Title IX New Frontier: Science

If pseudo-feminist Christina Hoff Sommers is against something, it must be the right thing to do!

The New York Times reports:

Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target: science.

The National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy have set up programs to look for sexual discrimination at universities receiving federal grants. Investigators have been taking inventories of lab space and interviewing faculty members and students in physics and engineering departments at schools like Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, M.I.T. and the University of Maryland. [...]

So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven’t had much visible impact on campuses beyond inspiring a few complaints from faculty members. (The journal Science quoted Amber Miller, a physicist at Columbia, as calling her interview “a complete waste of time.”) But some critics fear that the process could lead to a quota system that could seriously hurt scientific research and do more harm than good for women.

The members of Congress and women’s groups who have pushed for science to be “Title Nined” say there is evidence that women face discrimination in certain sciences, but the quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women’s interest in some fields isn’t the same as men’s.

Did you hear the buzz words? "More harm than good for women" and "women's interest in some fields isn't the same as men's." Yeah, I thought so.

And if you click through to read the rest of the article you'll hear the ultimate buzz word ... "quota's."

Followed by how this could ultimate hurt both science and women's equality. Yes, and men's football programs on college campuses are profit centers ... right.

And the ultimate threatening language that sends up red flags is:

“Colleges already practice affirmative action for women in science, but now they’ll be so intimidated by the Title IX legal hammer that they may institute quota systems,” Dr. Sommers said. “In sports, they had to eliminate a lot of male teams to achieve Title IX parity. It’ll be devastating to American science if every male-dominated field has to be calibrated to women’s level of interest.”

Followed by:

Whether or not quotas are ever imposed, some of the most productive science and engineering departments in America are busy filling out new federal paperwork. The agencies that have been cutting financing for Fermilab and the Spirit rover on Mars are paying for investigations of a problem that may not even exist. How is this good for scientists of either sex?

Good grief.

Take the science challenge!

from Jesus' General

"It’s a science song weekend at the General’s (with a helmet tip to freereed). We’re looking for songs about science… Let’s begin with a little Thomas Dolby followed by a lecture on (de)evolution by Devo."

"Creation Science 101" by Roy Zimmerman

God and His Gays

Those wacky religious right evangelicals are gonna hate me for this one ... but I couldn't resist. It seems that science might be about to take the steam out of one of their biggest obsessions. And, they are finding out about it from one of their own! Yikes!

Consider the dilemma of the Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and a leading figure in the Southern Baptist firmament.

Writing in his blog this month, Mohler acknowledged that " the direction of the research" increasingly points to the possibility that a "biological basis for sexual orientation exists." Should sexuality be determined in utero, Mohler continued, that still wouldn't justify abortion or genetic engineering.

Well THAT'S good to know, because I kind of like me! And besides, if some one is going to do any genetic engineering on me I'd rather it be -- in the words of my mother -- to "make me a size 10 with lots of hair."

... as Mohler noted in a later blog post, his admission that the data suggest that homosexuality may be as genetically determined as hair color produced a torrent of irate e-mail from his fellow evangelical Christians. Up to now, the preferred theory among Christian conservatives has been that homosexuality is behaviorally induced and thus can be unlearned.

It's easier to hate the sinner if you think the sinner could change, but is choosing to remain a sinner just to spite you.

The thought that being lesbian or gay could be genetic does create a theological dilemma for the Mohlers among us. People like, say ... Peter Pace?

... as the data confirming this thesis continue to mount, that could confront even those of Pace's persuasion with Mohler's conundrum: how to reconcile a God who creates homosexuals with a God who condemns practicing homosexuals to hell? A mysterious God may be well and good, but a capricious or contradictory God can inspire so much doubt that He threatens the credibility of the entire religious enterprise.

For an evangelical community fighting about global warming and war, could this be the straw that finally breaks the camel's back? Guess time will tell.