The fact that Harvard will allow her to remain on the faculty is truly unbelievable. Gay was and is a total fraud......a diversity hire, plain and simple. I've seen terminations of employment for people who barely embellish their resume or fudged their previous income. Its pretty obvious by allowing her to stay that Harvard leadership is terrified to terminate her employment completely. This is the perfect example of the rot brought on by diversity, equity and inclusion that has a stranglehold on board rooms and HR departments.
The Harvard Corporation leadership should be dismantled completely and here's to hoping that Jeffrey Flier, Bill Ackman, Steven Pinker and others will insist that happens. With any luck, 2024 will be the year DEI departments completely collapse in on themselves.
I loved what Michael Malice posted yesterday - "The next and final leg, the universities, will be the best. The academics are worse than the journalists by virtually every metric, and their pearl-clutching, foot-stomping shrieks alternating with pleas for mercy will hilariously fall on deaf ears."
The resignation of Gay will merely give the legions of the Leftish chattering classes in academia and MSM the perfect excuse for remaining in denial about its 5 decade-long 'Progressive' hegemony. To 'fix' Harvard would require ridding itself of a huge proportion of its academics who are only there in the first place because they have ticked the right groupthink boxes. If the political will ever materialises (and the votes to back it) to re-establish universities as the broad-minded institutions that they once were, it would need to be an unashamedly sledgehammer legislative programme....one including:
- a clear-out of the kind of senior academics who have so cravenly caved in to spoilt-brat ‘radicalism’.
- a complete clear-out of the multi-billion ‘diversity’ bureaucracy racket.
And while such a political will existed (if it ever does which I doubt).
- ending the decades-long absurdity of left wing proselytising organisations being actually funded by the taxpayer.
- a complete overhaul of teacher training (that has long been allowed to become a training ground in progressive ideology).
- an end to public sector security-of-tenure unrelated to performance.
I'm hoping new academic institutions like University of Austin will end up pulling the better leadership/faculty over time and give the MIT's, Harvard's, and UPenn's a run for their money. We'll see. https://www.uaustin.org/
This is actually likely as the "blush is off the rose" as they say. Also the Ivy League is supposed to dump legacy admits meaning attendance doesn't necessarily mean you'll be rubbing shoulders with the rich and influential so what are you paying the $350K for?
Maybe not but the overall scale of the problem is hard to overstate. The dismal truth is that whilst Western publics have been mesmerised by the MSM psychodrama of elections and party-political pluralism, a 5-decade long transformation has quietly been ongoing whereby the 'educated' middle-class (the future leaders, professionals and administators) have passed through a rite-of-passage Leftist sheep-dip. A highly seductive 'education' in how to think of yourself as virtuous just by the simple and cost-free adoption of 'correct' opinions. We have quietly got ourselves and our culture into a dreadful mess and the Claudine Gays et al are merely the tip of a very big iceberg. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Teacher training, aka majoring in education, has long been a broken mess. I would love to see Bari and friends do an in-depth analysis of education departments. I taught many of these students in literature classes and several, especially the older students, knew quite well they were being indoctrinated. They were all bright students looking hard for authentic course work. Most of the younger education students in my lit classes had zero education to build on. As a result Blake and the later Romantics were simply a mystery. Some students reached for and caught that elusive thing called knowledge. Many if not most of my students were first generation college
students. And poetry scared them to death! But at the end of each semester many became converts to the power in our gorgeous language.
And who knows what other enticements she was given to stand down. If the salary info was easily available, there must be many other things hidden behind an NDA that some enterprising journalist would do well to suss out.
It is a matter of Law Suits that would have been filed against Harvard claiming Racism on her behalf. I worked in DEI years ago when it had another name. I know the rules.
She kind of was a diversity hire. But really, she was an ideology/political hire first.
There were probably other black women who might have been willing and able to take the position, if that was their primary criteria. Gay likely wouldn't have been chosen if they just looked over all the "women of color" at Harvard and chose the most qualified. Over 60 percent of college graduates are female, and under 20 percent of Harvard students are white now -- so if they picked one at random, more likely than not they'd find themselves a "woman of color".
