Claudine Gay “was the DEI president and that is the deeper problem that I don’t think” Harvard is “ready yet to confront”
“She was a symptom of a deeper problem at Harvard and many other elite schools…, which is that they have embraced a racialization of education under the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It is poisonous throughout the system. It takes away from merit, it takes away from advancement of all people equally without regard to race. And she was a big advocate of that.”
Harvard President Claudine Gay has announced her resignation after a disatrous performance in Congress on campus antisemitism problems and revelations of repeated plagiarism. The CRT-left is fuming with rage, claimaing Gay was a victim of racism.
As I pointed out after hearing of her resignation, Rearranging Chairs On The Sinking Academic Ship – Claudine Gay Is Gone, But The DEI Problems Remain:
The resignation of Claudine Gay and Liz Magill, however, do not end Harvard’s, U. Penn’s, or academia’s underlying problem of an excessive and obsessive focus on race and ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ ideology that is gutting academia. Rearranging administrative chairs on a sinking ship is not the answer.
Havard and other Ivy League schools need to jettison not just their Presidents, but the DEI industrial complex that has captured the schools, leading to increased antisemitism, decreased or eliminated academic standards, and conflict.
I had a chance to expand on this theme in an interview with Kevin Hogan this morning on NTD TV (an affiliate of The Epoch Times), Harvard President’s Resignation ‘Symptom of a Deeper Problem’ in Ivy League Schools, Expert Says:
After weeks of criticism related to her comments regarding on-campus anti-Semitism and allegations of plagiarism in her scientific work, Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned on Jan. 2.
For an in-depth discussion on Ms. Gay’s resignation, NTD heard from William Jacobson, a Cornell Law School Professor and the founder of The Equal Protection Project.
He said it may not be easy for Harvard University to rebuild its reputation given the nature of the allegations made against its president.
“It’s very difficult, because she was not the problem,” said Mr. Jacobson. “She was a symptom of a deeper problem at Harvard and many other elite schools, particularly in the Ivy League, which is that they have embraced a racialization of education under the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“It is poisonous throughout the system. It takes away from merit, it takes away from advancement of all people equally without regard to race.”
TRANSCRIPT (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors)
Hogan (00:00): And for an in-depth discussion on Claudine Gay’s resignation, we hear from William Jacobson, a Cornell law professor, and the founder of equal protect.org. Bill, thanks for coming on the show this morning.
WAJ (00:10): Thank you for having me.
Hogan (00:12): We’ve got a lot to unpack here. We have plagiarism allegations against Gay and also after national backlash. That’s when she distanced herself from that group saying that it was all Israel’s fault, the violence and condemned Hamas. And then it was a heated testimony that caused her to apologize after her remarks on combating antisemitism. Was all that too little, too late and that’s why she resigned?
WAJ (00:34): I think it was all of that, but it was also the plagiarism accusations, which were very substantial despite what Harvard says. They were not trivial. And when you have the head of an academic organization, probably the most prestigious in the world, who has credibility problems for her own academics, I think that’s a problem. So I think it was a combination. I don’t think if it was just the antisemitism issue, that she would be gone. I think it was a combination of both.
Hogan (01:02): That is really interesting. You point that out. So what does Harvard have to do now to rebuild its public image?
WAJ (01:08): It’s very difficult because she was not the problem. She was a symptom of a deeper problem at Harvard and many other elite schools, particularly in the Ivy League, which is that they have embraced a racialization of education under the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. And it is poisonous throughout the system. It takes away from merit. It takes away from advancement of all people equally without regard to race. And she was a big advocate of that. She was the DEI president and that is the deeper problem that I don’t think Harvard or any of the other schools are ready yet to confront.
Hogan (01:48): Can you explain the selection process for a school’s president and how it led to a situation like this?
WAJ (01:54): It’s really baffling how she became the president of Harvard University. She was not an esteemed scholar. She was not a notable person. Nobody really outside maybe of their little circle had ever heard of her. So it’s really baffling. And I think that lended itself to issues with regard to her credibility. When her scholarship, her paltry scholarship, was called into question. The question became why was she picked? And Harvard’s never given an answer for that. But it wasn’t based on her prior performance or her reputation or her standing in the academic community. And that’s the problem. They selected her for other reasons, and hopefully they will select the next person based on their merit and their credibility and their reputation in the community and not other factors.
