To the Editor:
Norman Podhoretz supports Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement” plan, but the whole concept of being able to separate Israelis and Palestinians is false [“Bush, Sharon, My Daughter, and Me,” April]. Even if Gaza is completely emptied of any Jewish presence, there will continue to be thousands of Palestinians flooding into Israel daily for work. In addition, Israel will still be providing the Palestinians’ basic utilities and depending on the Palestinian authorities to prevent the bombing of population centers.
As even a cursory look at the daily news reveals, weapons of all sorts have been smuggled into Gaza under the noses of the unconcerned Egyptians, and terrorists have been invited to join the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Podhoretz concedes that the “new” Palestinian leadership’s beliefs about terrorism are no different from those espoused by Yasir Arafat. There is no evidence that the Palestinians now acknowledge the Jewish state’s right to exist; they do not even pretend to. Why should Israel rush ahead with a plan that uproots 8,000 Jews from their homes and businesses, especially when the plan has such uncertain benefits and when nothing has changed on the ground?
If, after this terrible experiment, terrorism actually increases, Israel will not be able to do anything about it, since the Israel Defense Forces will have been removed from the “hot” areas. Mr. Podhoretz argues that, in such a case, the Palestinians would suffer because they will lose American support for their state. But what if they are not as interested in a state of their own as they are in destroying the Jewish presence here? This is not a risk we Israelis can afford to take.
Mr. Podhoretz puts his faith in George W. Bush and the Bush Doctrine. But there is no evidence that, as he writes, “the Palestinians are now as subject as all the other regimes” to this “great new force.” Where exactly does Mr. Podhoretz see the Palestinians being held to some high standard? Where is the evidence of an end to Arab rejectionism or a Palestinian willingness to accept a two-state solution?
Even if the Bush Doctrine were the most perfect idea, the Bush administration is still saddled with a State Department notorious for taking the Arab side, a Congress that includes members from across the political spectrum, and an international community that is usually hostile to Israel. Mr. Podhoretz simply gives too much credit to the ability of one man, who is after all working within a democratic system, to push through his own agenda.
Deborah Buckman
Beit Shemesh, Israel
To the Editor:
Norman Podhoretz’s article certainly goes to the heart of the matter concerning the Gaza disengagement. I found his feelings very close to my own and (I would venture to say) those of many other Israelis who have held their breath and allowed Ariel Sharon the leeway he required to proceed. But recent developments have caused me to become a skeptic.
At the end of March, the American ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, stated emphatically that there was no understanding with the U.S. regarding Israel’s retention of major Jewish population centers on the West Bank. President Bush and Secretary of State Rice moved in quickly to do some “damage control,” knowing that Sharon’s credibility in Israel would be cut to shreds if Kurtzer’s remarks were taken at face value.
But they did not deny what the ambassador had said; they simply restated Bush’s earlier, vague commitment that “new realities on the ground” would be taken into account when the final border between Israel and a new state of Palestine is drawn. During Sharon’s visit with the President in April, there seems to have been no substantive discussion of this issue. The shrill denunciation by the U.S. of plans in Israel to make Jerusalem contiguous with the populous suburb of Ma’aleh Adumim only highlights the problem.
Allan Leibler
Jerusalem, Israel
To the Editor:
Because of his extensive record of correctly foreseeing the consequences of major policies and actions in the Middle East, Norman Podhoretz has great credibility when writing about Israel’s disengagement plan. Nevertheless, his article supports policies that are dangerous for the U.S. and Israel.
Mr. Podhoretz is hopeful that the two countries will enforce the provisions of the “road map” as they pertain to the Palestinians. But even as Mahmoud Abbas has welcomed terrorists into the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, Bush and Sharon have behaved as if all were progressing as stipulated. They have continued to support Abbas and the corruption surrounding his thugocracy.
Bush demanded that the Palestinians produce a leader who is not associated with terrorism. Thus, everyone pretends that Abbas was not involved with the 1972 Munich massacre, was not Arafat’s bosom buddy, and did not specialize in Holocaust denial. Abbas is certainly capable of keeping the Palestinian Authority itself from promoting anti-Semitism and “martyrdom,” though such hate continues to flourish as always in the Palestinian schools. If there is any doubt about Abbas’s beliefs, one need look no further than the order he recently reaffirmed to execute a large number of Palestinians whose “crime” was attempting to prevent attacks on Israelis.
In his admiration for President Bush, Mr. Podhoretz lets him off the hook entirely. His administration refuses to ask questions or make demands that might “weaken” Abbas. Instead, it places pressure on the Israelis, implying that they are responsible for producing good behavior from the Palestinians. Bush’s policies will ensure that Israel is prevented from ever achieving a definitive victory over its mortal enemies.
Laura T. Gutman
Durham, North Carolina
To the Editor:
Contrary to what Norman Podhoretz asserts, President Bush appears to be satisfied with “ritualistic condemnations of terrorism” by the Palestinian Authority. He has accepted Mahmoud Abbas’s “revolving-door” arrests of terrorists. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has urged Israel to make concessions to the PA, without which, it is contended, Abbas would lack the political power to crack down on terrorism. Meanwhile, Abbas has assured the terrorists that not only will he not disarm them, he will add them to the PA’s payroll. And the U.S. has continued to donate funds to the PA, despite Abbas’s failure to comply with his obligations to crack down on terror and his failure to end indoctrination in bigotry and violence.
There is no reason to suppose that if the PA continues to support terrorism, the U.S. will cease to support Palestinian statehood.A0Bush’s rhetoric has made it sound as if statehood were some sacred and immutable right for that undeserving band.
Richard H. Shulman
New York City
To the Editor:
Norman Podhoretz’s article is so nuanced and qualified that one could find a half-dozen instances in which he doubts his own claim that Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan is, in the final analysis, good for Israel. This makes for a rather weak argument. Moreover, his defense of the plan is weaker than he supposes.