But an Eritrean woman who studies migratory patterns of birds or a Ghanan woman who studies cooling systems for quantum computers isn't really useful for advancing any message. Gay was chosen because she published 17 papers about race that advanced certain policy points and goals.
| under 20 percent of Harvard students are white now |
The stats say 35.4% white and 21% Asian but if you add them all up it only comes to about 80% so something is not being reported correctly. From working at a University, I see that Asians are the most shortchanged in terms of admissions. Whites still have legacy admissions from their parents and grandparents, with some Asians starting to move into that category, but, in general, Asians need the highest grades, extracurriculars and test scores to get into college.
Seriously, Asians are not more intelligent than others. We're all humans with same levels of intelligence and potential to succeed. It's not like if you go to China, Korea, or Japan you'll step into a land of geniuses. When the entire population is Asian, things fall into places pretty much like everywhere else. Asians in non-Asian countries fare well in academics because their kids are willing to study more, and their cultural heritage is more focused on family their self (ie not "my identity"). And they tend to come from two-parents households. That's it. It's not magic. But God forbid we recognize these basic building blocks for academic success.
What? Asians are dominating the college landscape. And, good for them. They earn it. Nothing is given to them. But, the poor white male who excels has little chance at an Ivy.
WSJ reported she will continue to receive a million dollar salary for teaching. Teaching what? Is there anything original about her so called work? The college will continue to pay a cheater?
Harvard should offer Dr Carol Swain the position of President although I doubt she would stoop to take it.
Harvard has inflicted a huge wound on itself. It needs to hurt for a while so hopefully its administrators will learn something. But I think it’s reputation is shot.
I think it would be a great attack to talk about income inequality in this instance. How is it that this woman, with no real-world skills, is making a million dollars when ordinary teachers struggle to get by? There are so many targets our progressive elites have on them, but they never get hit. Thanks for sharing the million-dollar salary.
Not sure if you'll read my comment but Christopher Rufo has a Substack...he interviewed Carol Swain recently because she was one of the people that Gay plagiarized.
Swain for a few years and have seen her in person twice.. She’s marvelous and her story is inspiring. I’ll need to look up Rufo’s interview. Thanks for the tip.
I have been following her for a few years as well. I would love to see her in person! She and Shelby Steele are some of my favorite people. I learn so much from their wisdom.
Good point! That’s a big disparity that can’t be justified by Gay’s scholarly or leadership work. But it is still justifiable when viewed through the distorted lens of the intersectional oppression olympics. Gay is still a black female and she continues to identify as an academic.
You should check out Christopher Rufo's Substack. A few weeks ago, he interviewed Carol Swain. She was one of the people that Gay plagiarized. Very good article.
We all need to look into the president of the Harvard board Penny Pritzker who hired her and encourages the destruction of American ideals.
Her billionaire family are involved in destructive influence schemes including the extreme leftist Illinois governor and the millions given to lgbt racketeering organizations.
"The fact that Harvard will allow her to remain on the faculty is truly unbelievable..." No, it's totally believable and de rigueur. How many times have we all read about misfeasance, malfeasance, or gross incompetence in the education system that have been 'punished' by what are essentially paid vacations.?
How can she teach university-level classes when she has committed the most egregious academic sin of all: plagiarism? Her students couldn't be expected to be held to any academic standard at all--they could rightfully protest the hypocrisy. And no one can expect that her students have actually earned the grades they receive in her courses.
At the risk of sounding like the old lady saying, “well, back in my day...”.
Back in my day we took exams with pencils and bluebooks in a classroom. No laptops, no references, no take home exams where we could look stuff up. Just our brains and a few hours.
Now? Preliminary exams to qualify for a PhD program are take home and you have several days. References are fine. Is AI being used? No doubt. Academic standards have been debased for a long time. So do professors view plagiarism as the cardinal sin it used to be? Maybe not.
I stopped teaching in 2010, so I'm not sure what is expected these days. But "in my day," plagiarism was punishable with serious consequences--in addition to failing the paper and failing the course, I could go to the dean and have it placed on their permanent academic record. I never had a situation where I went that far, but it was on the table.
