A battle is brewing between two professors at Harvard University over whether male and female biological sex is rooted in science or merely a “social construct” like “gender identity” or “non-binary.”
Carol Hooven, lecturer and co-director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, was attacked by Lauren Simone Lewis for an interview on Fox News where she said teaching science requires telling students the facts about male and female biological sexes.
Teaching students scientific facts conflicts with the academic narrative that people can choose their gender and that using terms related to biological sex such as “pregnant woman” is offensive. Hoover said:
It’s incredibly confusing to people, first of all for science educators and for students who are trying to learn about the world and learn the tools of science and critical thinking. It’s very confusing when professors like me or lecturers like me, and even journalists and people in the mainstream media, start backing away from certain terms that they’re afraid people will find offensive.
And that fear is based on reality. People do find these terms offensive. They do complain on social media, they do shame people and even threatened to get people fired. So it’s no wonder that sort of people, a lot of people are sort of caving and yielding to this kind of social pressure, but we’re doing students and the public a huge disservice.
Lauren Simone Lewis, director of the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force at Harvard, slammed Hooven on social media without naming her until pushback on Twitter led to a second more conciliatory post:
As the Director of the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force for my dept @HarvardHEB, I am appalled and frustrated by the transphobic and harmful remarks made by a member of my dept in this interview with Fox and Friends: https://video.foxnews.com/v/6265580505001/…#medtwitter
I respect Carole as a colleague & scientist. But this dangerous language perpetuates a system of discrimination against non-cis people within the med system. It directly opposes our Task Force work that aims to create a safe space for scholars of ALL gender identities and sexes.
The back and forth began after Bari Weiss, former New York Times reporter, featured an article by Katie Herzog on the Substack platform, host of the podcast Block and Reported, about how teachers are afraid to present facts and students are not being educated about those facts.
The introduction to the lengthy article about the gender identity narrative, including the growing transgender movement, said, in part:
During a recent endocrinology course at a top medical school in the University of California system, a professor stopped mid-lecture to apologize for something he’d said at the beginning of class.
“I don’t want you to think that I am in any way trying to imply anything, and if you can summon some generosity to forgive me, I would really appreciate it,” the physician says in a recording provided by a student in the class. “Again, I’m very sorry for that. It was certainly not my intention to offend anyone. The worst thing that I can do as a human being is be offensive.”
His offense: using the term “pregnant women.”
“I said ‘when a woman is pregnant,’ which implies that only women can get pregnant and I most sincerely apologize to all of you,” the professor said.
“This is what it looks like when activism takes over medicine,” the subtitle of Herzog’s article said.
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