The Smith Connection

I knew there had to be one. After all, Harvard is hardly breaking any barriers by hiring the first woman prez in its 371-year history, Drew Gilpin Faust. The new head of Harvard crossed paths with Dr. Mary Maples Dunn when they were students at Bryn Mawr. Dunn was president of Smith when I was there. Dunn was known to us as NOT Jill Ker Conway, the groundbreaking first female president of Smith, a feminist who attained celeb status in the academic world with her book Road from Coorain. Dunn did boring things like establish an engineering program and beefed up the math and science in the school, which I suppose is a good thing if one wants to compete with the big boys, and I do think it paid off. But her legacy was easily overshadowed by the next president of Smith, Ruth Simmons, an African American, who went on to become the president of Brown. I digress. Point is, that after the former President Lawrence Summers made his notrious comment that women are genetically predisposed to be bad at science -- he demonstrated that he was genetically predisposed to put foot in mouth. Which led to this Faustian bargain. Check mate.