I just finished my MBA and did it online at a real school. Plagiarism was punished with expulsion and many (not all) professors took it seriously. For those that did, tests and exams were taken in a program that requires a drivers license scan using the laptop camera, then it locks down your computer so the only window accessible is the test itself, and the laptop camera is activated during the test. I doubt someone was monitoring me on the other side of the camera but I assumed it was recorded.
All of my written submissions were scanned by some AI plagiarism software that returned a score indicating the likelihood of plagiarism. I had one paper during the program that had a higher score than expected which apparently indicated there was a possibly of AI input in the writing and I had to produce other examples of prior writings to prove the writing voice was my own. It was a PITA. I think the tolerance for plagiarism is very dependent on the individual professor and how much work they’re willing to put into preventing or upholding academic standards.
By the time I retired from my high school in California (2015), teachers were no longer able to ask students to put their phones away during tests. Phones were actually confiscated during standardized testing, but were perfectly okay during any situation in the classroom.
Here in Canada, the provinces of Quebec and Ontario are banning cellphones in classrooms, in effect when students return from the holiday break -- long overdue! Public elementary and secondary schools are affected.
It is punished at Harvard as well - but only for students. Suspensions for an academic year for inadequate citation are typical, according to the student who wrote an editorial in the Harvard school paper who sits on the review board.
My qualifying exams were based on even older ideas. You were one on one with a professor for 3 different areas. They guided your study from the beginning. At the end you had dozens of long discussions with each of your 3 area professors which culminated in one final public discussion in each area. It wasn't unusual for me to get notes with dozens of books to read and a date in which we were discussing them in their office. Each discussion brought on more books/studies layered on each other. Pretty effective...........
The genie of the internet is out of the bottle so students, beginning in elementary school, need to start being taught how to identify reliable and unreliable sources rather than just how to look up information.
There's something to be said for loyalty. I'm sure they knew she wasn't that bright when they hired her. She ticked all their boxes, so she got the job. Just because the rest of the world doesn't appreciate the same standards doesn't mean Harvard should change its ways. I started meeting Harvard graduates back in the 90s, and was impressed at how mediocre their thinking abilities were, and how brainwashed and conformist. It seems like a good place for Ms. Gray, who, after all was only doing what she was taught to do and picked to do.
While I agree that she was just doing what she was hired to to that doesn't absolve her of very much. Considering all of her plagiarism, I think she knew that she was not actually worthy of the position...knew she was a bit of a grifter. But she took the job. That is on her.
IDK P. Depends on how far down the rabbit hole they are as far as being able to Guage how bright she was when hired. IOWs once fully stocked with those like minds they are just replenishing the tank.
One might have thought of Claudine Gay as a simple affirmative action hire who happened to get caught in the tornado caused by Oct. 7. However, she showed exactly what kind of human being she is by penning a resignation letter that refuses to address both her extensive plagiarisms and her pathetic performance in congressional hearings. To top it all, she blames her downfall on “racism”, of course. From Adams, mayor of New York, to Lightfoot, former mayor of Chicago, to the current mayor of Chicago and now to Claudine Gay, it has become an absolute habit to shamelessly play the race card any time things don’t go their way. This is a huge blow to honest black people, who don’t play this card but get the terrible reputation generated by the opportunists who do.
Surely you jest! We cannot expect equal outcomes because we offer equal opportunity. It is further decisive and racist. Standards should not be lowered just because of skin color. Harvard will lose “ bigly”, as President Trump would say.
I didn't think it possible to paper shred a Harvard degree but Claudine showed us a way. Harvard is a clown show until Gay is gone. Paying a bigot liar nearly a million a year? Nothing says 'I am an idiot!' like that action.
And of course she blames it on racism not plagiarism nor the politics of funding. And she stays on faculty with a very high salary--so clearly Harvard won’t commit to examining the validity of the plagiarism charge which if proven, the consequences must also apply to faculty. So that charge still needs to be reviewed with full transparency and care or Harvard’s lack of action on that front remains a joke. But with the lemming left think of the faculty and students remains. The reputation serious evidence of anti-semitism and ethics that plague the entire school have been addressed.