Mr. Podhoretz seems to agree with his interlocutor “C.” that the Palestinian leadership does not regard the Israeli evacuation of Gaza as resulting from the success of the intifada. But in the unlikely event that Sharon had become prime minister in a time of relative peace, can anyone credibly claim that he would have advocated unilateral withdrawal?
In fact, the withdrawal can and will be seen—by ordinary Palestinians, by the leaders of the PA, and by the terrorists who are their bedfellows—as a defeat for Israel. So when they have their provisional state and return to terror, Israel can place its trust in the U.S. to do—what, exactly? Put off final-status talks? What if, as is likely, the provisional state declares independence and asks for UN recognition? If millions of Palestinian “refugees” clamor for “return” to Israel? If the provisional state imports arms and forms alliances? If Palestinians besiege the separation fence and surround and threaten Israeli communities at the de-facto border? I could go on.
Indeed, barring the implementation of policies that would be anathema internationally and to a large segment of the Israeli intelligentsia and public, Israel appears to have been checkmated by its foes. Hoping that George W. Bush will in Solomonic style put matters right is wishful thinking.
Jonathan F. Keiler
Bowie, Maryland
To the Editor:
By speaking of policies he advocates in terms of the peace they will bring about, Norman Podhoretz imbibes the very drug that has consistently led Jews astray. More than peace, what Israel needs is to discourage aggression by making it so costly as not to be dared.
Allen Weingarten
Monroe Township, New Jersey
To the Editor:
While trusting President Bush and his doctrine, Norman Podhoretz would do well to bear in mind the proverb of Rabban Gamaliel in the Mishnah: “Beware of rulers, for they befriend someone only for their own benefit; they act friendly when it benefits them, but they do not stand by someone in his time of need.”
George Shimanovich
Freehold, New Jersey
To the Editor:
Though I am a great admirer of Norman Podhoretz, I feel that he has lost his inner compass. The anxieties pervading the air in Israel are very much due to people like him, who “put their faith in princes” to bring about the security and peace that we all yearn for. Common sense and the lessons of the Oslo debacle would be a better remedy than such faith for the “unmistakable intimation of tears” that Mr. Podhoretz finds in the current situation.
Barbara Oberman Herzliya
Pituah, Israel
To the Editor:
I hope that Norman Podhoretz has asked himself one double-barreled question:A0what future developments would convince him that he was wrong to support the current policies of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon, and what, afterward, would he recommend to correct things?
Israel Pickholtz Elazar,
Israel
To the Editor:
For Norman Podhoretz to be willing to stake Israel’s future on George W. Bush and the Bush Doctrine is shortsighted.A0Even assuming that Bush can be trusted for the rest of his term, what happens when he is no longer in office?A0Mr. Podhoretz does not address Golda Meir’s crucial question: “Who will guarantee the guarantor?”
Sheldon F. Gottlieb
Boynton Beach, Florida
To the Editor:
Norman Podhoretz’s article is beautifully written, thorough, and compellingly argued, but he was too quick to dismiss the importance of a national referendum in Israel on the disengagement plan. He quotes a proponent of the plan who felt that Ariel Sharon was wrong to resist a referendum because it might have silenced the opposition and united the nation behind him. Mr. Podhoretz does not offer his own view, noting that the chances of holding a referendum were slim to begin with and that “it is impossible to tell whether the pullout from Gaza will presage a large-scale evacuation of Judea and Samaria, or whether it will strengthen Israel’s case for maintaining its hold over large chunks of those territories.”
But there is a compelling reason why a referendum should have been held—and should still be held—that has nothing to do with the merits of the plan or the difficulty in predicting its ultimate course. Without a referendum, it will be difficult to press what should be an essential demand in future negotiations: that any agreement reached between Israel and the PA must be approved by a referendum of the Palestinian public.
That way, the agreement would not simply be the work of a precarious political elite, and would be morally binding on the people. A referendum would help silence the opposition among Palestinians, unite them behind the plan, and deprive any future opposition of moral authority. Without a referendum, any agreement reached by Palestinian leaders can later be subject to challenge by those who would claim that they “sold out” Palestinian rights.
Rick Richman
Los Angeles, California
To the Editor:
Norman Podhoretz rightly applauds President Bush for being the first American president to recognize that peace in the Middle East cannot come until the Arabs renounce their existential war against Israel, and that a necessary condition for this to come about was the replacement of the Arafat regime with one that eschews terror. But as Mr. Podhoretz shows and Ariel Sharon knows well, this condition is far from sufficient. The malevolence toward Israel that the likes of Arafat have bred into generations of Palestinians cannot be switched off in an instant.
Nevertheless, as Mr. Podhoretz observes, Bush’s grand initiative to transform the political culture of the Middle East from despotism to democracy, beginning in Baghdad rather than Ramallah, provides the context for Sharon’s complementary strategy to assure Israel’s long-term security. By limiting Israel’s claim to the disputed territories, retaining the most important settlements, and insisting on borders that can be defended, Sharon’s move to relinquish Gaza seizes the diplomatic initiative, insures that Israel will remain both democratic and Jewish, and helps reinforce the demand that a Palestinian state will not practice terror.
Sentiment in Israel for maintaining a Jewish presence in all the territories is understandably strong, and justifiable. But holding the territories would keep the issue of a Palestinian “right of return” on boil indefinitely, restore the initiative to the rejectionists, put Israel back into the political crosshairs of its regional and international enemies, and risk the strength of the all-important American partnership. Given the demographic and political realities, and Palestinian rejectionism notwithstanding, I agree with Mr. Podhoretz that Sharon’s strategy is the optimal one.
