Don’t Confuse Me By Pointing Out My Inconsistencies

In the comment section of an article that discusses, among other things, the row at Harvard over President Summers statement on why there might be more men than women in mathematics and the sciences (Belmont Club article We Shall Overcome), a commenter named Scott made this telling observation:

Gays are said to be biologically predisposed to their orientation (though if they weren’t, their civil liberties would precipitate the same politics by another route). We’re asked to accept this as uncontroversial; indeed, to controvert it is to invite charges of homophobia. But let Summers suggest that there may be differences between men and women, and all hell breaks loose. We’re obliged to accept notions of radical genetic distinctions within gender, but it seems we’re as obliged to deny any distinctions between genders.

Hmmm… The guiding ethos of the modern university used to be a rigorous pursuit of the truth, no matter where it took the dialog. That was the watchword when the pursuit led the vanguard against the longstanding beliefs of the West’s Judeo-Christian heritage. Now that the same pursuit is questioning the shibboleths of entrenched liberalism, it is suddenly out of bounds. It was good when it questioned what liberalism wanted questioned, but not now that its searchlight has spied half-baked pottery in the stalls of its own camp everyone is in an uproar.