I don't think Harvard is terrified of firing Gay. They don't care because they are communists and they will do whatever it takes to break down society in this country.
NPR is already calling for her to be replaced with a “woman of color.”
It’s amazing how they get to have it both ways. If you suggest Gay was hired for her race and gender your are declared a racist, while at the same time they get to declare their intention to hire based on race and sex.
DEI departments are never going away completely. They employ too many people who have no other “skills”. It would be similar to stopping various forms of welfare; can’t do it because the “system” employs too many people, many non-whites.
The bloom is off the rose. Just like Dems suggest for coal miners, these people should start going to continuing ed classes at their local JUCOs... or learn how to install solar panels and fix windmills.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” - Samuel Johnson. Now it’s race. Claudine Gay hurts African-Americans worse than she’ll ever know or wants to know, by invoking racism to try and cover the stench of her own arrogance, incompetence, dishonesty, lying, and cheating. She hides behind her person-of-color privilege card, instead of being accountable. Shameful.
I of course agree with you. But in woke world, the only thing that matters is equity. Equal outcomes. Competency, originality, rigorousness, etc. are white supremacist constructs designed to hold black people back. Holding them to any sort of traditional standards is just pure racism.
Exactly. But DEI is predicated on Tabla Rasa, so any outcomes are culturally driven. Capitalism and freedom allow each person to figure out their own strengths, and develop them. And that diversity of non-academic talents is highly beneficial for society. DEI is only academic credentials based. (Of course! They extract the maximum toll to grant credentials!)
Gay is a product of the decades-long DEI initiative, and she played the game well -- until she got caught. If she'd kept a lower profile, she'd still be president. Harvard never really cared about the plagiarism charges; maybe it's something they've come to expect from DEI hires. She only got roasted when she testified. Even then, if she was astute and well-advised she could have put forward non-answer answers like most politicians and bureaucrats do (see, e.g., Mayorkas recent interview). Essentially this requires her to swallow whatever pride she has and just lie with a straight face (Id.). Playing the RACE card is indeed the last refuge of DEI advocates/bureaucrats; the kryptonite of defenses. When there is no actual defense, claim racism. The mob reacts in support of the idea that everyone opposed to them is racist, and therefore believes the nonsense that racism is the motivating factor. Sad. I'm glad I am 73 years old and won't be around to see how this all turns out. I hope for the best, for my three granddaughters' sake, but I'm not optimistic.
I think Gay buying into it is *completely* what one would expect. She has, for years, managed to convince herself that her wealthy background creates no difficulties in classing herself among the "oppressed." That following the rules--even the very basic and primary rule of academics: do not plagiarize--did not apply to her. Her very sense of self is completely reliant upon believing that everything she does is automatically right and good, no matter how wrong it is objectively.
I think money is likely to prove to be the deciding factor. Wealthy donors are closing their purses. Ultimately, those in charge will have to do whatever is necessary to loosen those purse strings...or find an alternate source of funding.
We have recently learned about the amount of funding that is pouring into our universities from governments that *despise* the U.S. Perhaps those donors can be induced to up their contributions enough to make up the difference, so there will no need for a change of policies.
I predict that if a change of policies becomes necessary, the more devoted adherents of CRT on the board will resign in protest.
One of the many criticisms of Claudine Gay is that she made life very difficult for African American males who held different political viewpoints. Ronald S Sullivan Jr who was dean at Harvard was dismissed after joining Harvey Weinstein's legal team. Roland G. Fryer Jr. was also subject to political persecution for his research that showed there was no racial difference in the shooting of unarmed men in Houston.
It's race with a strong mixture of ideology. It is the leftist decision of who is "really black" ie Joe Biden's statement 'If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black"
I couldn’t help contrasting Gay’s *claim* of being persecuted because of her race with the decades of Clarence Thomas’ *actual* “digital lynching” for daring to be a black conservative originalist. Gay certainly has “chutzpah”...