Michael Balch
Iowa City, Iowa
Norman Podhoretz writes:
I agree with almost everything my critics say about the Palestinians in general and Mahmoud Abbas in particular. Indeed, as some of them graciously acknowledge, I said most of these things myself. What divides us, then, is not the question of whether the Palestinians under Abbas have changed their stripes. Where we differ is on whether the United States under George W. Bush has changed its stripes.
Will Bush, as I believe, stick with the principles he enunciated on June 24, 2002? Will he, that is, continue insisting on an end to Palestinian terrorism as the necessary (but not sufficient) condition of American support for the establishment of a Palestinian state? Or will he—as Deborah Buckman, Allan Leibler, Laura T. Gutman, Richard H. Shulman, Jonathan F. Keiler, George Shimanovich, and Barbara Oberman variously contend—succumb to pressure from his own State Department and the “international community” and allow himself to be bamboozled by excuses and outright lies from Abbas the way his predecessors were by Arafat’s? As my critics all seem to recognize, it is on the answer to that question that an assessment of Ariel Sharon’s strategy ultimately rests.
Cutting to the chase, let me respond to Israel Pickholtz’s challenge. “What future developments,” he asks, would convince me that I was “wrong to support the current policies of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon”?
I implicitly met this challenge in the concluding pages of my article, but here, made fully explicit for Mr. Pickholtz’s benefit, is my position: I will admit to having been wrong the moment Bush goes along with—and Sharon acquiesces in—Abbas’s wish to skip the first two phases of the “road map” and to jump immediately into the third and final phase.
In phase I, the Palestinians are required to “undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israel anywhere,” and also to mount “effective operations aimed at . . . dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.” Only when the Palestinian Authority does this are the parties to enter phase II, in which negotiations are supposed to culminate in “the creation of a Palestinian state with provisional borders.” At that point, phase III kicks in, and the process begins of forging a “permanent-status agreement [on] borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements.”
Abbas claims that he has already fulfilled his commitments under the first two phases, and that the time has therefore come to enter into phase III. If Bush and Sharon were to accept this claim while the facts on the ground continue exposing it as a fraud (or, at best, as a self-deception), I would admit to having been wrong about them. I would also admit to having been wrong if they were to endorse the characteristically cynical preference of the “international community” for a “fast-track” approach (i.e., jumping into the third phase even though the requirements of the first two admittedly remain unmet by the Palestinians).
Yet contrary to the contention of Mr. Shulman and Laura T. Gutman that Bush and Sharon “have behaved as if all were progressing as stipulated,” neither man has ever wavered on the issue of terrorism. Bush and (pace Deborah Buckman’s reference to “a State Department notorious for taking the Arab side”) his Secretary of State continue to reiterate, and in very strong language, that further progress toward statehood will be impossible unless the Palestinians take serious action against terrorism. As for Sharon, his position is that, because Abbas has thus far failed to take such action, we are not even out of what the Israeli prime minister calls “the pre-road map phase,” let alone being finished with the first two phases and ready to plunge into the third.
To be sure, both Bush and Sharon are still hoping against hope that Abbas, with a little help from them, will succeed in his declaratory policy of coopting the terrorists by drawing them into a political process. Thus Sharon has made concessions to Abbas on prisoner release and checkpoints and has also altered the route of the security fence here and there in deference to “humanitarian” considerations. Thus, too, in late May, when Abbas visited the White House, he came away with a pledge of $50 million and public words of praise.
Being strengthened in these ways will necessarily make it harder for Abbas to get away with pleading weakness to Bush as an excuse for failing to crack down on terrorism—although it seems clear that the main purpose of the aid and the praise was to bolster him in the coming elections against Hamas. In line with the same purpose, while Bush made no bones about denouncing Hamas in public as a terrorist organization, it was only in private that he pressed Abbas to become more aggressive in squelching terrorism.
That he did so in private was confirmed even by unnamed “Palestinian officials” who expressed their pleasure at Bush’s public treatment of Abbas, but also “indicated” to the New York Times that
Mr. Bush had been tough on the need for them to do more to dismantle militant groups like Hamas with a history of attacks on Israel. In particular, administration officials say they are unhappy with . . . Mr. Abbas’s efforts to negotiate with Hamas . . . rather than trying to disarm it by force.
I for one would place my bet more on sticks than on carrots, but the mixed Bush-Sharon approach may conceivably be worth a shot, and it is in any event still a far cry from declaring that the job has already been done.
It is also true, conversely, that the Bush administration keeps reminding Israel of its own commitments under the road map on the expansion of settlements. Linking this kind of talk with the condemnation of Arab terrorism admittedly belongs to the old framework of moral equivalence rejected by Bush on June 24, 2002; but it is surely trumped by the assurance he gave to Sharon in his letter of April 14, 2004:
In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949 [i.e., the ’borders].
This assurance was confirmed in very forceful terms by Secretary of State Rice in the wake of the Kurtzer flap to which Mr. Leibler refers. It was then subsequently reaffirmed in even more unambiguous terms by the President himself during Sharon’s visit to Crawford this past April. Furthermore, when Abbas said after his own visit to the White House in May that the letter had been “misunderstood,” the administration, dispelling the sly suggestion that he had received any such impression from Bush, issued the following statement:
President Bush . . . reiterated to President Abbas American policy with regard to the region. That policy has been well spelled out in speeches in April and June 2002, in his discussions with Prime Minister Sharon in Washington and in Crawford, Texas, and in his letter to Prime Minister Sharon dated April 14, 2004. The principles and positions set out at that time remain the policy of the United States.
But what about the vagueness in the April 14 letter that bothers Mr. Leibler (for example, on the question of how Ma’aleh Adumim can be made “contiguous” with Jerusalem)? Obviously, the intention here is to defer such issues until the final-status negotiations under phase III when, under the more propitious conditions that will presumably have developed by then, they will become more amenable to resolution.
