A couple of weeks ago, Harvard president Larry Summers made waves with some remarks suggesting that the under-representation of women in certain fields at top universities may be attributable to “innate” differences between men and women. Summers has since defended himself in the press, and there’s been a lot of healthy commentary to the effect that Summers should be allowed to articulate unpopular ideas. Well, of course he should.

But whether Summers should be allowed to say such things is a different question from whether his remarks were well-considered. That’s why Meghan O’Rourke’s fine piece in Slate on the Larry Summers foofaraw is worth reading. Although not presented as such, it’s a pretty good response to William Saletan’s Slate piece on the same issue, which appeared several days earlier.

My own view is that of course there are general differences between men and women, not all of which can be reduced to cultural forces. (I’m talking about emotional and maybe cognitive differences, not the more obvious physical ones.) But none of these general differences tells us anything at all about what to expect from a particular individual. We assess people properly only when we assess them as individuals.

And it’s worth remembering that to an ant or to a Martian, or to a god whose perspective is sub specie aeternitatis, it’s likely that gender makes no difference at all.

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