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Watching Journos Try to Process Harvard President's Ouster Is Really Something

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  January 04, 2024 12:01 PM

Harvard's president badly botched the university's response to an explosion of anti-Semitism on campus after the October 7th massacre of Jews, then performed poorly during a Congressional hearing into the matter. In the process, and in order to deflect criticism, she wrapped herself in the banner of free thought and expression -- despite presiding over an insitution that shamefully ranked dead last in the country on a rigorous free speech index, developed and assessed by an independent organization. Then came the allegations that this same university president engaged in multiple instances of plagiarism, accompanied by damning evidence. The accusations stretched into the dozens, including particularly brazen and undeniable examples. The school reflexively defended her to the hilt for awhile, even bullying news organizations with litigation threats if they reported on the controversy; another terrible look. But as the scope of Claudine Gay's academic violations came into clearer focus, some faculty members began to turn on her. A student who adjudicates punishments for plagiarism offenses on campus wrote an essay indicting Ms. Gay's conduct:

A member of Harvard’s student Honor Council called for the resignation of university president Claudine Gay over her ongoing plagiarism scandal — accusing the school’s governing body of having one standard for the embattled administrator and another for the student body. “Gay’s getting off easy,” the student, who sits on the council tasked with deciding sanctions for classmates caught plagiarizing, wrote in a letter published anonymously in the Harvard Crimson Sunday. “Let’s compare the treatment of Harvard undergraduates suspected of plagiarism with that of their president,” they wrote...“What is striking about the allegations of plagiarism against President Gay is that the improprieties are routine and pervasive,” the letter said...“That the Corporation considers her corrections an adequate response is not fair to undergraduates, who cannot simply submit corrections to avoid penalties,” the student wrote...The member of the student Honor Council dismissed as ridiculous arguments for excusing the plagiarism as unintentional. “There is one standard for me and my peers and another, much lower standard for our University’s president. The Corporation should resolve the double standard by demanding her resignation.”

Some left-leaning columnists started to call for a change in leadership.  Other observers noted her role in railroading other people, including a rising star black scholar, in what some called cancel culture excesses. One former professor accuses Gay of developing a pattern of attacking and undermining black academics within her realm. At the New York Times, right-leaning Bret Stephens highlighted the thinness of her body of academic work (centered on matter of race, naturally), some of which relied on data that she disturbingly refused to produce for scrutiny:

The important question for Harvard was never whether Gay should step down. It was why she was brought on in the first place, after one of the shortest presidential searches in Harvard’s recent history. How did someone with a scholarly record as thin as hers — she has not written a single book, has published only 11 journal articles in the past 26 years and made no seminal contributions to her field — reach the pinnacle of American academia? The answer, I think, is this: Where there used to be a pinnacle, there’s now a crater. It was created when the social-justice model of higher education, currently centered on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts — and heavily invested in the administrative side of the university — blew up the excellence model...Skin color was the first thing The Harvard Crimson noted in its story about her taking office, and her missteps and questions about her academic work gave ammunition to detractors who claimed she owed her position solely to her race. This is the poisoned pool in which Harvard now swims. Whenever it elevates someone like Gay, there’s an assumption by admirers and detractors alike that she’s a political symbol whose performance represents more than who she is as a person. The weight of expectations on her must have been crushing. But dehumanization is the price any institution pays when considerations of social engineering supplant those of individual achievement.

On her way out the door, in her resignation letter, Gay remained on-brand, playing the race card by smearing her critics as animated by "racial animus." Not that they needed much prodding, but others instantly followed suit, attempting to turn the whole episode into a passion play about racism -- rather a referendum on an individual's underqualifications, academic misconduct, and poor leadership amid a serious on-campus challenge. Al Sharpton, who once infamously fomented an anti-Semitic race riot in New York City, declared he'll visit "consequences" on those he sees as responsible for Gay's unceremonious departure.  He called it an "attack" against "every black woman" in America.  Is every black woman in America a serial plagiarist?  What nonsense.  One of the nation's most financially successful race grievance grifters (this is quite a read) and advocate of so-called "antiracism" declared Gay's departure an exercise in, well, racism, in which her own actions are irrelevant:

Those who objected to Gay's handling of anti-Jewish harassment and bigotry at Harvard, and those who dared to notice her repeated plagiarism violations, are a "racist mob," you see.  Because under Kendi's poisonous, race-fixated ideology, larger narratives supplant individual choices and agency.  That's why he so breezily asserts that "the question to assess whether this was a racist attack isn’t whether Dr. Gay engaged in any misconduct," as if her actions are tertiary, at best.  In addition to being fundamentally racist unto itself, and morally bereft, this whole project is also extremely tiresome.  For some, 'racism' is basically their only argument.  Here's someone who made one of the most embarrassing and hilarious math errors on live television in recent memory (she parlayed the moment into a tale of victimhood with racial implications, of course) similarly  chalking up Gay's removal as obvious racism. Applying consistent standards on plagiarism constituting "an attack on diversity" is one hell of an argument:

Another prominent race obsessive, a failed sports television host and Kaepernick disciple, lamented that affirmative action leads to unfair assumptions about certain job candidates' qualifications (she meant this not as a critique of affirmative action, of course).  In responding to critics on this point, she decided to claim that the dozens of proven plagiarism infractions by Gay are...unproven, or something:

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Others are having none of it.  One of the alleged victims of Gay's plagiarism -- a retired conservative academic who happens to be a black woman -- called for Gay's resignation in late December: 

Writer and intellectual Coleman Hughes has also scorched the race fixaters:

He and others are also pointing out that a common refrain from the grievance crowd is quite easily disproven, based on very recent events, in fact:

In case you missed it, I'll leave you with the Associated Press' cartoonishly awful coverage of this firestorm, unleashing one of the most preposterous 'conservatives pounce' headlines of all time, coupled with a bit of hilarious historical illiteracy for good measure:

How does this embarrassing drivel get printed?  I think this is right:

I'd argue this is the increasingly dominant mindset in newsrooms, especially among the younger activists who see journalism as a tool of The Cause -- rather than a dogged pursuit of truth, without fear or favor.  They are motivated by, and consumed with, selective fear and favor.