There is, however, a very long way to go before phase III can be reached. In my article, I predicted that the process would probably get stalled in phase II, but by now I have begun wondering when it will even get out of the “pre-road map phase.” Which brings me back to my trust in Bush, and specifically in his threat to withdraw American support for the establishment of a Palestinian state if the PA is unwilling and/or unable to call off the dogs of terrorist war.
Suppose, as Deborah Buckman asks, that the Palestinians “are not as interested in a state of their own as they are in destroying the Jewish presence here?” Certainly this was true of them under Arafat, but people who know far more than I do about Abbas and the post-Arafat Palestinian condition say that it is not true of them today. If those people are wrong, then Deborah Buckman and others of like mind will be consoled by yet another instance of the famous Palestinian propensity never to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Correlatively, Israel will be faced with a third intifada and will be forced back into doing what it did in defeating the second intifada. Only this time, with the fence and the withdrawal from Gaza completed, it will have stronger and tighter defensive lines, as well as the full freedom to conduct the kinds of offensive military operations that proved so successful then.
Under such circumstances, I am confident that Israel would again be given a “green light” by George W. Bush. But I do not believe that it will come to that. As against the worst-case scenarios painted by some of my correspondents, Michael Balch’s take on the situation seems to me far more plausible. I therefore commend his very skillful summation of the case to them and to all the others (except for Rick Richman, who has no need of it but whose commensurately skilful summation of the case for a referendum has been rendered academic by the march of events).
Finally, there is Sheldon F. Gottlieb’s question: “what happens when Bush is no longer in office?” In response to this, I can only repeat the expectation I have voiced a number of times about the Bush Doctrine: that by the end of its author’s second term, it will already have done so much to transform the broader Middle East—and therefore the context in which the Arab war against Israel has heretofore been waged—and will have acquired so much momentum that his successor will be unable and indeed unwilling to stop or reverse its course.
To the Editor:
Ruth R. Wisse writes powerfully and passionately about the campaign against Harvard President Lawrence Summers; it has been, as she suggests, a shameless stampede [“‘Dear Ellen’; or, Sexual Correctness at Harvard,” April].
But her defense of Summers repeats the old canard about the incompatibility of motherhood and intellectual work. Summers asserted that employers want workers who will essentially be married to their jobs, and that “this is a level of commitment that a much higher fraction of married men [than married women] have historically been prepared to make.” In other words, men are more likely than women to neglect family for the sake of work.
Until very recently, such assumptions were almost universally accepted. Academic committees openly rejected the applications of young married women, believing that motherhood would keep them from pulling their professional weight. I learned this in a very personal way while in graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis. As the dean of arts and sciences said of me to my department chairman in the early 1970’s, “She’s a married female with two children; you can’t give her a fellowship. Students in that demographic are not reliable.” It was only because I received a special fellowship for women that I was able to continue toward my Ph.D. and a career in the academy.
Statements like Summers’s have dramatically affected the reproductive decisions of talented and ambitious women who have not been as fortunate as I—or as Ruth Wisse. Facing environments that incorporate a mistrust of motherhood, many postpone childbearing because they do not want to be suspected of lacking commitment to their work. Sad to say, some of my sister feminists have also reinforced anti-motherhood messages by heaping scorn on those who say that fertility is not an even playing field stretching from the onset of menstruation until menopause. Many women, when they are finally established firmly enough at work to risk having a baby, encounter biological difficulties.
Ruth Wisse urges young women to understand that motherhood is on the whole a far more satisfying and important endeavor than any paid job. If employers discriminate against women because mothers are more devoted than fathers, so be it. But as women juggle demanding careers and family needs, they often discover a positive corollary: their husbands become more engaged, effective fathers. At afternoon faculty meetings, young male professors often plead for promptness so they can drive in carpools. Male colleagues bring sick children to the office to while away the hours on an unused computer. Many women—and apparently many men—are capable of the juggling act.
According to Ruth Wisse, fellowships awarded exclusively to women, or other special considerations in hiring, are unfair because they discriminate against men. But discrimination against women, while perhaps more subtle than in the past, remains pervasive in academic life. Many women candidates would not get to the “short list” if diversity officers did not insist on it. Women—especially mothers—need policies that will continue to open doors for them that others are anxious to close. They need people like Ruth Wisse to be an advocate is on their behalf.
Sylvia Barack Fishman
Brandeis University
Waltham, Massachusetts
To the Editor:
I should like to add a somewhat different perspective to Ruth R. Wisse’s wise and thoughtful discussion of the debate about women and tenure at Harvard. When I was a graduate student at Harvard in the early 1970’s, there were no more than four or five tenured women in the entire faculty of arts and sciences.
One, whom I knew personally, was for many years only a “lecturer.” She was finally granted tenure on the basis of a publication record that put many senior faculty to shame. This arrangement, in which she taught a full-time load for half-time pay, had advantages for her at a time when she was raising three young children. As she once put it to me, she felt that she could honorably cut back her full-time schedule if a family emergency ever required it (so far as I know, it never did). I suspect that her public expressions of contentment with this arrangement were not entirely sincere. In any case, the arrangement was most unusual, and would not have been feasible had her husband’s income been less generous.
A second vignette: as a high-school student in Seattle in the 60’s, I recall seeing, with a friend, a picture of the graduating class of the University of Washington medical school. It was a sea of men—around 250—among whom were sprinkled four women. You can imagine its effect upon my companion—a brilliant girl and until then an aspiring doctor. She decided on the spot that the odds were better in nursing.
A final story: I arrived in Buffalo, New York in the fall of 1974, where my husband, who was a year ahead of me in graduate school, had been hired as an assistant professor. When I sought employment, I encountered “anti-nepotism” rules that kept academically qualified wives (often with Ph.D’s from first-rate programs) from teaching at the university. I avoided the rule in question by agreeing to “teach for free” and off the books. I also encountered, I regret to say, many unhappy wives and failing marriages.
