(This was posted to the Science for the People mailing list. Levins is a Harvard professor who works closely with Cuban scientists. He is the co-author of "The Dialectical Biologist" with Richard Lewontin, another Harvard professor and leftist.)
On Sommers' theory: 1. comparative data to Scandanavia and Cuba. In Cuba during my work there the dean of the faculty of mathematics, the minister of science, technology and the environment, the director of the center for plant and animal protection (CENSA), the director of the Tropical Fruit Institute (now moved up to vice-minister of agriculture), the new head of the institute of ecology, the founding director of the Institute for Mathematics and Cybernetics applied to Medicine, the director of the Carlos Finlay Institute (vaccines etc) were all women as were many department heads. Did a mass mutation occur in 1959? 2. Harvard has had a long history of providing reactionary ideologies with a veneer of scholarship to justify racist, class and other discriminations.. Norbert Weiner was refused appointment because of the chair of the math department's anti-semitism.
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