Rearranging Chairs On The Sinking Academic Ship – Claudine Gay Is Gone, But The DEI Problems Remain
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.
Claudine Gay had no choice but to resign, she had lost all credibility and was damaging Harvard’s brand. She would have presided over a zombie presidency.
I previously wrote that I thought it would be better for the country if she stayed in the position, to keep the focus on the DEI ideological rot that lifted her into the presidency and which she championed, It’s important to Harvard that its brand survive Claudine Gay. It’s important to America that it doesn’t.
I don’t care about the “Harvard” brand, which signifies the smugness, classism, and elitism that makes me want to puke. It’s not just the Harvard brand under pressure, most of the ‘elite’ colleges and universities, particularly the Ivy League, are damaged by their reactions to Hamas’ October 7 massacre. How bad the damage is and how long it lasts remains to be seen, but it’s not a bad thing if it is deserved – and in most cases it is.
Academia has been corrupted and hollowed out by the rot caused by the DEI agenda, which elevates group identity over the individual, and skin color and physical appearance over merit. It’s also a part of why “The anti-American activists are the anti-Capitalist activists are the anti-Israel activists”.
The corruption and rot caused by DEI is on full display, and Claudine Gay has become its poster child. While on substance she should be gone, having her stay in place serves the function of keeping the focus on the DEI farce. The Harvard brand may have to fall so that a better academia can rise.
It’s important to Harvard that its brand survive Claudine Gay. It’s important to American that it doesn’t.
Now she’s gone, and Harvard and academia will try to claim the problem is over. In fact, they’ll claim there never was a problem, she was singled out because she is a black woman. That U. Penn squeezed out Liz Magill, they’ll claim, may not be racism but because she’s a woman.
This will be turned around into a racism and misogyny problem. It’s already happening.
Lost in this identity shuffle is what lit the fuse for these women, their tolerance of antisemitism to placate the unruly mobs running wild on campus in the name of social and racial justice.
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.
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Comments
The cat is out of the bag, owing to these clueless women more than anything. It’s now up to people to force change, not the clueless.
Imagine the privilege of allowing her to retain her almost $800 K compensation. Not a good start to reform.
Qatar gives millions and millions to Hamas.
Qatar gives millions and millions to Harvard.
Qatar will continue to give millions and millions to Hamas.
Hamas will continue to give millions and millions to Harvard.
To OldSchool:
Sorry
Wasn’t intended as a reply to your post
But don’t worry. Al Sharpton is planning a “Civil Rights” march in her honor because of those mean RACIST whiteys who “won’t stop toppling all Black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism. What these racist mobs are doing should be obvious to any reporter who cares about truth or justice as opposed to conflicts and clicks.” – Ibram X Kendi
If you want to get rid of DEI, post all lectures, classes and training seminars on line. The public deserves to know exactly what doctrine is being “taught”.
1) The Ivy League schools are captives of the Leftist Collective. They do not want to nor will they change. It is not confirmed, but I just heard that Gay will remain as a tenured professor at a hair under $900k a year according to Brit papers.
2) The Left and its subsidiaries are hard core anti-Semitic. Nothing will change except that we can be sure that any replacements will be protected classes.
3) Students of talent, intelligence, and integrity need to avoid the Ivy League for such time as things hold together lest they judged guilty by association. And employers should note the association and avoid Ivy League graduates and faculty.
Subotai Bahadur
Academia will not get fixed until the federal money for undergraduate students is completely stopped. ALL THE MONEY. And loan guarantees – which is how the feral government did it before BarkyCare engineered the feral government’s complete takeover of the student loan industry.
When the undergrad outside money dries up the colleges and universities will start to fix themselves up immediately – because many of them will be going out of business.
Oh … and no more tax-exempt status for any private college or university. Alumni and others can give their schools money without any tax breaks and the schools can take the money and pay taxes on the income like any other business.
Only when those two things happen (the federal money coming out, most of all) will schools begin to fix themselves or be fixed. Otherwise, the schools have absolutely no incentive to change anything.
DEI is cancer. It’s the reason schools changed admissions requirements to make SAT/ACT scores optional, any means necessary to increase diversity.
Poison Ivies. Faculty 90% leftie. No diversity of thought allowed.
She’s only resigning her post of president, right? Will she just backslide into her former cushy position as a member of the formerly esteemed Harvard faculty?
Seriously. I cannot see how that can possibly fly when her resignation as president does nothing to make her plagiarism albatross go away,
“the bonds of trust and reciprocity”???
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is that what passes for English at Hah-vahd?? It seems as if she just learned the word “reciprocity” and wanted to try and shove it in, somewhere, to show her smarts to the world.
I looked up that phrase and found a few references for it. Evidently, it’s some kind of catchphrase in the idiot world of sociology/poli-sci. The earliest cite I could find with it was some 1997 paper The Idea of Civil Society: Scholarship and Debate. by David Karp and William Sullivan. It seems to be some sort of mangling of Tocqueville. The phrase might have appeared earlier but this was the earliest instance I could find.
I had a feeling that that wasn’t her phrase – not that I am accusing her of plagiarizing. It seems that it’s a somewhat popular phrase in her joke field – I found a number of papers after that above reference that used the identical phrase.
Gay dictated this part while she was monopolizing the Xerox machine.
“scholarship” … LOL.
It’s not just Harvard. It’s all of what used to be called “learned professions.” All of them.
https://notthebee.com/article/this-med-student-compiled-graphs-showing-how-different-professions-have-shifted-far-left-over-the-past-decades-the-one-about-doctors-really-surprised-me-
It’ll take more than diverting a couple of rivers to clean up the Augean Stables of Academe.
She’s not gone. Now Harvard will have two presidents … the everyday president and the Sunday Go To Meeting president.
The motive force behind all of these twisted ideas originated with a few white men, but it was the complete feminization of society that made their adoption possible. Without female suffrage our society would be strong and wholesome. That is a fact which more perceptive women are beginning to see. But, like the equally obvious facts surrounding race, we all pretend blatant differences are merely superficial traits.
Why does the term “zombie presidency” sound so familiar?
And leftist…..?
They said the quiet part out loud and were held accountable (sort of – they’ll fail up to a higher paying job somewhere as Gay already has). All this means is that they’ll get better at hiding behind weasel words, for a while anyway. We’re getting closer to when these morons can speak the quiet part out loud without suffering repercussions, temporary or otherwise.
BTW, Gay is not gone! Legal Insurrection should agitate without interruption until she is forced out. She will continue at Harvard as a professor with the same base salary in excess of $850,000. This is unseemly. Harvard should have used its massive influence to install her in some wacky non-profit as the payoff. Instead, this deceitful plagiarist will continue to infect the campus, with a huge salary and a loony following. Do not stop covering her antics at least weekly. Keep the pressure on!
Yes, this seems to be nuts. Harvard needs to put on its’ big boy pants and act like an adult. But Harvard can install Krusty the Clown as their next president if they want. They can return to academic excellence by merit and achievement, or continue to go down the social justice route.
Keeping the serial plagiarist on staff in a demoted position sends the wrong message.
This PragerU interview with Peter Boghossian is excellent. He makes a good case that the university system is not salvageable.
Peter Boghossian Says We Should Burn the University System to the Ground
https://www.prageru.com/video/peter-boghossian-says-we-should-burn-the-university-system-to-the-ground
Harry Chapin, Dance Band on the Titanic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5le92UmPmU