Really creepy story about how Harvard Business School treated women like children to help them succeed at Harvard Business School.
Bizarre NYT story about zealous gender equity monitors at Harvard Business School.Would love to know more. http://t.co/1kXgAU2nZG
— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) September 8, 2013
The social engineering experiment went so far as to teach the best and the brightest how to raise their hands with confidence:
Women at Harvard did fine on tests. But they lagged badly in class participation, a highly subjective measure that made up 50 percent of each final mark. Every year the same hierarchy emerged early on: investment bank and hedge fund veterans, often men, sliced through equations while others — including many women — sat frozen or spoke tentatively. The deans did not want to publicly dwell on the problem: that might make the women more self-conscious. But they lectured about respect and civility, expanded efforts like the hand-raising coaching and added stenographers in every class so professors would no longer rely on possibly biased memories of who had said what.
Here’s a screen capture of student Brooke Boyarsky demonstrating assertive hand raising:
The really long article goes on to describe improved performance under the innumerable artificial conditions created to help the women succeed versus the men. Conditions, of course, that do not exist in the real, competitive world.
Otherwise, this story would not be worth writing about.
Then I got to the end:
As Ms. Boyarsky glanced around her new job as a consultant at McKinsey in Dallas, she often noticed that she was outnumbered by men, but she spoke up anyway. She was dating more than she had at school, she added with shy enthusiasm.
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Comments
The real reason to get an MBA is to have better dates?
And we wonder how Sandra Fluke is a hero today instead of Sandra Day O’Connor.
What’s the caption to that photo? “Heil Harvard!”?
I find phony scandal Native American Harvard women especially attractive. It is so awesome to abuse the quota system as a means to “empowerment”.
Did they suggest raising hands, and claiming minority status while looking white, as an effective strategy? It seemed to work for Lieawatha.
No different than offering for sale a machine that turns lead into gold.
Of course, my mom used to say there were lots of people who could take gold and turn it into shit. Which is on par with the Harvard program giving out diplomas based on skin color and genitalia.
I could tell them this won’t work. But they don’t listen.
I hope your mother had many other pithy sayings like that. I bet that was what sealed the deal for your dad. 🙂
Conditions, of course, that do not exist in the real, competitive world.
Applies to affirmative-action male law students, too?
Hmmmm, anyone we know? 😉
Yeah, and he’s desperate to get a date with Congress so he doesn’t have to go to the prom alone. (h/t Ragspierre on the tip line)
No, there’s plenty of gubmint jobs.
I was under the distinct impression that treating those they purport to care about like small stupid children was the modus operandi of the modern liberal.
Right. They’ve zeroed in on the real difference between women and men. Men are better at raising their hands. It’s purely cultural of course. Probably a vestige of (white) male privilege. Harvard should be proud to be teaching about true equality. It’s so much better than teaching icky stuff like math.
Teach women to be more assertive and participatory so they can get better dates. Way cool!
So let me get this straight: my wife and I should dedicate our lives, and our son’s life from the time he starts sixth grade onwards, to jumping through all the hoops necessary to assemble a resume that may or most likely may not get him into an “elite” school like Harvard? For this?
I’ve seen far too many items like the one above, like “Sex Week at Harvard”, like stories about Harvard interviewees who don’t know elementary U.S. history, to even begin to consider such a thing.
Not only does our emperor have no clothes, but increasingly his minions-in-waiting don’t either. (Pun definitely not intended.)
Bet the designed tests don’t measure much.
Besides, if you get to design the tests, you also know the answers in advance.
But life doesn’t work out like a “multiple choice” question.
Oh, the best resumes are the ones you create out of whole cloth. When I was in my 20’s I wrote one that showed I had 104 years of experience. I included searching for flotsam and jetsam.
I also wrote that I had strong legs. And, if necessary, I could throw a file cabinet over my shoulders and go running out the door.
Most women don’t want to work for other women. So keep in mind that just as water flows downhill, you’re not going to change how people are hard wired.
Women act like women; Harvard horrified, leaps into action….
Incidentally, I hated “class participation” in school. It as designed to get teenage girls to yammer on about stuff nobody wanted to hear about… because they knew that they’re supposed to talk up, while the guys and geeks were waiting for something worth saying.
Which was promptly smacked down as not needing to be said. /sigh
This is not only silly is it offensive..I was a college grad and had no barriers, challenges, obstacles to ” raising my hand”, speaking my mind, being respected by my college community. This was 1979…So my question is what possible issues do these women have where they do not just speak… Sounds like a planted unissue to me…
Liberals are superstitious, in a way. They have a grab bag full of phantoms, and corresponding potions and incantations to ward them off. The problem is, if they can’t find a phantom, they create one.
You are brilliant, and you’re probably on some government list for re-education when the shtf.
I am speechless. I went from an all girl’s high school to a freshman college class in which there were ten men for every woman and managed to graduate summa cum laude in under three years without any coaching in assertive hand raising. I then managed to navigate an MBA program where men also greatly outnumbered women plus law school, again without any special programs. How was that possible?
Of course, my dating life sucked. I always thought that was because after college I was working full time as well as taking full class loads. Now I realize it wasn’t because the guys didn’t want to play second fiddle to a Macroeconomics or Con Law. It was because there were no stenographers in my classrooms to record my every brilliant contribution to raise my self esteem.
The grades of the women went up, as reflected by their increased % in the top 5 %. HBS seemed surprised. perhaps it was because they required each Prof to track interactions an class participation by gender and the HBS monitored those grades.
Profs knew what the HBS wanted and gave it to them. higher female grades.
Was the detail of shaved/unshaved armpits factored in?
Was the detail of shaved/unshaved armpits factored in?
Double clutch! Ghost in the machine.