I hadn't said anything about the Harvard/Summers situation because without having a transcript of his comments I really didn't know what to say.
And, now that the New York Times has decided it's yet again another opportunity to put Charles Murray into print, the entire discussion has officially jumped the shark...
...okay, short version of what I had decided to write:
From what I can piece together from the various news accounts, it sounds like Summers was giving a stock Econ 101 lecture on the topic of discrimination. Such a lecture, as with many things in Econ 101, isn't meant to bring students to the current cutting edge of thought on a topic, and nor is it designed to provide them with any conclusions on the subject. Instead, it's to provide an introduction to how economists think about approaching the subject, providing simple theoretical frameworks into which some empirical factoids can be fit.
But, Summers wasn't lecturing a bunch of 18 year old freshman.