At the moment science and math education in the universities remain rather untouched by the PC dumbing down in the rest of academia. Is that about to change?

"Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science," was passed unanimously by the House Science Committee on April 28. The amendment includes support for workshops to enhance gender equity. The full House may vote on the bil l as early as this coming week.

One has only to read the AWIS mission in the pdf file, with all its fluffy buzz words to see in what direction this is going, and I'd not predict a continuing leadership role for the U.S. in science and engineering.

Rick Moran adds:

This is the same nonsense liberal academics have tried before and it has its roots in the notion that there is no such thing as physics or chemistry, but rather there exists "Women's physics" or "African American chemistry." The idea comes to us via deconstructionism where the "White male power structure" maintains its hegemony in teaching and research jobs by promoting a perspective in science that is not female or racially friendly. The bottom line; scientific facts are flexible depending on which aggrieved group is looking at them.

AEI's Christine Hoff Sommers:

Officials at the National Science Foundation are fully on board and are ready for action. They have developed dozens of innovative anti-bias programs through a 130 -million dollar initiative. Any physics, engineering, or math program that hopes to avoid a Title IX investigation can now demonstrate its commitment to equity by taking part in the NSF programs. They could attend a workshop that encourages participants to question the hyper-competitive, work-obsessed ethos that prevails in American science and to consider moving toward a more female-friendly, balanced-life model.

Alternatively, they might bring in a theater group that performs awareness-raising skits where, for example, overbearing male physicists ride roughshod over hapless but obviously intellectually superior female colleagues. There is also Gender Bias Bingo developed by activist scholars at the University of California Hastings College of the Law with the help of a $300,000 NSF grant.

Here is the problem. Serious scholars have been producing study after study suggesting that simple bias is not what is holding women back. A recent example is the book "The Mathematics of Sex: How Biology and Society Conspire to Limit Talented Women and Girls," by Cornell University psychologists Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams. They review the current research on why women are underrepresented in fields like engineering and physics, and over-represented in disciplines like psychology and veterinary medicine. They show that institutional bias is a weak and implausible explanation. (On the other hand, readers looking for "proof" that women are less math-capable will not find it here.)

That won't stop our gender and race warriors from trying to overturn science in their quest for what Valerie Jarrett has called "absolute equality."

Clarice Feldman