Amid the disgraced resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay, it seemed rather inevitable that the issue would come up in a White House press briefing and, sure enough, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the Gay affair (h/t Inez Stepman) in her first appearance before reporters of 2024 on Wednesday afternoon.
"I know there's been a lot of coverage of this, and so I want to be very mindful and careful, and I've said this before when it comes to either private institutions or colleges and universities: we're not going to comment," Jean-Pierre said in response to a question on the tumult at Harvard. "We're not going to comment on any personal decision that's been made," she added before still commenting on what's been going on at Harvard and other supposedly elite schools in terms of radical antisemitism on display. And what followed was quite the word salad.
"I want to, you know, as you ask, because you asked me, our comments from here and what we said from here, we believe that this is a moment for leaders to have more clarity, that we believe that it is incredibly important at this time to have more clarity and you know, look um, any calls for genocide are monstrous and they're antithetical," said Jean-Pierre, ironically not speaking with much clarity.
Karine Jean-Pierre's reaction to Harvard President Gay's resignation was a brutal word salad... pic.twitter.com/GGhtg9imac
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 3, 2024
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Biden's press secretary continued: "There should not be a place for that in this country and we're always going to call out hate and we're always going to be very, very clear about that, and I will add that you heard the university presidents who testified also apologize, right?" Jean-Pierre rambled. "And you heard them say this, I'll quote what President Gay said, she said, 'I am sorry words matter.' I'll quote what President Magill said: 'I was not focused on what I should have been — the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate,'" summarized Jean-Pierre. "So we believe it's a time to stand up and have- and show leadership, and we believe that's what we did at that time."
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