Sorry - posted ^^ accidentally before finishing.
Reminiscing a bit about Larry Summers . … . he certainly opened up a hornets nest with that comment about women’s aptitude for math and sciences. IIRC it was not a gratuitous statement but offered in the context of an NBER conference on the position of women in science. The result, of course, was outrage from all the women scientists in the room with a good number of them walking out, etc. If anyone was able to counter the research he provided, it wasn’t reported. Were his statements provocative? Absolutely. Were they appropriate to the setting? Absolutely - the conference (or at least his talk) was concerning the small numbers of women in STEM (at the time) and the audience consisted of academics and researchers - in other words, experts clearly capable of addressing and debating the issue objectively and without a head of steam. Instead, because his talk countered the prevailing viewpoint with conclusions that were, uh, not exactly “politically correct”, it was another nail in the coffin of his presidency. An interesting thought given that the subject is academic freedom.