Hogan (02:43): Right. And Gay said that she was the victim of a racist attack surrounding her resignation here. In your view, does that have anything to do with it?
WAJ (02:52): I don’t think so. I mean, the Internet’s a nasty place. We all know that. And I have no doubt that foul and offensive things were probably sent her way as they are to many people who were public figures in this day and age of the internet. But that’s not why she had to resign.
She had to resign because of her poor job performance and her inability to communicate, and the fact that she’d become a punchline, a laughing stock. There were all sorts of memes floating around about her plagiarism. So she had lost her credibility. Much like Liz McGill at University of Pennsylvania, although not accused of plagiarism, lost her credibility.
So you have two presidents, one white, one black, who were both pressured out of office. I don’t see how you can claim that Claudine Gay was pressured out of office because of her race.
Hogan (03:44): Was the questioning by representative Elise Stefanik effective in holding accountable the heads of universities who had a questionable response after the October 7th terrorist attacks?
WAJ (03:54): I think it was really an incredible start,it really put a big spotlight on what’s happening on campuses. It can’t be the end of the accountability, but it was the beginning. And I think Elise Stefanik and other members of that committee deserve a lot of praise for putting a spotlight on an issue that those of us on campuses know exists, but really hasn’t been covered by the media and the general public doesn’t know, but they do now. So it was a great first step.
Hogan (04:24): And just in a few seconds here, Bill, do you think that Sally Kornbluth, with the president of MIT, is now really questioning what she should do at this stage?
WAJ (04:34): It doesn’t look that way. She immediately got full backing of the board at MIT. She has been out of sight, out of mind for the most part. Whether she will come back into sight and mind, I don’t know, but whoever gave her advice to just disappear essentially from the public airwaves and to disappear from public view, probably gave her very good advice. So I don’t know what’s going to happen with her, but she certainly didn’t make the sort of mistakes that the presidents of U Penn and Harvard made
Hogan (05:07): Law professor at Cornell. William Jacobson, thank you so much for your time on this.
WAJ (05:11): Thank you.
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Comments
This is the 13%, terrifying
Our culture is completely gone
No one is coming to help us
Prepare
https://youtu.be/H4sWD3T3oNw?si=PXKDH5Qv92ev6DHR
The DEI Movement at our colleges and universities is like syphilis in the human body. When the chancre sores (people like Claudine Gay) go away, some people mistakenly believe they’re cured of syphilis, but nope, you still have the disease and the long-term consequences are dire. Harvard needs to rid itself of hundreds, if not thousands, of faculty and administrators to fix itself.
I think of DIE more of a tuberculosis type disease; highly infectious and takes forever to cure.
Of course, there is the new incurable version of TB coming in with illegals…..
Why did Gay plagiarize her DEI research papers?
Because she was too lazy to make up her own lies.
Meanwhile, Charles Blow of the NYT says she is being persecuted.
https://archive.is/Y7zX0
I propose that every tenured professor in the Ivy League be subjected to an examination of the research and publishing history. No university would open that can of worms but I suspect many would fail the scrutiny jyst like Claudine Gay has.
More fertile ground — look into the “data” they claim supports their “findings.”
Especially in the “soft” sciences, it’s stupid easy to just make stuff up, and as long as you reach the “right” conclusions nobody usually checks up on you. (See, e.g., Michael Bellesiles; see also various journals’ publication of invented garbage Sokol baited them with.)
The machine is already trying to find ways to excuse Gay’s plagiarism and that of people like her. (Coming soon: “rules against plagiarism are racist and thus are no big deal”). But data fabrication is an unforgiveable sin in academia — no way they can excuse that and have any credibility.
IMO, that’s what caused Gay to step down. *Very* serious questions about her alleged “data” (which she bizarrely refuses to share/produce) have been around for years, and her ability to keep a lid on them is gone (Congress would have been all over that issue in any new hearing). She knew if it came out that she fabricated her data, she’d suffer the same fate as Michael Bellesiles (drummed out of academia, and at last report was working as a bartender).
