There' s a Pool Going on How This Guy Rose to the Post of President of Harvard. I've Got Twenty on Nepotism.

The president of Harvard University prompted criticism for suggesting that innate differences between the sexes could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers....

The remarks prompted Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist Nancy Hopkins &mdash a Harvard graduate &mdash to walk out on Summers' talk, The Boston Globe reported....

Five other participants in the National Bureau of Economic Research conference, including Denice D. Denton, chancellor designate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, also said they were offended by the comments....

"It's possible I made some reference to innate differences," he said. He said people "would prefer to believe" that the differences in performance between the sexes are due to social factors, "but these are things that need to be studied."

Summers declined to provided a tape or transcript of his remarks, but he did describe comments to the Globe similar to what participants recalled....

He also cited as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral upbringing. Yet he said she named them "daddy truck" and "baby truck," as if they were dolls.

It was during such comments that Hopkins got up and left.

Summers went on to say that a few days later, the "daddy truck" was nowhere to be found, and when he saw his daughter playing with her "baby truck," he interrupted her to ask where it had gone. He had expected her to say Daddy truck was away earning money so Baby truck could have fuel in her tank, and pretty wheels on her axles. Instead, she told him that Baby truck had heard a few hurtful and offensive comments Daddy truck had made about mommy trucks; so, to teach him a lesson, Baby truck had set Daddy truck on fire while he was sleeping.

"Oh, yeah," Summers said his daughter told him, "Baby's a riot grrl."