I mention these episodes not to arouse indignation but to try to re-create the context out of which the current “feminist” movement emerged, and to suggest the intransigence of certain related trade-offs. It is important to keep in mind that the “prejudice” against women in the academy was not altogether unfounded. Why, after all, lavish an expensive graduate or professional education on a student who is likely to drop out (or only work part-time) in order to raise a family? Ruth Wisse would like to keep “legal equality” while at the same time urging a return to more traditional, family-centered roles for women. But, should young women heed such advice en masse, would it still be reasonable or fair to expect universities and employers to admit and hire them on an “equal” basis? In sum: what is needed is less anger and more serious thought about how we might more happily reconcile equality of opportunity with the having and rearing of children.
Susan Shell Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
To the Editor:
The controversies swirl-ing around Lawrence Summers are nothing new for Harvard presidents. But the particular controversy over women, which Ruth R. Wisse addresses in her brilliant article—well, that’s a different story. As she so eloquently notes, it was not that Summers was wrong in requesting a broad-based inquiry into women’s progress in scientific careers but that he did not go far enough. This inquiry should be expanded to other fields, including my own, business.
Charles Eliot, Harvard’s president from 1869 to 1909, was as quintessentially politically incorrect in his day as Summers is now. Eliot championed women’s education, elective courses, and clinical and case-based pedagogy, among many other radical reforms. None came easily: his move to rescind required attendance at chapel was adopted only after a decade of bitter debate.
Like Summers, Eliot believed in an equality based on merit, not on birth. Not surprisingly, he also championed tough grading. As a young professor of mathematics and chemistry, Eliot administered Harvard’s first written examinations. Small wonder his languid peers denied him tenure.
History does not always treat the politically-incorrect Harvard president kindly. James Conant, Harvard’s president from 1933 to 1952, was flayed during his tenure for his failure to damn the Nazis, his tacit support of a quota on Jewish students, and his advocacy of using the atomic bomb against civilian targets in Japan.
To me, Summers is clearly on the Eliot side of the politically incorrect—a person of great vision with the courage, guile, and charm needed to implement it.
I personally know that women are good at science. After all, it was the 99th-percentile scores I earned in my SAT’s that convinced MIT to admit me, the first enrollee from my obscure Yeshiva University High School for Girls. At that time, before coed dormitories, housing for MIT’s female students was so limited that their SAT scores and other admission criteria had to exceed substantially those of males. Yet nearly half of this extraordinarily talented group dropped out before graduation, and all too few progressed to significant careers.
Why? That is Summers’s very good question. And it applies elsewhere than in science. I have observed similar patterns among my brilliantly talented women students at the Harvard Business School. Women account for half or nearly half of medical and law students but only 30 percent of MBA enrollees, although the MBA degree is life-altering and women enjoy their MBA education and benefit from it as much as men.
My hypothesis about the relative paucity of women MBA’s and scientists is that they face unsatisfactory career paths. Some women have succeeded in big business. By 2004, sixteen women led Fortune 1000 companies and others headed large private firms, great universities, and nonprofits. They did good: the eight firms headed by female CEO’s posted a 52-percent return in 2004 versus 27 percent for all large companies. They did well, too: a 2003 report noted that Pat Russo, CEO of Lucent, pulled in $39 million.
But many women have rejected big-corporation careers, opting to become entrepreneurs instead. The women MBA’s of the class of 1992 were much more likely to be self-employed. Was this movement out of big corporations a push or a pull? Both; but the push was mighty powerful. One research group determined that corporate culture was the number-one reason why women left. They wanted greater job satisfaction. Those executive women who remained were often less assertive and more risk-averse than their male counterparts. They used their mentors more for protection than for advancement. Why were they hunkered down? Noted one corporate escapee: “the brass ring ends up thrust through your nose. . . . The possibility of being ousted not for performance but for politics is just too thick up there.”
The personal costs were substantial, too: 27 percent of these women did not marry, or postponed marriage. The children of the women CEO’s whom I know personally came from their husbands’ former marriages. Few have had and reared their own.
The young women who avoid MBA programs, and perhaps science too, may well view their degree as a ticket to an inflexible, political career in big bureaucratic organizations that will drain them of their capacities.
Regina E. Herzlinger Harvard Business School Cambridge, Massachusetts
To the Editor:
Thank you for publishing Ruth R. Wisse’s wonderful essay. We are a hearty band, we few academic women who stand outside the feminist majority on our campuses, trying to talk common sense to both our male and female students. This includes trying to dispel the pernicious notion that women can “have it all,” which often obscures serious examination of what they most truly want.
For too many years, young women have been taught to think that the most difficult choice before them is deciding which profession to enter, and how to compete successfully with men once they are in it. The need to find a husband or to think about having and raising children often seems to be very far in the back of their minds. They blithely assume that these things will take care of themselves.
Jean Yarbrough Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine
To the Editor:
I was puzzled by the reaction to Lawrence Summers’s remarks about women and careers in the sciences. I read the transcript and found nothing offensive. In particular, the reaction of Nancy Hopkins, the MIT biologist who walked out on Summers’s talk so as to avoid “throwing up,” struck me more as a testament to her insecurity than as a demonstration of principle. If she was confident that Summers was wrong, she could have simply disagreed.
I believe that Summers was genuinely trying to provoke a constructive dialogue about obstacles for women in the sciences. The hysteria of critics like Hopkins undermines the very cause that they purport to advance, and has no place in a climate of academic rigor and scientific development.
Susanna Stratmann Stuttgart, Germany
To the Editor:
Ruth R. Wisse is correct to describe perpetual discontent as feminism’s legacy to women. The initial meeting of Northwestern University Medical School’s equivalent of the Harvard Women’s Caucus featured a female physician from London who crossed the Atlantic in order to teach the women faculty how to recognize “microinequities.” Apparently, my colleagues at Northwestern could not see how silly it was to complain about inequities that they had thus far failed to recognize. The episode helped convince me that women with advanced graduate training in science join foolish clubs as readily as do junior-high-school girls, and with as little forethought. It obviously requires more than higher education to avoid following the madding crowd.