I predict the next Harvard president will be a minority. I’d bet the farm it won’t be a white male. I’d bet two farms it won’t be a Christian, conservative white male.
I’ll see your two farms and raise you a Montana cattle ranch that it won’t be a Jewish, white male with he/him/his pronouns.
Well, the acting President (current Provost) is a straight (married, 4 kids), white, Jewish physician and economist (with over 100 peer-reviewed publications listed in his CV). IOW, he actually is a serious scholar and academic.
So of course the left is already trying to claim he’s a Zionist plant and that the sky is falling.
Much of the problem across universities is the very existence of so many joke departments, staffed by poser morons who shouldn’t be anything more intellectually challenging than mopping the floors. The only reason that these departments exist and have faculty is because so much “free” federal money (guarantees, before BarkyCare) is flooding the schools. Schools can make up these joke departments and it doesn’t matter, the Uncle Sam tuition money keeps rolling in. So the schools are actually incentivized to create worse and worse departments to take in worse and worse “students”. When I was doing my undergrad I had to take some courses from these junk departments to fill out my requirements. I took some sociology, which is where I first ran into self-proclaimed marxists (when I didn’t think such idiots even existed any more) and was forced to read papers by these idiots. It was complete drivel. At the time I just laughed at them. I forgot about all that until 2008, when Barky started campaigning and I immediately recognized so much of the retarded marxist trash I had been forced to read, coming out of his mouth, verbatim – which how most of the marxist idiots do things. Most of them are too dumb to understand the reasoning behind arguments so they just learn scripted arguments phonetically. Barky was an obvious case of this.
At least half of the non-science university positions are jokes that have no business in any academic setting. Claudine Gay came from one such department and is, herself, a perfect example of someone in academia who has no business being there. She knows nothing. Nothing of value, at least.
The fact that Claudine Gay was the President of Harvard was not the problem. The fact that she was ever at Harvard, for anything, was the problem. Her “scholarship” – and those who make pretend it is any way scholarly – is the problem.
None of this is new. This was all known for decades and illustrated best in the Sokal Affair.
Indeed. The problem is perpetuated with government money. I would say more than half the faculty is infected, since they have instituted direct “diversity statement” filters.
The kids are maleducated and the country/Constitution is undermined.
I admire the good professor. He has the temperament to go against the majority of his own religion while carefully avoiding stating the obvious truth. Such men are needed at this stage.
Claudine Gay published an op-ed in the NYT while employing the Animal House Defense.
“As I depart, I must offer a few words of warning. 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.”
Where have we heard something like this before?
I know.
“The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with duplicative and unattributed language—we did.”
“But you can’t hold a whole university and its president responsible for the behavior of a few, sick perverted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole [university] system? And if the whole [university] system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general?”
“I put it to you, Greg: isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do what you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.”
“Because she was too lazy to make up her own lies.”
*****
That may have been the final push for her resignation. People were looking hard at her “research” data. She refused to provide her data for review and the strong suspicion is that some/all of it was fabricated. If proven, that would be on an entirely different level of misconduct than “just” plagiarism.
I bet she didn’t steal from Mike, er, Michelle Obama’s senior thesis at Princeton…
DEI: ‘Content of character VS color of skin’ as a lie. It’s been weaponized against our society. Until this weapon can be neutralized, stop elevating Negroes to positions of authority.
Follow the $$$. Who benefits? Three years ago, domestic terrorists rampaged thru our cities murderering dozens and destroying billions in property. Politicos knelt in fealty to these terrorists; painted their execrable logo on public streets paid for with our tax dollars; flew their conquering flag on public buildings; and now laugh in our faces as their anti-white proxies take a dump in once hallowed institutions. We are at war. Prepare accordingly.
But wait. There’s more. Reinforcements of military age men are invading by the thousands thru our southern border with their blessing. They’ll make BLM seem like boy scouts in comparison.
We’re being conquered, but most are too comfortable with sports ball and MUH economy to even care.
I know I’m persona non grata in this forum for saying this, but I’ll keep sounding the alarm. DEI: ‘Content of character VS color of skin’ as a lie. It’s been weaponized against our society. Until this weapon can be neutralized, stop elevating Negroes to positions of authority.
