Foot in mouth disease
A post from The American Prospect reports on a verbal blunder made by one of the New York Times Book Review’s editors, Barry Gewen, at a lecture he gave recently. Gewen, who was introduced by Harvard’s first female president-elect, Drew G. Faust, reasoned that the NYTBR uses few female reviewers because “they just can’t write for a general audience about such topics as military history.” Faust is one of the few who made the cut; she has published 14 pieces in the review. Gewen later called his comments a “Larry Summers moment.” When speaking of NYTBR’s recruitment practices he admitted that his staff needs to expand their hiring pool, but said that he felt uncomfortable merely hiring a person because of their ethnicity.
