The Claudine Gay Controversy Damages Harvard’s Reputation

What must you do to fail at Harvard?

It used to be pretty clear.

You had to be caught cheating.

Or doing something so outrageous that it’d get you chucked off campus.

Not anymore.

Today Harvard is an institution that thinks that antisemitism is OK and believes that plagiarism is fine.

Not long ago a student would have been kicked out for either of these sins.

Today the President has been caught out on both.

And the board of the university stuck by her.

Even when she decided to step down this week both she and her supporters went into full-on “victimhood mode.”

Nothing was her fault.

In a bitter farewell piece, Gay said she was the victim of a “demagogues” who had “weaponized” her presidency to “undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence and truth.”

If those are the animating ideals of Harvard then they are ones that Gay herself trampled all over. With her lack of academic distinction, her total lack of scholarship, her plagiarism and self-pity.

Gay has published no books, written only 11 articles (most of which turn out to have been plagiarized) but still she was appointed President of Harvard.

As the Somali-born author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali told me in an interview this week, “My grandmother wouldn’t have trusted Claudine Gay to herd her goats.”

Unlike Hirsi Ali, Gay comes from a privileged background, and she will continue her privileged lifestyle.

It emerged this week that although Gay has left the presidency, she is going to stay on at Harvard as a lecturer.

On a salary of an extraordinary $900,000 a year.

Who knew lecturers were so well paid?

Almost a million dollars a year for being a lecturer!

Everyone else in America must be wondering where it went so wrong for the rest of us.

Still, in Gay’s sorry rise and blaming-everyone-but-herself fall there are lessons to be learned.

“Don’t cheat” should be one for her.

But for everyone else it should be the realization that the playbook of the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity crowd is now out in plain, fetid sight.

Because Gay and her defenders are not done yet.

All week they have continued to pretend that her resignation is the result of unfair attacks from “racists” and “the right.”

Take another Gay: Mara Gay of the New York Times.

She said yesterday that Claudine Gay’s resignation was “really an attack on academic freedom. An attack on diversity” and “an attack on multiculturalism.”

The NYT writer went on “I don’t have to say that they’re racist, because you can hear and see the racism in the attacks.”

Actually, you can hear and see no such thing.

Though here are some things you can see.

People who have spent their lives assaulting academic freedom now complaining that there is an assault on academic freedom.

People who have been caught being racist now complaining about racism.

People who got where they got to on everything except merit now complaining that there is an assault on merit.

People who judge other people on their race falsely claiming falsely other people are judging them that way.

The truth is that you can have these things one way, but not every which way.

Supporters of Gay need to realize that a person with so little academic expertise should never have been expected to lead an institution of academic excellence.

They need to realize that a university (Harvard) which was last year found to have 2.5% of the faculty willing to admit to being “conservative” and 0.4% willing to admit to being “very conservative” is not a place of intellectual freedom.

But they are such hypocrites.

These defenders of Gay dare to talk about academic freedom when Harvard just ranked dead last among all American universities in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression´s “2024 College Free Speech Rankings.”

Indeed Harvard came in at number 248 in that list with a 0.00 overall score, Harvard under Claudine Gay was rated as having an “abysmal” climate for free speech.

[…]

Does Ukraine need a deal?

This week there have been further major rocket and drone attacks on the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

More than 500 missiles and drones were fired against Ukraine in just five days.

The largest Russian bombardment of Ukraine since the war began.

Among other responses to this, Ukraine sent missiles into the Russian border city of Belgorod with dozens dead and over a hundred people injured.

It is a reminder that although the world’s attention is elsewhere (not least navel-gazing) the bitter Russia-Ukraine war grinds on.

I have always thought that support for Ukraine is obvious.

[…]