"Affirmative action" got Michelle Obama into Princeton University to read sociology. She could not have got in on merit; her "senior thesis" would disgrace an intelligent eleven-year-old. Would "affirmative action" have got her into MIT to read physics? Not yet, it seems. (American readers, please correct me if I am wrong.) But sometime in the future, a mediocre woman may be accepted, and physics dumbed down to her level. This is very dangerous. Sociology is not a proper discipline anyway, and a bad sociologist may do no more harm than a good one. Bad scientists are another matter.

A few days ago I linked to David Thompson's piece on "quota-driven, gender-balanced and non-competitive science". Thomson says most of what needs to be said on the subject of "gender parity", "affirmative action" and other such nonsense:

Of course, what matters is that men and women of comparable skill and motivation compete fairly for employment. Whether or not meritocratic selection has been achieved cannot be determined by whether or not gender parity results, since we have no solid basis on which to say that gender parity should be the meritocratic outcome. On what basis could one determine that there “ought” to be a particular ratio of male and female mathematicians, engineers or oil workers? At what point and on what basis – besides political dogma - could one determine that a particular gender is sufficiently “represented” in any given vocation? Yet these are the assumptions of much of the research mentioned above, and of those who wish to “correct” who is interested in what. The belief that, magically stripped of all external influences, the male and female population should be roughly symmetrical in interests, skills and dispositions is just that – a belief; a prejudice, if you will. And not, it seems, terribly scientific.

The longer article, by Christina Hoff Summers, should be read in full. Note in particular the following warning:

During the past 30 years, the humanities have been politicized and transformed beyond recognition. The sci­ences, however, have been spared. There seems to have been a tacit agreement, especially at the large research universities; radical activ­ists and deconstructionists were left relatively free to experiment with fields like comparative literature, cultural anthropology, communica­tions, and, of course, women’s studies, while the hard sciences—vital to our economy, health, and security, and to university funding from the federal government, corporations, and the wealthy entrepreneurs among their alumni—were to be left alone.

Departments of physics, math, chemis­try, engineering, and computer science have remained traditional, rigorous, competitive, relatively meritocratic, and under the control of no-nonsense professors dedicated to objec­tive standards. All that may be about to change. Following years of meticulous planning by the activists gathered for the hearing, the era of academic détente is coming to an end. 

It was a mistake to politicise the "humanities", as they are now called. Subjects like English and comparative literature, history, theology and philosphy should be taught with the same academic rigour as the sciences, and admission to courses granted solely on merit. It is not admirable that sciences were left alone only because they are "vital to our economy", and arts subjects tampered with because they are not.  Nevertheless, I fear for American science - and where America leads, Britain always follows. I hope somebody cries "Stop!" whether in an American or British accent, or in some strange mixture of the two.