Contact: Christie Hobbs
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WASHINGTON, DC — The Independent Women’s Forum today expressed disappointment in Harvard University’s decision to spend $50 million over the next 10 years on initiatives to make their faculty more gender diverse. With these initiatives, Summers hopes to curtail further criticism of his remarks from last January, implying innate gender difference could account for the dearth of women in the sciences.


“Fifty million dollars is an obscene price to pay for political correctness,” said Nancy Pfotenhauer, president of the Independent Women’s Forum. “Dr. Summers simply told the truth: that men and women are different. It is a shame he caved in to the blackmail of the radical feminists.”


Highlights of the $50 million plan include a senior administrative post overseeing diversity and faculty development as well as a faculty development and diversity fund which will reward appointees who “contribute to diversity.”


“As a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, I know first hand the enormous lack of ideological diversity on campus,” said Carrie Lukas, IWF’s policy director. “Harvard’s real diversity problem isn’t its lack of female professors, but its intolerance for any opinions not shared by the liberal left.”