My favorite was the part about her “commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor” being her bedrock. The greatest doublespeak of all time. She will live out her days thinking she was the victim here.
I strongly suspect she modeled it after MacArthur's farewell speech at West Point. There's certainly one person who thinks Claudine Gay is a martyr: Claudine Gay.
lol someone did put it through Grammarly's plagiarizing software and yup, it got flagged. Considering she couldn't even write an acknowledgement without stealing it from someone else, are we surprised? https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1742261717025927582?s=20
I find myself uninterested in Gay's resignation. To those in the mainstream media and in academia, they will frame her resignation as racism - a "mob" coming for her.
I don't think that's true, but it's how most within these institutions genuinely see it.
The problem is so much deeper. It's a generation of leading universities bloating with layer upon layer of administration. Faculty still has to pledge fealty to administrative ideology.
Gay's tenure might be the most egregious example - one of the most prestigious universities led by someone who probably shouldn't even be considered for tenure as a professor. But we'd be mistaken if we didn't recognize that this is going on at hundreds of other feted research universities.
They're not scared. They're indignant. And as we've seen recently at UCSD with its new code requiring student indoctrination to "climate science," this problem is so pervasive that MIT can dig in and protect Sally Kornbluth without even a shred of hesitation. Nor should we, again, have any interest in her removal. Just another symptom of the blight of critical thinking spreading through higher institutions in the '10s and '20s.
"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned" - Richard Feynman.
If she didn't lose the money, she didn't really lose.
They won't feel pain until you cut off their money, because at the end of the day it's about the money and it always was. Study after study is the same. Secular people care about money more than anything, and "equity" always means "more money for me".
Tell university students. They put you in debt for life so they can make morons obscenely rich. Stop giving the universities more money.
I don't think anyone without agenda actually buy the racism claim. For one thing, Liz McGill was sacked too, and earlier than her. Then the fact that her academic credentials were thin. The final death knell was the plagiarism. There's just no way to defend that anymore. And then for her to cry racism after the way antisemitism was allowed to run rampant on her campus, it all sounds so hollow.
This racism claim won't stick except with the already very woke.
A major feature of this administrative bloat is the lack of diversity of thought. Since every professor and administrator has a similar view of the world, they see issues without nuance.
They don't recognize the antisemitism. If challenged (and that would never happen from someone within their circle), they would make a comment like "criticism of Israel is not criticism of Jewish people." To them, all the work and actual academic thought that went into the NHRA is "just one viewpoint."
Then they turn a blind eye when it's obvious the protests are, after all, targeting Jewish people. In Ann Arbor, this has been going on for decades - a group of antisemites stationed outside of a temple in a nice residential neighborhood every Saturday. Just a mile from campus.
The racism claim shouldn't stick, but within the new ivory tower, it's pervasive. And now that the mainstream media is more talking heads who stay in their comfortable spaces instead of going out and learning about the world, they're buying it, too.
We live in a time when language has become less precise. Word games are played.
One such game is to take a word that has specific negative connotations, like "mob", and apply it in an imprecise manner. Mob implies a physical crowd and organization. Neither was true here.
When you say "a mob came", you conjure an image of populism - of a group of non-diverse rabble-rousers screaming non-thinking slogans in hatred . A mob didn't come. It was instead many people from many backgrounds in many different manners talking about the problems illustrated clearly in this article.
What was notable about this not-a-mob at all was that people were very specific about the issue. People reasoned that Jewish students are also entitled to safety on campus. That a double-standard was being applied in which some groups could exercise "hate" speech and some groups could not. That Gay herself had been involved in several cases where professors were censored while she was claiming here that Harvard was powerless to deter what really was a mob with most of its connotations. That Harvard ranks dead last among major universities in academic freedom. And that she had engaged in academic misconduct on many occasions and was far less published (even counting the plagiarized work) than others who had held her position.
On Twitter, the Leftists are screaming that we ought to subject the academic work of ALL university presidents to the same scrutiny. I don't think they expected the critics of Ms. Gay to say, "Yes, absolutely!"
