The University of California board of regents needed a speaker for a dinner in Sacramento on September 19. They invited Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard, but then something happened that will ring familiar to readers of the Contrarian.

Faculty of a feminist bent within the UC system, led by UC Davis professor Maureen Stanton, wrote a letter protesting that Mr. Summers had been invited in the first place.

"I was appalled and stunned that someone like Summers would even be invited to speak to the regents," professor Stanton told reporters. Less than a week before the dinner, the UC bosses duly caved in to the protesters, gave Mr. Summers the boot, and substituted Susan Kennedy, chief of staff for governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.    

What had Larry Summers done to deserve this kind of treatment?  Some sort of felony, or maybe an arrest in an airport bathroom? Not quite, as we noted in "Engendered Strife at Harvard," the Contrarian for February 7, 2005.   

On January 14, 2005, at a session on the progress of women in academia, organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, president Summers suggested that the shortage of elite female scientists might be due to "innate differences," between men and women. This is a legitimate point of inquiry because, to all but the willfully blind, there are indeed many innate differences between men and women.    

Mr. Summers alluded to research showing that while median scores of both sexes are the same, girls are less likely to score top marks than boys in standardized math and science tests. He explained he didn't know the reason for this but offered a number of hypotheses, including the innate differences concept.

Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin told reporters she was elated at Summers' ideas and "proud that the president of my university retains the inquisitiveness of an academic." But shouts from the feminist benches drowned out such good sense. As The Economist noted, they were denying him the right to express a plausible opinion and, as the publication said, "It beggars belief that a community of scholars, or people purporting to be scholars, wish to deny him that right."   

Summers apologized and appointed two task forces designed to increase the role of women in science and on the faculty. None of that lessened the pressure on him to resign, which he eventually did, giving way to Drew Gilpin Faust, who headed one of the task forces.  All that would be more than enough for one person to endure but the feminist troops want more.  

As a distinguished economist and former Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, Mr. Summers has a lot to say on many subjects. His travails at Harvard would also be of interest to the UC regents. Campus feminists, however, don't want the regents to hear what Mr. Summers has to say, reflect on it, then agree or disagree. They don't want him to be heard at all, not even at a private dinner.   

The UC regents had a chance to show courage but responded with the kind of spinelessness we have come to expect of administrators and politicians alike. Richard Blum, chairman of the UC board of regents and husband of California Senator Dianne Feinstein, was conveniently out of the country when the rejection of Mr. Summers became public.

This sorry episode suggests that there could well be innate differences between inquisitive academics and the close-minded kind on display in this case. Perhaps the women's studies or psychology department can look into it. The case also confirms that the diversity lobby has a point. People with courage, common sense, and open minds are underrepresented at the University of California.