Carol K. Tharp
Northwestern University Medical School
Chicago, Illinois
To the Editor:
Ruth R. Wisse’s article is an island of sanity amid the teapot tempest created by the candid pronouncements of Lawrence Summers. That men and women’s brains differ in essential ways is not an opinion; it is a fact. As the neurobiologist Larry Cahill recently noted, “neuroscientists are uncovering anatomical, chemical, and functional differences between the brains of men and women,” and they are “working to determine how these sex-based variations relate to differences in male and female cognition and behavior.” Present knowledge perhaps does not allow us to determine in what way these inherent differences are reflected in the performance of complex tasks, but the point is that they exist—and vive la difference!
Universities should make sure that women who want to retain their nurturing roles while pursuing careers in the hard sciences are given all the necessary facilities for doing so, such as free child care. But that requires financial commitments from administrations typically strapped for funds. It is cheaper to subvert admissions and hiring processes, which is why that is normally done.
Didier de Fontaine
University of California
Berkeley, California
To the Editor:
Perhaps I am naïve, but I suspect that some of the heat of the controversy over the distribution of women in the elite precincts of math and science comes from ignorance of statistical relationships. I agree with Lawrence Summers and Ruth R. Wisse that women’s choices are probably the most important reason for their under-representation among researchers in, say, quantum mechanics. But what if women’s choices played no role?
It need hardly be said that if the statistical distribution of talent was precisely identical across the sexes, the relative frequencies of men and women with the talent to be on the science faculty at Harvard would be identical as well. But such a distribution is highly unlikely for any human characteristic, much less for mental acuity, which is a congeries of abilities.
A simple analysis of the properties of the “normal” distribution demonstrates that relatively small differences in either the dispersions or the means of mental acuity for men and women—differences that would be imperceptible in the normal activities of life—can reflect stark differences in the frequencies at the very “tails” of the distribution. And it is from the very tip of the right-hand tails that the science faculties at elite educational institutions are drawn.
To some, this will still be unacceptable. They demand that men and women be not merely approximately equal in intellectual endowments but identically so in every sub-category. I know of no ontology that commands this result, no ethics or politics that demands it, and no empirical evidence that suggests it. To insist that such a position is the only acceptable one to voice in public is an embarrassment to intelligent discourse in general and to the academy in particular.
Lloyd Cohen
George Mason University
Arlington, Virginia
To the Editor:
I am often appalled by what I see and hear from our elite universities. Ruth R. Wisse’s article has made me feel that, if someone like her is teaching at a place like Harvard, perhaps all is not lost. Our most prestigious universities may not be completely devoid of common sense and rational thought after all.
Bruce Hamilton
Shamong, New Jersey
To the Editor:
Though I do not agree with everything in Ruth R. Wisse’s article, I admire the clarity of her argument, the force of her prose, and her uncanny ability to cut to the bone. I have followed the Lawrence Summers controversy for weeks, and hers was the first article that made me rethink some of my own suppositions. Thank you.
Sam Wineburg
Stanford University
Stanford, California
Ruth R. Wisse writes:
The anecdotal evidence supplied by my correspondents is a reminder of how dramatically women’s expectations have changed since the 1960’s, when many stormed the workforce hoping, as Jean Yarbrough says, that they could “have it all.” Beneficiaries of developments in science and technology, women gained control over their reproductive systems, enjoyed medical advances that almost eliminated infant mortality, and profited from an array of products and services that facilitated every aspect of raising children.
I would have expected the response to all this bounty to be gratitude—thanksgiving for lengthening lifespans and multiplying opportunities in a land of plenty. Instead, there arose a culture of grievance that has poisoned the very freedoms that women won.
Admittedly the culture of grievance embraces far more than feminism. Every living soul who has ever made a career in a university has tales to tell of discrimination leveled against his or her person or group. At the very first departmental meeting I attended at Harvard, my new colleagues were lamenting the barriers their graduate students faced in a national competition because of widspread resentment of the “Harvard name.”
The question, as always, is what should be done. The prejudice that Jews experienced during their entry into the sciences was far harsher than that felt by women since the 1960’s. This did not prevent Jews from becoming leading scientists, or from winning over 40 percent of U.S. Nobel prizes in medicine. Will women accomplish the same? Jews excelled by driving themselves very hard, as if harkening to the grandmother’s advice in Isaac Babel’s story, “You Must Know Everything.” Modern feminism, when it tries to win advantages under the motto, “You Must Have Everything,” demeans the women it pretends to champion, and corrupts the institutions where it presses its demands.
Sylvia Barack Fishman believes I should be joining her in promoting group preferences for women. But why should she or I advocate discriminatory favoritism on behalf of the most privileged group ever to emerge in this or any other society? We are certainly obliged to ensure equal opportunity for all who want to compete on equal terms, but not at the expense of measurable standards of merit.
If women are not advancing in some areas as far or as fast as men, that is most likely because they have more choices than men. As Susan Shell and Regina E. Herzlinger attest in different ways, the desire of most women to reconcile work with family must necessarily complicate professional performance and the workplaces that try to accommodate their needs. The more competitive a workplace, the less allowance it can afford to make for extraneous considerations. Men and women who want to compete at the highest levels in the most demanding tasks have always had to sacrifice other goals to that end. If the competition slackens in one place, we may be sure that it will pick up in another.
I am unqualified to comment on findings cited by Didier de Fontaine and Lloyd Cohen that identify innate differences between men and women as contributing factors to differentials of talent. But watching the recent Ultimate Tournament of Champions on Jeopardy!, I was struck by how honestly this television game show has been forced to confront sexual differences.