Personally, I think every professor at every American university ought to have their academic work subjected to the same scrutiny. I suspect that if discovered plagiarists were actually *fired* from teaching, some of the indoctrination on campus would diminish. The "By Any Means Necessary" professors very probably attained their degrees and published the necessary volume the same way.
This is a common leftist counter when you point out obscene corruption. They'll attempt to normalize it by saying "it's always been that way" or "well everyone does it".
Yeah guys, it's no big deal that they had cocaine in the White House. The problem is your expectation that our leaders are accountable to the law like we are!
There has been an examination of other university presidents for their academic work and it has resulted in the resignation of a white male president! Stanford's president Tessier-Lavigne was forced to resign due to "serious flaws" in his research. The first report about possible faulty research was reported by Theo Baker a 19 year old reporter for Stanford Daily.
I think that is good although I wonder if he was targeted for an ignoble reason. Merit is merit. Cheating is cheating. Standards are standards. It is not complicated.
A review found that there were significant flaws and data manipulation in his lab. While he did not commit the fraud, it happened on his watch. Cheating is cheating, but some cheating has consequences that extend to and impact the real world.
Dr Tessier-Lavigne published papers and researched nerve cell responses to injuries with the goal of producing effective treatments for brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases. Allowing bad data to establish false medical conclusions is inexcusable and we should have learned that lesson from the Dutch study that supported trans therapy or the Covid "research." Maybe Tessier-Lavigne was targeted for ignoble reasons, but it is dishonorable to not have solid research. Maybe what happened to him as what happened to Gay will work to ensure better academic research and more thorough reviews.
I was thinking the same. These journalists should continue their impressive work by digging into one elite institution at a time. And then investigate the state schools.
Quite possibly. If the person's committee approves their completed dissertation, no one else is going to ask questions. If the committee members are not particular.....
I used to edit papers for M.A. and PhD students of a former college acquaintance who is now a department head. I was unimpressed with the work of many (fortunately not all) of these students. The lack of writing skills and the difficulty they had making proper citations would not have passed muster with me if I were the one making the decision to pass or fail.
Fortunately, I wasn't. And some of my clients were genuinely bright, scholarly people whose first language was not English. But there were times when I felt ethically soiled by the work I was doing for students who did not, in my opinion, deserve the degree they were using my skills to help them get.
The wokies don't counter with things in hopes of debate or change. Whatever they shout, what they are really saying is "Stop pointing out how my side is wrong and shut up." That is why their go tos are "Racist" or "TERF". They are generally just trying to stop discussion. In this case, their bluff was called...they don't have a backup plan.
Bill Ackman’s most recent X post outlines his well reasoned plan about what needs to happen next to dismantle DEI and return to a meritocracy in search of Veritas. The pressure on all institutions must continue.
Cornel West posted a virulently racist , antisemitic attack in defense of poor Claudine Gay. Worth reading to better understand how deeply entrenched this Woke garbage is and what it will take to fight these ideologues.
Martin Gurri - whoever the hell he is - can call Trump all the names he wants. But the Free Press, as good as it is, still does not understand the reason why many sane people support him. Much of the FP rightly exposes the utter rot of the elite institutions. All of them are aligned against Trump with both real power and deranged behavior. The gut reaction of many is “if the rotten crew hates Donnie so much, maybe he is not so bad”. Or, “he has flaws but does not support DEI based racism, hatred of Jews, open borders, green energy debacles, etc. I wish we had a better choice but he will at least try to stop the insanity”. Much of life is a lesser of two evils dilemma, hence his popularity.
Here it is FP - the basis for a good investigative journalism article. People don't vote for Trump because they like him as a person - they vote for him because they hate what they see going on in the institutions of America and can only see one person who truly challenges those institutions and their policies.
At this point I think a fair amount of his support is support for an underdog. Most people would have cratered under the mountain of legal proceedings. I am genuinely impressed. Additionally, everyone who has ever thought they got a raw deal at the courthouse, which is practically everybody who has been there, is sympathetic.
