Harvard President Claudine Gay has had a few bad months due to her horrible appearance before Congress, inability to condemn antisemitism, and plagiarism allegations.
The scandals have led to calls for resignation or firing, but the Harvard Corporation, the school’s governing board, stands behind her.
A source told Jewish Insider that former President Barack Obama has something to do with Gay keeping her position:
According to a source familiar with the matter, Obama, a Harvard graduate, had privately lobbied on Gay’s behalf as she faced pressure to resign in the wake of her disastrous appearance before the congressional hearing on antisemitism. “It sounded like people were being asked to close ranks to keep the broader administration stable — including its composition,” the source, who was informed of Obama’s outreach and asked to speak anonymously to discuss a confidential matter, told JI on Tuesday.Obama’s office did not respond to a request for comment from JI.
It is not hard to connect the dots. Obama graduated from Harvard. Penny Pritzker, Obama’s commerce secretary in his second term, is a senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation. She became a senior fellow after she donated $100 million.
(Yes, Pritzker is the sister of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.)
The senior fellow position put Pritzker in charge of the committee that searched for Harvard’s new president. The committee chose Gay last December.
Pritzker signed the letter with the board members, reiterating their confidence in Gay.
However, Pritzker has not spoken out for or against Gay, ignoring the school newspaper.
The silence has concerned people since Pritzker is an outspoken supporter of Israel. Brother J.B. became one of Obama’s first supporters, “persuading Jewish and pro-Israel donors to support his first presidential campaign, despite skepticism over his approach to Middle East policy.”
More from Jewish Insider:
“This is a full-blown corporate governance crisis for Harvard University and the fellows of the Harvard Corporation,” Benjamin Badejo, an MBA candidate at Tel Aviv University who studied at Harvard Law School and is a vocal critic of Gay and Pritzker, said in a recent email to JI, “and raises questions about the fellows’ ability to carry out their professional responsibilities.”—While [Founder and president of Harvard Chabad Hirschy] Zarchi clarified that he had not spoken with Pritzker, he speculated that she has been cautious in recent weeks because of what he described as a preemptively defensive posture he has observed among other Jewish leaders at Harvard. “Jews in power go to an extreme degree to show that they’re neutral, lest they be accused of showing favoritism,” he told JI last week. “It’s another reflection of the toxic culture in the academy that people can’t speak their conscience.”Still, critics see other calculations at play. In his email to JI, Badejo, the Harvard Law School alumnus, claimed that Pritzker and her fellow board members on the Harvard Corporation “arguably have conflicts of interest regarding Gay’s continued tenure as president, as managing the public’s awareness of their potential failures to do proper diligence” could potentially “impact their own continued tenures.”
This story has become more interesting after The New York Post revealed that Harvard did not investigate Gay’s alleged plagiarism until after the news paper reached out about the allegations brought to it by an anonymous source.
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