THE PRESIDENT of Harvard University is in trouble. Larry Summers, who used to be Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, is guilty of the worst offence possible at an East Coast liberal university. He has committed free thought, based on evidence. Mr Summers pointed out that few if any women reach world-class levels in the hard sciences. He went on to suggest that this might tell us something about the difference between male and female brains.

Poor Mr Summers: short of endorsing George Bush, he could not have said anything to make himself more unpopular. It is even possible that he may lose his job. If so, that would be a disgrace. If universities are not citadels of free speech and controversy, there is no point in their continued existence. Some of Mr Summers’s critics would like to turn Harvard into a madrassa of liberal bigotry. If they were to succeed, it should be closed down.

Mr Summers has made a powerful case. After a century of increasing female educational emancipation, women are running out of excuses for their failure to produce scientific geniuses. We know that they can do great novels. It may be that they cannot do great science.But this does not matter. Let us assume that the top 100 physicists and mathematicians will always be male. If so, so what? It tells us nothing about the educational attainment of the overwhelming majority of the human race, or about female success in other fields.

Margaret Thatcher studied science. Though she was good enough to be employed as a research chemist, no one has suggested that she might have won a Nobel prize. She had to make do with becoming one of the three or four most important statesmen in the civilised world during the 20th century.

To be fair to Mr Summers — poor fellow, he needs it — he is not suggesting that women should be discouraged from studying science. His opponents would have us believe that he would condemn all women to servile roles, such as interns in the Clinton White House. Not so. If any girl were to announce her intention of proving him wrong, he would applaud in encouragement.

A lot of Harvard academics would now like to treat him as the Inquisition treated Galileo. They are merely demonstrating that their brains — male, female or neuter — are unfit for intellectual activity of any sort.

They should be condemned to helping Bill Clinton with his cigars.