Closely self-monitored to permit no bias, the program tries to include as many female contestants as it can. But by the time we got to the semifinals, all had been eliminated; in this kind of competition, men clearly prevail. Were Jeopardy! a university, my female colleagues would be forming a caucus either to shut down the program or to demand changes in the rules so as to render it “kinder” to women. And the administration, just like Harvard’s now, would be creating six task forces to correct the imbalance.
Far from influencing impressionable young women to curtail their ambitions, as Sylvia Barack Fishman fears they did, the remarks by Lawrence Summers were exploited by feminists to press for advantage. Their strategy of intimidation—in the event, highly successful—was a substitute for the “serious thought” that Susan Shell encourages. I am therefore all the more grateful for the thoughtful comments offered here by academic colleagues who have witnessed similar episodes on their own campuses. I am also very happy to have confirmed some readers in their sanity, and to have provoked others to second thoughts.
Reforming the UN
To the Editor:
Michael Soussan accurately and concisely describes the problems, many of them self-inflicted, plaguing the United Nations [“Can the UN Be Fixed?,” April]. He rightly wonders whether merely adding more seats to the UN’s key organs will change the organization’s pattern of failed performance on issues like genocide and terrorism. I also agree with Mr. Soussan that on the question of preventing genocide, the basic problem is not a lack of UN authority but a lack of political will. He correctly reminds us of the world body’s failures in Kosovo, Rwanda, Darfur, and, of course, Iraq.
In singling out the UN’s failures to deal with rogue or terrorist states, however, Mr. Soussan overlooks the fact that the UN’s primary influence derives not from any intrinsic political or military power but from the values it represents. A profound part of its legitimacy flows from the added value that the UN demonstrably provides to the quality of life of men, women, and children throughout the world. Linking peoples’ local interests and concerns to larger issues is the goal of a growing community of self-organizing groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) that have become skilled at advancing their agendas for change through the UN. Some 225 NGO’s were represented at a 1972 conference in Stockholm; that number had risen to 2,100 at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing.
In arguing that the UN’s first priority should be to promote democracy, Mr. Soussan expects too much of it. Democracy is obviously the most desirable outcome for all states. But the road to democracy lies in the UN’s bringing to bear its moral and institutional authority—identifying failed states, combating the denial of human rights, halting the promulgation of genocide—through more active engagement with the world’s peoples, NGO’s, and the private sector.
Simply urging non-democracies to change their stripes—whether by tinkering with the UN’s legalistic formulas or by threatening non-democracies with exclusion from the body—will not break the moral logjam. The UN certainly can do much better in the management of its own affairs. But just preaching to or threatening the unconverted is not likely to achieve the goals of the UN or the United States.
Ambassador Donald M. Blinken
New York City
Michael Soussan writes:
Ambassador Donald M. Blinken makes several important points about the nature of the United Nations’ work, especially its valuable efforts to rescue people in distress around the world. He believes, however, that I expect too much of the UN by arguing that it could do much more to promote democracy. He also believes that there areA0humanitarian values that supersede, say, the application of Article 6 of the UN Charter, which stipulates that member states that consistently violate UN rules may be expelled from the organization.
Were the drafters of the UN charter wrong to include Article 6? They may have been unrealistic in expecting UN members to play by the rules. The cold war forced upon the organization a certain moral relativism—an institutional culture that, to a large degree, still prevails today. But the world has changed dramatically since 1945. The trend is toward democratization, and the UN can do much more to be in step with it.
The risk of not doing so is that the UN will lose the confidence of the democracies that now constitute a majority of its members, countries that face an increased threat from terrorism and the dictatorial states that sponsor it. This does not mean that it will be easy for the UN to become a more effective force for democracy. As Ambassador Blinken rightly points out, the UN often requires some level of cooperation from dictatorial states if it is to aid the people who need it most. But perhaps we can agree to debate how this change must occur, rather than whether it should.
Pinstripes & Red Sox
To the Editor:
As a fellow member of the Yankee diaspora now living in Boston, I commend Charles Dellheim for his excellent article [“A Yankees Fan in Red Sox Nation,” April]. It might be worthwhile to remind ourselves that there is a latent benefit to last year’s postseason collapse. With the Red Sox’ reversal of the “curse of the Bambino” comes responsibility. We now know that they can win. When they don’t, it is not because it is written in the stars, or because some curse is guiding their fate.
I have quickly learned what baseball means to the Boston psyche. After the Red Sox’ dramatic loss to the Yankees in the 2003 American League Championship Series, the emergency-room psychiatric ward where I was a resident swelled with young men wanting to “talk.” Almost all of these visitors exhibited indulgent melancholia, not true psychopathology. I was struck by how helpful such primitive group defenses as “the curse” and “it was inevitable!” could be in the face of their loss.
No longer. Now, it is about cowhide balls being slung at ash bats, and the mortal talent behind each duking-it-out for who will be on top. In other words, it is about baseball. May the best team win—unless it’s the Red Sox.
Steven Kleiner
Brookline, Massachusetts
To the Editor:
Notwithstanding Charles Dellheim’s allegiance to the Yankees, I very much appreciate his article. I understand the challenge of being a Yankees fan here in Boston: it is not unlike that of a poet who reads verse in praise of George W. Bush in the People’s Republic of Cambridge.
At the end of his article, Mr. Dellheim writes, “Chalk one up for Red Sox nation, past and present, for the great ones like Ted Williams and Dom DiMaggio who are gone.” Although the Splendid Splinter left this mortal coil in 2002, rumors of Dom’s passing, to paraphrase Mark Twain, are greatly exaggerated. He turned 88 this past February.
