Dear Harvard Trustees: Why not replace your president with the President? Mired in a morass of your own making, Claudine Gay’s resignation gets you out before you could embarrass yourselves further. Replacing Gay with President Joe Biden is a simple solution — and from the look of things you would only have to wait a year to do so.
READ MORE: Claudine Gay: Another DEI Success Story
Harvard committed a series of egregious errors from which it could not escape. As it became clearer with each passing revelation, its first mistake was making Claudine Gay its president. Second, Harvard and she allowed grotesque anti-Semitism to repeatedly take place on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
Next came Claudine Gay’s atrocious testimony before Congress when she and the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were called to explain their campuses’ moral obtuseness to anti-Semitism. Gay was unable to explain Harvard’s past actions (or lack thereof), but, worse still, she did not possess a moral compass capable of navigating her way through a simple question from Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) on whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate Harvard’s code of conduct. Demonstrating that she could neither think on her feet nor reason in her head, Gay responded that it would depend on the context, though she assured that if “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.”
Quickly, Harvard handlers rushed to mitigate the damage after the fact, and Gay issued a lame non mea culpa that it was not really Gay’s fault because she had gotten “caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures.” As she then explained, “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged.” Never mind that Harvard’s actions prior to this — and this was the reason the university had been called to testify on Capitol Hill in the first place — had not done this at all.
As all this was unfolding, questions regarding plagiarism by Gay began coming to light. And coming and coming. And still they came, until there were accusations of over 40 instances of plagiarism. According to the New York Post, Harvard knew of earlier accusations, thereby adding another failing to its pile.
Still, Harvard was not done in its failing-fest. Rather than walking away (or better yet, running), as the University of Penn had the good sense to do, Harvard put its other foot onto the landmine that is Claudine Gay: The Harvard Corporation gave Gay its unanimous support — thereby proving that two wrongs do not make a right, but they do make a Harvard president.
It was only a matter of time before Harvard had to follow Penn’s lead and get Gay to announce her resignation. Now that time has run out for Gay, who announced her resignation on Jan. 2, stating, “[I]t is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.”
This brings us to Harvard’s next dilemma: It needs a new president (and governing board, for that matter). The solution of course is staring them in the face — which is why Harvard will undoubtedly miss it. As Joe Biden plummets in the polls, it becomes increasingly clear that his entire administration will soon be looking for work. So, Harvard, you will have your pick of an entire coterie of failed lefties to choose from. (RELATED: Beware the Wounded Animal in 2024)
Being Harvard, of course you could not think anything but BIG. So, why not Biden himself? He has the perfect pedigree. He is already a president. He also has the plagiarism base covered; he did it back during his first failed 1988 presidential run — before plagiarism was cool. He has also repeatedly demonstrated that he too cannot think on his feet.
Too white and too male for you, Harvard? Then there is Vice President Kamala Harris. Admittedly the No. 2, she’s still high-profile — and only increases it every time she speaks. No one can toss a word salad like Kamala. If she had testified before the House committee, people would still be trying to decipher what she had said.
So, Harvard: Name an interim head and announce a search. There will soon be an entire administration of job seekers on the market. Education your priority? They have a whole department of it. Law school? There is the DOJ. Medicine, perhaps? There’s HHS. The one guarantee is that there will be lots of people for any loony lefty idea you want to pursue — they probably will bring many of their own.
Of course, Harvard’s real problem is not Gay but that it has gone from “veritas” to “very precious.” In American academia’s elitist self-immolation, Harvard is at the top of the pyre. Facing an act of starkest moral clarity, America’s elitist academia has revealed in shocking terms its relativist opacity. And nothing summed it up better than Gay’s in-the-moment hearing response that in its essence paraphrases down to “it depends.”
Gay’s real problem was not that she was not forthcoming enough but that she was all too much so. Our self-styled academia elites are a thoroughly distorted product of their own creation. They revel in their separation from the rest of the country — after all, their separation and distance lie at the heart of being elite. Ultimately, this was Harvard’s only reason for backing Gray as long as they did. It simply could not bear succumbing to the verdict of the hoi polloi. Confronted with common sense, Harvard could only discern the “common,” not the “sense.” Rather than come in out of the torrent of justified abuse, it preferred soaking in it.
Perhaps there was a long gone and forgotten time when Harvard and other elites’ elitism rested on substance. Alas now, it is just a semblance. Its last remnant is separateness. So, Harvard and our elites cling tenaciously to it in the mistaken belief that this has made them better, instead of the caricatures they have become.
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