor of the smartest and most motivated women at a discount salary."
And didn't these in turn rest on the assumption that a fully employed male would be able to support a family? The family wage is gone now, the victim of the destruction of unions, the stagnation of real wages, and the massive increase in economic inequality. In a word, neoliberalism.
A major part of the "assumption that a fully employed male would be able to support a family" was that there would be implicit and often explicit discrimination against women in general, and also against unmarried/childless men, to help prop up wages for men who were the "head of a household."
I think we should aim to roll back neoliberalism without ordering women back into the kitchen.
I don't think anyone has mentioned Hybristophilia, it isn't that common but you do find a small percentage of women who are really supportive of violent criminals for fetishistic reasons. In some criminal justice and activist spaces I think it is noticeable.
The Big Five splits the feeling of anger from the expression of anger.
The feeling is a subcategory of the neuroticism measure and the expression is a subcategory of the agreeableness measure.
The relevant Neuroticism subcategory you're looking for is N2:
N1: Anxiety
N2: Angry Hostility
N3: Depression
N4: Self-Consciousness
N5: Impulsiveness
N6: Vulnerability
The relevant agreeableness subcategory is A4:
A1: Trust
A2: Straightforwardness
A3: Altruism
A4: Compliance
A5: Modesty
A6: Tender-Mindedness
People quibble about almost all aspects of the Big Five (what to call it, how to group the traits etc.). They stick with it because it seems to pop out of statistical analyses in multiple different scenarios.
Just a quible bit: Larry Summers as president of Harvard unitversity (and not as a reasearcher in the field) engaged in unnecessary rank speculation that could not be more offensive to his immediate audiance. Whatever the merits of speculation it was neither the time nor the place. That is a fireable offence to any leader-especially the president of Harvard.
It’s true that the DOJ hasn’t destroyed any tech majors even though the desperate measures they took to increase URM share of headcount fell far short. But they did take some desperate measures, which were pretty straightforwardly discriminatory. I was there. The emails are still in my inbox. They weren’t secretive about it.