We are at war. Prepare accordingly.
This is my TED Talk. Thank you.
Equality rejects racism; “equity” embraces/requires it.
MLK Jr. has been kicked to the curb and replaced by “saint” George Floyd.
How could claudine gay get her phd at harvard, and become professor at harvard, without anybody at harvard being aware of the “quality of her work”?
Its inconceivable that nobody at harvard was aware. Harvard is completely corrupted to advance her to the top as president. There is no other conclusion.
Harvard must be destroyed and rebuilt.
They do have a credible defense:
No one ever reads those stupid poli-sci/sociology papers. Everyone knows that they are low-grade nonsensicle essays. The only thing they care about with the doctoral theses, particularly, is that all the margins are correct and the correct fonts are used so the paper can be properly entered into the school’s abyss of
fecestheses. They are more decorative than anything … in the modern art/brutalist sort of vein. As to journal papers … for any individual paper you could not find more than three people who have read it all the way through. They usually measure the value of those papers by page count (although many in the department cannot really count that high so there are lots of “infinity” papers floating around).That may be true for many “academic” papers, but a PhD still requires a verbal defense before a committee. Her committee gave her a pass because she is a black woman. They certainly didn’t spend any time doing their due diligence to dissect her work and truly evaluate whether or not it justifies having a terminal degree awarded.
The dissertation committee probably fielded softball questions like the fawning liberal media.
So tell us, Claudia, what’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? LOL!!
Probably using the same metrics that allowed Elizabeth “Fauxcohontas” Warren to claim American Indian ancestry.
Seems to me that what’s needed is a Reformation.
Not of the Church; rather of Education.
And it can be done.
Let them have their silly old rotted archaic decayed institutions. I’m serious.
Those who value talent and intelligence and merit can form co-ops and associations and partnerships. And internships and apprenticeships. Especially internships and apprenticeships.
This CAN be done — the money is there, the interest is there, and now the awareness of the need is there.
In a few years, people will wonder why in heaven’s name anybody did things the way we do them now.
Like top hats, platform shoes , and afros.
I agree with you and the first two steps are the revocation of the post-secondary non-profit tax-exempt status and the termination of the tenure appointment systems.
As the illustrious and comical Tommy Boy once said, “That’s gonna’ leave a mark.”
The way to fix this crap is to get the government out of financing higher education. Tell all colleges that they have to lend the students money for their education. And make the colleges responsible for collecting said loan payments. How many loans will go toward silly non-financial viability degrees? None! With no more bs degrees there will be a major downsizing of administrative and faculty positions. Frees up many more people to man the espresso machines. FJB
And then pass legislation mandating a 5% cap on administrative salaries or alternatively a sensible ratio of full time faculty to admin positions. Univ would be free to ignore this but would no longer be eligible for Federal funds as an institution without compliance.
Good article in American Thinker on the Harvard scandal..
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/dei_can_only_exist_in_a_noncompetitive_environment.html
“The most significant “A-ha!” moment from le affair Gay is that DEI only “works” in noncompetitive environments such as government and academia. The principles of “diversity” and “equity” implicitly assume that entities and organizations will continue along their current trajectory regardless of who’s in charge. DEI discounts merit, ability, and leadership and assumes as a matter of ideological gospel that “diversity” will more than make up for their loss.
And although this might be true in glacial bureaucracies at Harvard University, the U.S. Department of Education, or Los Angeles City Hall where funding rolls in at the start of every fiscal year and there is virtually no accountability for poor performance, DEI cannot survive in competitive environments where outcomes truly matter.”
Somebody somewhere anywhere somehow needs to be asked how DEI ever improved anything.
I’m willing to examine evidence — calmly, thoughtfully, with an open mind.
In the meantime, does harvard select the rowers on its crew teams using dei?
Or its chess club membership?
Or its debate club?
Does Harvard use dei when hiring campus security?
Now that professor gay will probably have some extra time in her schedule, maybe she could be encouraged to start a database? of all the work settings in Massachusetts that benefitted from Harvard-like dei policies.
“Now that professor gay will probably have some extra time in her schedule, maybe she could be encouraged to start a database? of all the work settings in Massachusetts that benefitted from Harvard-like dei policies.”