Aaron Goldstein
Boston, Massachusetts
To the Editor:
I have no sympathy for a Yankee fan who lives in New England, being a Red Sox fan who grew up in suburban New York among Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants fans. I write only to express my puzzlement at Charles Dellheim’s slight of the baseball historian Frederick G. Lieb. Mr. Dellheim writes that Lieb used a “heinous anti-Jewish stereotype” in describing Harry Frazee, the Red Sox owner who sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees, as “an evil genie.”
To be sure, anyone who reads Lieb’s 1947 book, The Boston Red Sox, will become aware of his dislike for what Frazee did, and any Red Sox fan will share that dislike; but there is nothing in the writing that suggests animosity toward the man, nor is there any mention that Frazee was Jewish, or that he acted as only a Jew could have done in selling Ruth to New York. Can’t anyone be an evil genie?
Tom Putnam
Buffalo, New York
To The Editor:
I happened to read Charles Dellheim’s article in the lobby of the Seaport Hotel in Boston on April 11. The Red Sox’ 2005 home opener was that day, and around me tooA0many Red Sox fans were watching the pre-game championship celebration at Fenway Park on the large-screen TV. It was painful being there, but Mr. Dellheim gave me some solace.
Dan Liberti
Naperville, Illinois
Charles Dellheim writes:
Baseball continues to serve as a literal and symbolic field of American dreams, as Steven Kleiner’s perceptive letter suggests. It is no wonder that in Boston, young men fell victim to “indulgent melancholia” (is that covered by insurance?) and wanted to “talk” after the Red Sox’ 2003 ALCS defeat. Victory entails celebration, but defeat demands explanation or at least consolation. I doubt that I would have written a word about baseball had the Yankees not suffered their historic collapse during the last four games of the 2004 ACLS. And I agree with Dr. Kleiner that the “curse of the Bambino” offered a primitive group defense for the more primitive members of Red Sox nation. It also turned mundane errors on the field and managerial mistakes in the dugout into errors of truly mythic proportions.
Like other literary forms, writing about baseball draws on a variety of tropes, some of which are more dangerous than others. Tom Putnam suggests that I slighted baseball historian Fred Lieb by suggesting that he used a heinous anti-Semitic stereotype, genie,” to describe, and denounce, Harry Frazee. I do not know enough about Lieb to comment on what he thought, or did not think, about Jews. But I will stand by the point that the “evil genie” is a traditional anti-Semitic notion. It is clearly related to ancient superstitions about the “devilishness” of shrewd Jews who outwit honest Christians through alleged magical powers. Mr. Putnam is quite right to suggest that anyone can be an evil genie, but Lieb’s metaphor contained an anti-Semitic subtext irrespective of his intentions.
I would like to thank Aaron Goldstein not only for his willingness to tolerate the existence of a Yankees fan in Red Sox nation, but also for graciously rescuing the great Dom DiMaggio from a premature passing. Watching the 2005 Fenway Park opener, I was relieved to learn that Dom was alive and kicking, if not batting and catching. Let me also thank several readers for taking the time to point out, privately, another goof. Enos Slaughter, who was the oldest man on the Yankees when I was a child (but who was younger then than I am now), was, of course, nicknamed “Country” because he came from rural parts rather than, as I wrote, for his part in the 1946 World Series.
Dhimmitude
To the Editor:
I read with much interest David Warren’s review of my book, Eurabia, and I am obliged to respond to a few of his comments [Books in Review, April]. Contrary to what Mr. Warren suggests, I never claimed that a formal structure was created “to accommodate the transfer of Europe to Islamic rule.” As I explained several times, the end result was not what had been at the beginning. Shortsighted policies, as well as political and economic interests and mistaken assessments, have concurred to bring Europe into a culture of submission to Islam, or “dhimmitude.”
Perhaps, seen from America, the “Euro-Arab Dialogue” of the European Union is “a small component of a much vaster Euro-bureaucracy,” but within Europe it has determined domestic policies that will influence the continent’s politics, demography, culture, religious character, and institutions for years to come. It already affects the school systems, especially in England, France, and Denmark, and thereby will modify the character of the continent.
The Euro-Arab framework also has structured Europe’s policies toward the Arab-Muslim world, America, and Israel. It has generated the Barcelona Declaration (1995), the Mediterranean Partnership, and the EU Dialogue Between Peoples and Cultures around the Mediterranean, with its Anna Lindh Foundation (2004). These are political and economic instruments that shape the entire European-Mediterranean strategy as planned by the European Council of Ministers and the European Commission, which represent the highest political and executive level of the EU. The Euro-Arab Dialogue is not the expedient device of Euro-bureaucrats, as Mr. Warren suggests, but the common vision of European leaders, heads of state, and governments.
The “authoritative pronouncements” whose alleged absence leads Mr. Warren to dismiss the political significance of the Euro-Arab Dialogue are in fact plentiful. They appear in the many official endorsements over the years of Arab-League policy in the Middle East by representatives of the European Community—and to this day by the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. As for the supposedly missing “political bricks and mortar,” they are evident in the meetings and discussions held among the leaders of the European Community (and, later, the European Union) in Brussels and other European cities. It is through such negotiations that the policies of the numerous states making up the European Union are determined and implemented.
Bat Ye’or
Geneva, Switzerland
David Warren writes:
Bat Ye’or may well be right that things look different from America. The purport of my review was that she had correctly diagnosed a broad tendency in Europe to adopt a “dhimmi”-like posture of accommodation toward the increasingly aggressive Islamic presence inside and around the continent. But the bureaucratic measures she presents as causes, I take as symptoms. Our views seem to converge at the point where she insists that “the end result” of the European Union’s formal Euro-Arab dialogue “is not what had been at the beginning.”
Correction In Fred Siegel’s review of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning [Books in Review, June], a magazine article with the title “Can New York Survive?” was mistakenly attributed to New York magazine in 1977. The article appeared in the New York Times Magazine in 1969. We regret the error.—Ed.
