Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard who was forced to resign, decided that she was not going away quietly. She wrote a column in the January 2 edition of The New York Times titled “What Just Happened at Harvard is Bigger Than Me.” She took a page out of the Donald Trump playbook: (a) play the victim, (b) do not admit that you did anything wrong or excuse your conduct, (c) attack the motives of those who accuse you of misconduct, and (d) claim that what is being done to you is part of a greater strategy to attack those who agree with you. Trump’s repeated claims are meritless and so are Professor Gay’s.
She plays the race card, arguing that “they recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament… It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution.” Her claims are echoed by those on the left.
The irony is that she is arguing that race had something to do with her firing. Many would say that race had something to do with her hiring. Did she have such a distinguished resume that she, as opposed to anyone else in the country, was the most qualified person for the job? She tries to address this question by citing the substance of her scholarship. I would point out that most of her limited number of publications relate to one topic: race, and they tend to be published in political science journals. The one she mentions in her column which she claims is cutting-edge, I believe, was “The Effect of Black Congressional Representation on Political Participation,” American Political Science Review. It may be important. Nevertheless, there are plenty of other scholars who also author important papers and yet they are not the president of Harvard or any other Ivy League school. Those who are presidents at these universities have significantly more extensive backgrounds. For example, the prior president of Harvard, a white Jewish male, had been president at Tuffs University for more than a decade before he became Harvard’s president.
Assuming for argument’s sake that race had nothing to do with her hiring, it also had nothing to do with her resigning. What is missing from her column is any mention that Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, was forced to resign after her disastrous testimony which occurred at the same time as Professor Gay’s testimony. The president of the University of Pennsylvania is a white woman. That fact does not support her narrative, so she omits it. Is that a hallmark of a person who should be in charge of a premier Ivy League school?
Moreover, Magill was forced to resign for the almost identical testimony as Professor Gay. Yet Professor Gay was not forced out right after the hearing – it was only after the drips and drabs showing that she repeatedly engaged in plagiarism by copying others’ writings without mentioning the source. In other words, she used other individuals’ ideas and proclaimed them to be her own.
Professor Gay’s attempt to explain her conduct is laughable. She states: “My critics found instances in my academic writings where some material duplicated other scholars’ language, without proper attribution… When I learned of these errors, I promptly requested corrections from the journals in which the flagged articles were published.” It makes it sound like she was unaware of these duplications. She wrote the articles that included the objectionable material; she had to know when she wrote it who it came from. To claim that she learned about the errors later is not credible. Imagine if a student had made the same claim.
She also tries to excuse her testimony when she could not say that accusing Jews of genocide violated Harvard’s code of conduct. She blames it on her falling “into a well-laid trap.” Firstly, the question which she was asked was a simple question which required a simple answer. In any event, whether or not she may have been set up as she claims is irrelevant. If she had answered the question correctly, the “trap” would have been unsuccessful.
She claims that there are demagogues who are campaigning “to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence and truth.” The irony is that many today are complaining about what has been happening on college campuses. Presidents such as Gay have taken schools away from those goals. Instead, schools have become a place where only one view is taught. Moderates and conservatives should not bother to attempt to have their views heard.
She also claims that “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.” One of the pillars is education. That does not justify Gay’s conduct. Her conduct plays into the narrative of those who want to tear things down. There is no question that there are many on the far right and the far left who have engaged in these attacks. Trump’s mantra has to attack pillars of our society, such as the electoral or judicial systems. For example, on the third anniversary of the attack on January 6, he referred to those who are incarcerated for their criminal conduct on that day as hostages. Those who were kidnapped by Hamas are hostages; the individuals who stormed the Capitol are not hostages. To call them hostages, especially when we are waiting for the Israeli hostages to be returned, is despicable.
Professor Gay is correct that what has happened at Harvard is bigger than she. She is just an example of a university education system that has lost its way from its foundations. It has become obsessed with what they believe is DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and a one-sided left-wing ideology instead of excellence, openness, independence, and truth. If the schools want to keep the demagogues and ideologies from getting involved in education, they need to clean house and make systematic changes to return to their traditional goals. If not, it will be forced upon them, which would not be good for the educational system in this county.
Warren S. Hecht is a local attorney. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
