Obama aims to destroy math, physics and computer science

Story by Christina Hoff Sommers in the Washington Post, or here on AEI. (H/T The American Enterprise Institute)

I bet you thought that Obama was pro-science, didn’t you? Nope. Not only is he directing funds towards unproven ESCR and away from useful ASCR, but he also means to destroy university education in the fields of math and science. Leftist politics is more important than science for Obama.

Here’s what he plans to do:

In an October letter to women’s advocacy groups, he declared that Title IX, the law that requires universities to give equal funding to men’s and women’s athletics, had made “an enormous impact on women’s opportunities and participation in sports.” If pursued with “necessary attention and enforcement,” the same law could make “similar, striking advances” for women in science and engineering.

That campaign pledge is hardening into policy, which ought to give people pause. In February, the Congressional Diversity and Innovation Caucus met with academic deans and women’s groups to plan for the new Title IX deployment. Nearly everyone present agreed that closing the gender gap in the laboratory is an urgent “national imperative.” What they failed to consider, however, is how enforced parity might affect American science.

To start with, consider the effects of Title IX:

Consider the situation at Washington’s Howard University. In 2007, the Women’s Sports Foundation, a powerful Title IX advocacy group, gave Howard an “F” grade because of its 24-percentage-point “proportionality gap”: Howard’s student body was 67 percent female, but women constituted only 43 percent of its athletic program. In 2002, Howard cut men’s wrestling and baseball and added women’s bowling, but that did little to narrow the gap. Unless it sends almost half of its remaining male athletes to the locker room, Howard will remain blacklisted and legally vulnerable. Former Howard wrestling coach Wade Hughes sums up the problem this way: “The impact of Title IX’s proportionality standard has been disastrous because . . . far more males than females are seeking to take part in athletics.”

Allison Kasic over at the Independent Women’s Forum writes about recent cuts at Kutztown University.

She writes:

The latest victims of gender equity appear to be men’s soccer and swimming at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.  The school announced at the end of March that it would be cutting both sports effective at the end of this season.

…The “gender equity” law guides school’s program decisions through its rigid proportionality requirements (aka gender quotas).  For background on Title IX’s demands, read this as a starting point.  And, lo and behold, after students, parents, and coaches started asking questions about Title IX, the school admitted that many factors, including Title IX were taken into consideration.

IWF writes about Title IX quite a bit, and they have some of their pieces linked here.

UPDATE: Alison K. at the IWF sent me a couple of links on Title IX.

  • A thorough overview of Title IX’s impact on athletics is available here.
  • If you are looking for something shorter, this is basically the Cliff Notes version.

One thought on “Obama aims to destroy math, physics and computer science”

  1. Pretty ironic that the “one” would making this kind of blunder while Al Gore seems to be on the right page. He has promised $20 million to fund induced pluripotent stem cell research (iPS) or what some people call adult stem cell research.

    Seems <a href=”http://notdrjekyll.blogspot.com/2009/04/did-al-gore-finally-get-somthing-right.html”Al Gore has finally gotten something right while Obama continues to make incorrect, but politically expident, decisions.

    Like

Leave a comment