Imagine if over this past Columbus Day weekend then-Harvard president Claudine Gay had issued a statement along these lines:
The killing and kidnapping of hundreds of innocent civilians by Hamas in Israel on Saturday, October 7 horrifies me. I condemn it.
Harvard has many people with close ties to both sides of the conflict between Gaza and Israel. I acknowledge the pain and the continuing injustice that many people in that region live with.
But killing civilians is never justified. It is not an act of war. It is an act of terror.
Harvard offers its support and services to all members of our community affected by this terrible attack.
Such a statement would not have satisfied everyone.
But would anybody have mounted a campaign to remove Gay as president of Harvard?
The answer, of course, is no – which puts the lie to the current left-wing narrative that the vast right-wing conspiracy ganged up on Gay because she is a black woman.
Before Harvard’s slow-motion Hamas disaster, Claudine Gay wasn’t a high-profile target in the social and cultural wars in the United States.
Most people in America don’t know who the president of Harvard is, and they don’t care, either.
Here’s your evidence: In January 2023 – almost a year ago – an academic web site floated the idea that Gay had committed plagiarism.
Did anybody with a public megaphone seize on it?
No.
Now, it’s clear that it’s true.
Christopher Rufo showed side-by-side images of the offended and offending passages on his Twitter account on December 10, 2023. A story in The Washington Free Beacon published December 11, 2023 describes multiple instances of “airlifting,” as the story puts it.
These aren’t forgot-to-put-the-footnote transgressions, but rather passing off as her own entire paragraphs of substance written by someone else.
So what took so long?
Not enough people cared about this plagiarism scandal until Gay created a much bigger one.
During her inauguration speech in September, Gay talked about “the importance of courage.” Then a terrible thing happened in Israel eight days later, and she took two days to draft an inadequate statement and get 17 other subordinate administrators to sign onto it.
Courage.
Even then, though, her tenure in office might not have been mortally wounded until a Congressional hearing in December when she uttered that memorable phrase about whether calling for genocide of Jews violates Harvard’s code of conduct: “It depends on the context.”
How is an already-bloated, ever-expanding university supposed to raise money off that?
A day after resigning on Tuesday, January 2, she was still offering deep thoughts.
Here’s an excerpt from her column in The New York Times:
“My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.”
Who did more to “undermine the ideals” she mentions?
Christopher Rufo … or Claudine Gay?
Excellence?
Claudine Gay was hired as president of Harvard University because she is a black woman. She avoided being fired as president of Harvard University for nearly three months after she messed up a two-foot putt because she is a black woman.
Openness?
Harvard can’t even keep Harvard Yard open any more.
Independence?
Harvard is about as independent from the federal government as a junkie is from his drug dealer.
Truth?
Well, for starters: The dominant philosophy at Harvard is relativism, which denies truth.
But let’s do a thought experiment, and assume for the sake of argument that truth exists.
The truth is, Claudine Gay during her time as a tenured full-time professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard (2008 to 2015, when she became an administrator) co-edited one book and wrote four academic journal articles, according to her curriculum vitae – some of those with uncredited co-authors.
From there it was dean of social science (2015-2018), dean of the faculty of arts and sciences (2018-2023), and then president of Harvard.
That’s a lot of non-achievement fueling a relatively quick climb up the supposedly greasy pole.
Here’s some more truth: Conservatives don’t care about your race. Heck, when it comes to university presidents, we don’t even care about your politics. We assume you’re a liberal, or even a leftist, and we can deal with that.
The problem comes when you oppress your students or faculty, when you try to force people to say things that aren’t true, when you impinge on religious freedom, when you demand others adhere to your cultish health practices, or when you fail to express decency and clarity amid a terrorist attack.
But that’s not how Gay presents it, of course. Gay’s career isn’t a casualty of her own behavior. She’s a martyr on the altar of diversity-equity-inclusion:
“It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution.”
Get a grip. Almost nobody has any “anxiety” about whoever’s leading Harvard.
But Gay isn’t just the 30th in a list of presidents of Harvard that nobody remembers. No, she’s a symbol of something much bigger:
“The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda.”
This is a laugh-out-loud series of sentences.
“… unravel public faith in pillars of American society”?
Who does that better than Harvard?
Patriotism, religion, order, decency – these are all enemies at the Big H.
“… education and expertise …”?
Harvard sows confusion. There’s no rhyme or reason to the things students are required to learn, because the people who run Harvard can’t agree on what’s important. It’s possible to get a good education at Harvard, but if you do, it’s sort of an accident.
“… see through propaganda”?
Harvard University is a font of propaganda.
Here’s some unsolicited advice for those looking for another “leader” of this much-self-praised institution.
Just about anyone can be president of Harvard if the person respects scholarship, respects people with varying points of view, manages giant egos with grace, has common sense, and cultivates donors.
It’s not easy. But those are the qualities needed.
Leave race, sex, identity, and left-wing loyalty oaths out of the search. See what you can find.
And offer a lot of money.
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