Departure Of Harvard’s Claudine Gay Plays Into Campus Culture Wars

Conservatives who have objected to Claudine Gay’s appointment as president of Harvard University on ideological grounds have hailed her resignation as a high-profile win.

Although plagiarism allegations in her PhD thesis played a role in her departure from Harvard’s top job, her departure is more than just an academic dishonesty controversy.

In December, Dr. Gay came under fire for her participation in a congressional hearing panel on antisemitism on college campuses. The panellists’ lacklustre, bureaucratic responses to calls for Jewish annihilation, including Dr Gay, spurred University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill to quit.

After that incident, Harvard pledged its support for Dr. Gay’s presidency. But the fight was far from done.

Departure Of Harvard’s Claudine Gay Plays Into Campus Culture Wars

Dr Gay, who is black, epitomizes much of what her right-wing critics despise about current American higher education, which they see as being driven by a left-wing philosophy that prioritizes ethnic and gender diversity over intellectual rigour.

“It was a thinly veiled exercise in race and gender when they selected Claudine Gay,” Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a Harvard graduate, remarked on social media after she resigned.

Bret Stephens, a New York Times columnist, blasted the “social justice model of higher education,” citing Dr Gay’s comparatively modest academic record, which includes no published books and 11 journal articles.

He warned that what he called the “intellectual rot” in American institutions of higher learning “won’t stop spreading until universities return to the idea that their central purpose is to identify and nurture and liberate the best minds, not to engineer social utopias”.

Departure Of Harvard’s Claudine Gay Plays Into Campus Culture Wars

Christopher Rufo, a right-wing activist best known for the cultural war over supposed Critical Race Theory teaching in US schools, made the plagiarism charges that led to Dr Gay’s resignation.

Mr Rufo sketched out a now-familiar tactic for conservatives attempting to generate attention to subjects they believe the mainstream media is avoiding in a December social media post.

“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the right,” Mr. Rufo wrote in a letter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the left’s media apparatus, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors with the power to destabilize her.” After that, squeeze.”

Mr Rufo’s efforts were bolstered by the New York Post and the Washington Free Beacon, which reported details of a fresh anonymous complaint filed with Harvard on Monday, which included additional proof of suspected plagiarism in Dr Gay’s published work.

Dr. Gay stated in her resignation letter that she had been “subjected to personal attacks and threats fuelled by racial animus,” and that the last few weeks had demonstrated that more must be done to “combat bias and hate in all its forms.”

Others on the left echoed this attitude, albeit with more focused rage.

“So what we’ve learned is this: Bad-faith bigots pretending they’re concerned about antisemitism will happily use women of colour – especially black women – as a scapegoat and lightning rod for large systemic issues,” Celeste Ng, a writer, posted on social media. “And that people invested in maintaining those systemic issues will comply.”

Dr. Gay’s retirement brought the current Harvard debate to a close, but the greater conservative movement to undermine – and eventually supersede – liberal-dominated institutions of higher learning continues.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, a current Republican presidential candidate, overhauled the administration of the New College of Florida, cancelling its diversity and inclusion programs, sacking faculty members, and placing right-wing extremists on its board of trustees, including Mr Rufo. He aims to provide a conservative alternative to the current liberal arts college.

Donald Trump has advocated for reforms in how US institutions are recognized as part of his “Agenda 47” plan for a second term in office, emphasizing “defending the American tradition and Western civilization.” He has also promised to remove equality programs, push universities to cut overhead costs and tax noncompliant schools’ endowments.

Harvard may eventually replace Dr. Gay with someone who shares his intellectual and political views and who continues to advocate for methods to diversify Harvard’s student body.

Conservatives have won a significant win by removing the president of one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, the one involved in the Supreme Court battle over racial considerations in admissions earlier this year.

SOURCE – (BBC)