Our Better Half

Harvard didn't just make history when it selected a woman to lead the institution. It now means that half of the Ivy League schools are now run by women. This is a nice little postscript to the scuff up started by ex-Harvard prez Lawrence Summers, who made the now infamous comment that gender differences may explain why women don't succeed in these fields as much as men. Obviously, this made the women at the conference, especially the science and math profs, hopping mad.

While having a woman running the show at Harvard or Brown or U. Penn certainly doesn't guarantee against pig-headed gaffes, it's a good bet that these leaders, who have experienced gender and race-based bias on their way to the top, know a thing or two more than Lawrence Summers about what it means to succeed as a woman.