Morals vs. Pragmatism

Back in early August, I wrote about the Karpova-Tonegawa controversy at MIT, and about Rollins College president Lewis Duncan's comments on the topic in the Boston Globe.

More on the Karpova-Toadygawa story. This may be the best part of all. Because you see, Zuskateers, it isn't just Toadygawa who's had his true colors exposed. Consider this quote from the Boston Globe:

If the accusations are deemed true, [MIT president] Hockfield will face the task of standing up to one of MIT's greatest luminaries, someone who brings in tens of millions of dollars of research funding. "This may come down to a question of pragmatism vs. moral leadership for the president," said Lewis M. Duncan, president of Rollins College in Florida and former dean of engineering at Dartmouth College.

There you have it. Out in print. If you bring in enough research money, presidents and deans of engineering will let you get away with the most egregious forms of sex discrimination because, after all, it's pragmatic. Even if it is ILLEGAL. Go ahead and hang the women out to dry. Or let them hang themselves; laundry is women's work, isn't it?

To sum up: he's rich, you're a bitch.

I encouraged my readers to email President Duncan and complain about the danger of remarks like his; that even if he didn't mean them that way, such remarks can be interpreted by the morons of the world to mean "that illegality is pragmatic and therefore we should just toss our morals out the window because after all, it's just women, and we all know their tiny brains can't handle the math anyway." I offered a sample letter (phrased much more politely) for those who were too busy to take time to compose their own.

Before I wrote that entry, I called President Duncan's office to confirm that he had been quoted accurately in the Globe. And I let them know that I was going to write about the quote in my blog. Also that what I had to say wasn't going to be very favorable. to the president. Soon after the entry posted, President Duncan sent me an email taking "strong exception to [my] misleading interpretation and extrapolation of [his] quote in the Boston Globe" and he asked that I at least print his email and attached full copy of remarks to the Boston Globe.

After the jump, you'll find the remarks he sent to the Globe, and my deconstruction.

What follows is the text of President Duncan's remarks to the Boston Globe. Bracketed italic text is commentary inserted by me.

We might hope in some idealistic moment that science as the pursuit of knowledge and basic understanding of nature should be an inherently altruistic endeavor, of individual service toward a greater societal good. [But it's not, so buck up and be a man.] For a scientist true of heart, should not discovery be its own reward? [If you are a fool or loser.] However, science is, after all, a human pursuit, and scientists involved are fully susceptible to the realities of our own human nature. As in all other fields of human endeavor, the history of science is filled with stories of jealousies and accusations, of bitter competitions and occasional cooperations. Interestingly, behind these science rivalries is often a different motivation than found underlying many other competitions. [This is gonna be good...] In science, rarely is such peer antagonism inspired by the promise of extravagant material reward, but more often is motivated by the need for recognition and praise from disciplinary colleagues, scientific peers, and the general public. [Our petty battles over power and money are nobler than anybody else's.] And the ownership of ideas becomes even more contentious for fields such as neuroscience that develop at the intersection of traditional disciplines. [When disciplinary boundaries are shifting and contested, it is important to police those boundaries and demonstrate to outsiders that one's discipline is disciplined. That one's science isn't soft and mushy and indistinct; that one is doing the very hardest of hard science. One must be impenetrable. The consolidation of disciplinary standards and development of professionalism in any field of science or engineering is generally accompanied by increasing attempts to keep women out of the nascent discipline.***]

Colleges and universities are not so different in ambition. [Our stars look good, we look good.] Until very recently, the benefit of research to universities was less stimulated by direct financial reward, and much more associated with issues of institutional reputation and ranking. [Money matters a lot.] Within academia, we still talk mostly about who is at an institution, not how much money their research generates. [We talk about who is at an institution because of how much money their research generates.] Similarly, Dr. Tonegawa's Nobel Prize is much more important in terms of recognition of accomplishment than financial benefit. [Because the recognition helps bring in the coin.] However, such recognition in itself offers little insight into the abilities or inclinations of any individual for positions of leadership, particularly for the kind of service leadership necessitated for the mentoring and teaching of new scientists and students. [He sucks as a leader, but he brings in a LOT of cash.]

There are several different issues converging in the disappointing situation arising from Dr. Tonegawa's abrupt response to Dr. Karpova, and her decision to accept employment elsewhere. [Disappointing? A woman's entire career has been re-routed by a petty tyrant and the best you can come up with is disappointing?] That a prominent scientist would take this tact [sic] with a possible collaborator, or a perceived possible competitor, is certainly a matter of individual choice, though I would think it to be institutionally unacceptable that a possible new faculty member be so bluntly rejected by an Institute director and prospective faculty colleague. [So, if you want to go against the federal mandate of the funding you accepted for your fancy research institute, that's your personal choice, and who am I to bicker? though it is a bit unseemly from the university's perspective. Title IX? What's Title IX?] From all that I have seen in the communications you provided, I do not believe that Dr. Tonegawa's response was motivated by gender, nor even by threatened ability. [Sure.] I believe his response would likely have been the same to any similarly qualified prospective faculty candidate. [And this would be okay?] And even the most gifted rising young star in neuroscience would not represent a serious threat to Dr. Tonegawa's already established remarkable credentials. [So WTF???]As one of the commentator's noted, this seems more to be a matter of control, and apparent lack of interest in his serving as her collaborative mentor. [Which should make him unfit to be the director of a research institute, no?] As an educational institution, it does not compliment MIT to have this play out in the public eye, but it would be worse to have it not play out at all.

And as a final thought I would note that universities, in the final analysis, should be measured not by the accomplishments of their faculty, but rather by the accomplishments of their graduates. [Isn't it pretty to think so?] In Dr. Karpova's choosing not to come to MIT, I believe that it is the future students of MIT who have suffered the greatest loss. That is the true tragedy. [Indeed.]

In my next post, I will print President Duncan's email to me and comment on it.

***See, for example, the case of Ethel Ricker. She was elected to Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society, in 1903. This was at a time when engineering was beginning to consolidate as a profession that required a college degree rather than a practice one could apprentice one's way into. The National Executive Board overturned the vote admitting Ricker to membership AND voted to amend the constitution to exclude women. It was not until 1969 that the constitution was again amended to admit women, and 1973 that sexist language was removed from the constitution. In 1976, the first female national officer was elected. Source: Ruth Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine, Amsterdam University Press, 1999.