That sounds like the kind of job you don’t even have to show at work to get paid for!
You could turn in a blank piece of paper and the database would be complete.
Harvard alum and billionaire Ackman posted a brilliant, incredible piece on X at 2:03 am. If you can find it, read it. Absolutely brilliant.
It’s MORE than just simple “racialization”, it’s radicalization of academia. I am shocked, more than shocked, that antisemitism is unabated, if not encouraged on campus. And DEI is part of that larger problem with radicalization. So many “educated” people were so quick in their attacks against Israel and Jews in general, and/or so quick in their support of hamas, that it boggles the mind. Not even a day after the attacks were there academic elitists rationalizing the attacks. Sick.
Based only for n the almost instantaneous spread of george Floyd-inspired b l m democracy narrations around the world .. ya have to conclude that intelligence agencies around the world communicate quite quickly via internet — to coordinate strategy, talking points, etc.
Imho the 10/7 attackers knew that there would be a response—and they have, and had, their international allies available , ready to take orders, etc.
This isn’t complicated stuff
Everyone has instantaneous communication via internet, the world over.
The reason that you know that it’s preplanned and not “organic” is that the IDF hadn’t even figured out yet what to do or how to respond and yet the shouting and the marching was all over the campuses and on tv — whining moaning gnashing teeth.
Almost really like a monty python sketch.
So claudine gay gets lifetime employment guarantee at $900k per year, and gets to break all the rules, because she is non-white female?
Harvard is woke joke.
I’m astounded the Harvard Corporation did that. They still don’t get it!!
It’s one thing to terminate her, pay her severance, and make her go away. It’s another thing to keep a serial plagiarizer as a tenured professor. That sends a message that plagiarizing is accepted, as least if you are a black woman.
So yes, Harvard is a woke joke. Mediocrity, thy name is Harvard.
Worse, it instuttionalizes the reasons for the soft bigotry against
Affirmative Action</strike DEI hiresJust how does Harvard keep Gay on as a professor shown to be a plagiarizer ?
If anything, it should be a even more disqualifying feature for a professor.
Under DEI plagiarism is not a crime. Embarrassing the institution, however, by getting caught publicly is still a crime.
Notice they did not fire her for an inadequate response to antisemitism. Plagiarism was a cover story to change the topic.
Gay was picked for the agenda she carried, and for her obvious incompetence otherwise. She was pretty much manufactured, an ersatz of a leader, provisioned with a poisonous payload.
It’s messaging.: This is what matters. They aren’t trying to hijack the institutions on the sly; they’re showing you that they can, and you can’t stop it. Gay’s prior assassinations while in earlier Harvard admin, were similarly messaging pours encourage les autres. Play along or you’re next.
There’s some pithy riff to be developed along the lines of Indispensable Iowahawk’s “Identify a trusted institution…” Something like:
Identify an effective institution
Infiltrate it by counterfeit “same as”
Hijack it with what you carry
Leave its look on the outside, while manufacturing more hijack-bots with the captured machinery.
These people are manufactured pseudo-virus particles. It doesn’t matter if the target, or the pathogen survives. Success is propagating the process.
Presidents of universities resigning is the tip of the woke iceberg and enterprise that needs to be eradicated from our universities
I love it that multi-billionaire Bill Ackman has gone on the warfare against MIT. He says he will be turning his guns on Harvard and Yale.
At some point, those schools will sue for peace.
What should Ackman demand?
Resignation of entire board of directors.
Dismissal, including loss of all pensions, of university presidents responsible for the debacle before Congress.
At Harvard, dismissal without pensions of all 700 or so faculty who supported genocide. Ditto Penn and MIT.
At all three schools, dismissal of all students identified who marched for genocide, or who have partaken in activities that threaten Jewish students, keep them in their dorm rooms, or locked in libraries or other somewhat-safe spaces. Their transcripts must be marked, “Supported Genocide” in big black letters.
Yes, that price is too high and they’ll never pay it. Instead, they’ll pay an even bigger price, with the loss of reputation, and the departure of distinguished professors who don’t want to be identified in the same university as those who participated in those things.