I’ve always liked smart girls. My first girlfriend was Kathy Becker, in the second grade. She always knew the answers to the baffling math problems scribbled on the classroom chalkboard. I showed her my affection once by kissing her on the back (made sense at the time) and giving her a dollar. After that, it was all about girls with brains for me.

I married a smart girl. She’s a Smith College graduate, class of 1967. I recently accompanied my wife to her 50th class reunion, a joyful and inspiring affair. I was one of a handful of supportive husbands attending, and we male warriors locked eyes in silent solidarity as we shared meals and passed each other on campus.

Smith is a beautiful college campus, designed by the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. And Northampton, the college’s hometown, is a fun, funky, foodie place – a perfect combination of erudition, tradition and location.

This was my fourth Smith reunion, and my biggest challenge has always been negotiating the bathroom/shower situation in the residence halls where we stayed, prompting me to sneak into the shower room at 5 a.m. to reduce the chances of confronting a screaming, naked septuagenarian of the opposite sex. I did run into a wet-haired, towel-covered woman who had locked herself out of her room. Suffice to say, she was not happy to see me. But for the most part, the Smithies are more than tolerant of my presence.

I come to these events knowing that I’m pretty much an accessory, a second banana, an on-call helper. But I did get a compliment this trip while carrying my wife’s purse: “That’s a good look for you!” a smiling Smithie informed me.

Smith recently completed the largest and most successful fundraising campaign of a women’s college, raising nearly half a billion dollars in five years.

The Women for the World campaign supports Smith’s mission to educate woman who will change the world – like Katherine Johnson in “Hidden Figures,” a wonderful film about groundbreaking black female “computers” in the early days of NASA. She tells a male suitor that NASA has jobs for women, and it’s not because they wear skirts: “It’s because we wear glasses.”

In our most recent presidential campaign, there were legitimate reasons not to like Hillary Clinton, but I strongly suspect one of the illegitimate reasons for not voting for her was that she was a smart girl. Smart girls in this culture make some men uncomfortable, and even angry. So instead, we elected a not-so-smart man-child misogynist.

We call ourselves Homo sapiens (“wise man”), but history suggests we are misnamed. Men have been screwing up the world for millennia. Maybe it’s time to give smart girls their chance to make the world better. For all of us.

The reunion’s the was Becoming Women, Becoming Wise. It’s not only about women getting a good education, it’s about women’s instinctual wisdom – maternal, protective, caring and cooperative. What the world needs now.

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