Critics speculate Harvard president may have Asperger's syndrome, a condition that renders him socially autistic

Via OpinionJournal (no permalink so scroll down) which notes points to this letter in the Harvard Crimson by physician Michael Segal:

This speculation seems ironic since, according to a 1993 study by Ehlers and Gillberg, 80 percent of individuals diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome are male, and much scorn was heaped recently on Summers for mentioning that men are overrepresented among those with lowest and highest scores on various measures of abilities. It seems strange that it is fine to speculate on male disabilities but it is considered deplorable to ask whether there could be countervailing abilities more common in males.

It would appear Segal is the master of the understatement.

Meanwhile, the presidents of MIT, Princeton and Stanford want us to know: they're not Larry Summers. I assure you, I was under no such illusion. Larry, I'm sure, is thankful for his peers' helpful advice in his hour need.

Better advice. Posner's advice to college presidents speaking on sensitive subjects:

So the benefit of Summers’s speaking out was small. The cost would have been small, too—were he not the highly visible president of the nation’s most famous university. For as a practical matter, chief executive officers do not enjoy freedom of speech. A CEO is the fiduciary of his organization, and his duty is to speak publicly only in ways that are helpful to the organization. Not that he should lie; but he must avoid discussing matters as to which his honestly stated views would harm the organization.

By the way, in the unlikely event that the diagnosis is accurate it would put Summers in very good company.

Update: Back on January 20, before the Asperger's kerfuffle, Norman102, a commenter at Plastic had this to say in relation to the kerfuffle which started it all:

Increased relational thinking in the feminized brain (not limited to genetic females by the way) is an interesting theory and likely has some credence. After all, to some degree we seem to observe something of this cross culturally and historically. However, I'm not sure this would automatically apply to non-social skill sets such as mathematics. Abstract "relational" thinking isn't necessarily crosslinked with social skill relational thinking. There is even some evidence (from a somewhat unrelated source — Asperger syndrome) increased mathematical skills are contra-referenced with social skill sets.