College President James Wright distanced himself from Harvard University President Lawrence Summers' controversial remarks about women in the sciences but declined to criticize the embattled academic leader in an interview with The Dartmouth on Tuesday.
Last week, Summers released a transcript of his comments, which he made at a January conference, amid growing criticism over his leadership at Harvard.
Although he dismissed the notion that biological factors make women unable to pursue careers in the sciences, Wright stopped short of chastising the Harvard president for his comments.
Summers was trying to "encourage conversation and he clearly has done that," Wright said, adding that focus should now shift from Summers to "factors that militate against women pursuing careers in the sciences."
"There certainly are not any innate biological factors that prevent women from pursuing careers in the sciences," Wright said.
The presidents of Princeton and Stanford Universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have all openly criticized Summers' remarks. Graduate students at Yale also launched a protest directed at Yale University President Richard Levin for failing to personally denounce Summers' comments.
Wright, however, said he would not be making any forthcoming official statements on Summers' comments. He noted that the university presidents that have spoken out, two of whom are women and all of whom are scientists, are in better positions to critique Summers' argument.
Wright has also not faced faculty pressure to respond in a more substantive manner to the Harvard president's remarks, he said.
The calamity in Cambridge, which began last month with Summers' address to a conference on women in science hosted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, escalated over the past month, forcing the Harvard president to release a transcript of his remarks Thursday and resulting in an emergency meeting of the Harvard faculty Tuesday at which professors argued over the need for further action.
"So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this [the lack of women in the sciences] is that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination," Summers said at the conference.
One week later, Summers issued a statement to the Harvard community apologizing for the remarks that sparked widespread controversy.
"I deeply regret the impact of my comments and apologize for not having weighed them more carefully," Summers said.
Summers has also said the speech was meant to be "informal and speculative" and if he could "turn back the clock, [he] would have spoken differently on matters so complex."
At Dartmouth, Wright has worked to address the issue of women in the sciences since his tenure as the dean of the faculty years ago, when he noticed a disparity in the number of matriculating women who declared themselves as science majors versus the number who actually pursued those interests. When Wright took the position in 1989, he said that only 1 in 5 women graduated as science majors and now the statistic is closer to 40 percent.
As for recruiting female faculty members in the sciences, Wright said the College could do better but said Dartmouth would not especially recruit disgruntled members of the Harvard faculty.
"I am frustrated that we have not done as well as we should have in recruiting women to the science faculty," Wright said.
Although he knows Summers through the Council of Ivy League Presidents, Wright has not met the Harvard president outside of these meetings and refused to comment on whether or not he thought Summers should resign.
Still, Wright emphasized that a university presidency depends on the support of the faculty and said he is proud of the good relationship he has sustained with professors at Dartmouth.
