Gay's problems broke Harvard's curated culture

Whoever claims that somehow being Black is a pass to cheat, or steal someone else’s academic work, is selling lies.

Claudine Gay was no doubt qualified to be president of Harvard University. That job doesn’t require teaching a single class, or publishing a single paper. It’s a shame that in order to get to the place in the rarified clique to be selected for the job, she played the academic race game and cut many corners. I read somewhere that Harvard is really a curated culture, where the racial, social, and political makeup of its student body, faculty and administration is carefully engineered to exacting metrics, leaving little room for dissent or opposing opinion. Unfortunately, money is the same color for everyone, and the main job of Harvard’s president is to bring in the money. For that, Claudine Gay became school’s Titanic, and she had to go.

To say this is about race is to say that Harvard’s curated culture is a good and proper thing. This is what Joseph Rezek, who is an English professor at Boston University, posted, then deleted on X/Twitter, according to the Boston Globe.

“Terrifying and horrible what the right-wing mob did to Claudine Gay,” Rezek wrote on X in a post that was later deleted. “These words in her resignation letter are chosen carefully, she faced ‘personal attacks and threats’ — she doesn’t deserve any of this. It’s a dark day that will reverberate in our profession.”

The “right wing mob” includes such figures as Idan and Batia Ofer, second generation scions of the Israeli billionaire Ofer family, and they are hardly hard-right wingers. The Ofers resigned from their board membership with Harvard over Gay’s terrible lawyered response to Congressional questions regarding antisemitic speech.

Of course, Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is fully under the influence of the MAGA mind virus, crowed her delight at Gay’s resignation, posting the “resignation of Harvard’s antisemitic plagiarist president is long overdue. Claudine Gay’s morally bankrupt answers to my questions made history as the most viewed Congressional testimony in the history of the U.S. Congress…”

Stefanik was joined by the execrable Vivek Ramaswamy (both of them are Harvard graduates) in celebrating Gay’s departure. Both of these are worth the scorn of normal people who don’t drink the Kool-Aid of MAGA worship. But, again, those who value the curated socially-engineered critical-theory-fueled culture at Harvard and other Ivy schools focus on these reactions to feign terror.

Former Clinton White House aide Keith Boykin is a Harvard graduate and co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition. The group’s website describes it as “America’s leading national civil rights organization dedicated to the empowerment of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer+, and same gender loving (LGBTQ+/SGL) people.” Boykin posted, and the Globe quoted:

“Conservatives will use Claudine Gay’s resignation at Harvard to launch new racist attacks on affirmative action and DEI,” Boykin wrote, using the acronym for “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” “But when white men face controversy, the same conservatives don’t attribute failure to the person’s race or gender.”

I smell more than a whiff of rent-seeking here. Everyone in the grift uses such issues as grist for their fundraising mill, and have eager reporters on their iPhone favorite lists.

The truth is that Harvard wants to curate its culture, and the people on the Harvard Corporation’s obscure and opaque board have spent decades tending to the walled garden they created. Hamas’s bloodthirsty pogrom, exposing its Jew-hating roots, and inciting Israel’s lopsided response, put Gay in a terrible position, which she handled poorly. All the years of corner-cutting and diversity politics came crashing down on her head, which it tends to do as fate unfolds for the wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Gay could have led Harvard for decades had this not happened on her watch, even with the dogs of plagiarism claims nipping at her heels. The board knew about these claims well before her blowup with Stefanik. They’ve been floating around since the late 1990s. But part of Harvard’s culture is to keep this kind of stuff well hidden, because Harvard presidents don’t quit in scandal. Until they do.

I don’t think this debacle will change Harvard’s approach to culture curation, or its commitment to choose senior faculty and administration based on DEI principles. They will likely do a better job of due diligence in their search, and they will undoubtedly put a ton of lipstick on the pig of Jew-bashing that goes on in their Cambridge campus.

Unless the money—a good pile of which comes from Jews—stops flowing, Harvard will go right back to its base course. Gay will become the sacrificial goat; not that she doesn’t deserve it. Whoever claims that somehow being Black is a pass to cheat, or steal someone else’s academic work, is selling lies or trying to stir the pot for their own profit.

MAINE HANDS A WIN TO TRUMP. Donald Trump’s lawyers have appealed Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’s (a Democrat) decision to unilaterally remove him from the state’s primary ballot. The appeal to the state’s superior court asserts that Bellows is biased, that she had no legal authority to make the decision, that her legal basis was flawed, arbitrary and capricious, and that the decision harms Trump. On all these points, Trump is likely correct, or at least has strong arguments. Overturning the Maine decision is a win for the Trump campaign, and an own-goal for those who wish him to be eliminated from the race in a non-democratic fashion.

Let the voters decide, and if GOP voters (and Democrats, who think Trump is an easier opponent) are crazy enough to nominate him, let Trump get trounced on November 5th. Stunts like what Bellows did only help Trump. The cynic in me thinks maybe she wants him nominated.

ISRAEL KILLS LONGTIME TERRORIST. Were there no war raging in Gaza, nobody would be hand-wringing over the drone strike that took out Saleh al-Arouri. That terrorist has been on the kill list for a decade, and in fact was on the U.S. terror list. The U.S. regularly used drones to eliminate terror leaders. I’m willing to give Israel the benefit of the doubt here, as they took an opportunity and used it. The fact that the IDF is trying to move through the Gaza war phases while attempting to negotiate hostage releases doesn’t change the fact that evil terrorists should be taken out if possible. If people expect Israel to exercise more restraint over fear the war might expand, they are exercising magical thinking.