What? I'm having trouble finding a reference. I know the story that she faced discrimination and Hilbert vouched for her, but that was in Germany. I didn't know there was any from Caltech.
Why is it assumed that we have to rag on people? If we are ragging on people, what standards are we using? Obviously it's still ok to get artificial help to the top if you're in some groups, but not in others. That means it's ok to be discriminated against if you're in some groups, too.
Speaking of Caltech, female applicants have 3x the chance of getting into Caltech as male applicants[0]. It's almost certain that qualified males aren't getting in because they're males. That was the problem with Emmy Noether: she was qualified but couldn't get in because she was female. If the discrimination right now is against the males, why are we talking about Emmy Noether being forced to audit classes in 1903 on the other side of the world?
If we assume "equality" in the groups of male and female students applying to Caltech for 2016-2017, meaning they both should have the same acceptance rate, then 134 seats were taken from the guys because they're guys and given to the girls because they're girls. Maybe you can argue the girls only apply if they're really serious, but 3x?
[0] - https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-178-Caltech.html...
edit: here's a better data source: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=caltech&s=CA&l=93&id...
It shows 3x admissions advantage for females with over 2x enrollment advantage. Everybody's saying they don't do affirmative action but it's hard to believe at least for gender. But the racial demographics are extremely different from Harvard's so maybe the female applicant pool really is 2x as likely to be qualified. I need more data.