A very good point. Lawyers are not beloved in society (unless you need one), and this adds to the empathy for the orange man. If all of these governmental entities, save the money on investigating and prosecuting him, since 2016, and devoted it towards infrastructure on I-95, the world would be better off.
Had not thought of this. Excellent point. I always say the more money you have, the more justice you can get. What I mean is if you have enough money, you can hire a good lawyer to counter the amount of money they will use to try and convict you.
That is very, very true. It is also why even "winners" are also bitter. Even on the civil side. I have to hope the appellate and Supreme Court see Trump's various litigation and prosecutions as a chance to restore faith in the system. By that I do not mean rule as I wish them too but rather rule in accordance with the law and offer an articulate opinion in support of the ruling. Of course I thought they did exactly that in Dobbs and that was not well received.
Instead of acknowledging her mistakes - not condemning antisemitism and multiple accusations of plagiarism with lots of proof, Ms Gay resorts to playing the racism card. Yet another nail in her coffin.
The worst kind of non-apology. Boils my blood. The lack of accountability and the pointing of spineless little fingers.... even the Harvard Crimson said she got off easy.
It would seem that Ms. Gay is a very intelligent person. Stop and consider that she could have done the work, but the DEI industry told her she didn't have to. How many young people has DEI ruined by doing this?
It snickered at Diversity, most campuses don't have it.
It fiddled with Equity, telling the students they could get the same outcome without the effort.
It applauded Inclusion, creating marginalized groups with members that could ignore the rules.
Finally, and IMHO, the most damaging, was telling students to examine each interaction with other people for "micro-aggressions". Ruining the social fabric around them.
“It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am"
I think she must be enjoying saying things that are absolutely the opposite of the reality that people can see. "Because of 'who I am,' I can stand here in a nimbus of self-righteousness and lie to you, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Neener-neener."
This is merely another run-of-the-mill example of the constant gaslighting and projection that has ruled our culture since St. Floyd of Minneapolis. Ideology is consistently substituted for reality, because...”my truth”.
Reading her resignation letter, I am always interested in the racism attack. First, let me state the obvious. In some comments or messages, a lot of trolls and a fringe group of men with IQs less than 70 could and probably did send some personal and racial attacks.
But the broad middle and reasonable middle pay no mind to her race, look at her testimony, read the evidence, and don't think about race first, just the truth. For too long, the political right has cowered in fear of the Claudine Gay's of the world. We have given them this moral authority to impose their values on society. This example shows that our institution's leaders are idiots who are educated in parlor games rather than achievement.
To get rid of DEI, a focus on performance, results, and responsibility have to happen. Brave people have to attack the premise of the charge of racism. The changes of systemic racism have to get pushed back on strongly with style and substance. This is an opening to defeat this lousy ideology, but if the leaders of that resistance sound like idiots who have little style or substance, there is a chance for them to remain on their perch. How the opposition fights are critical to winning this battle.
Time for frank and naked honesty. The situation described at Hillcrest High School in NYC is symptomatic of the anti-White hatred launched by none other than our imbecile in Chief - the corrupt JR Biden. Talks of "puttin' yo back in chains." "Reparations" to people who were never slaves just because of their skin color. Creating a deep sense of unwarranted grievance and division. You can see it in the half-witted lunatic who stabbed two white girls in Grand Central Terminal, announcing he wanted to "kill all white people." In the replacement rhetoric of some of the politicians, exulting in a supposed "white minority status" for the country's future. In the barely concealed hostility and simmering glares on the subways. This is nothing less than a devolution to tribalism. It is dangerous and anti-American. And racist to its core. And it will lead to nothing good. I know it and you know it. Time to put a stop to it. The Democrat Party is behind this. Stop pretending otherwise.
Perhaps the Harvard students and faculty will devote Jan 15 to listening closely to the I Have A Dream Speech and really hear the words : content of character.
Progressives are some of the most dangerous people on earth. They all need to be fired and handed the door and have it slam their asses hard on their way out.
Great job Aaron and the Free Beacon! Followed both on Twitter last night. Best wishes - we FP people support you ! Thank you Bari and team as always. You’ve so profoundly changed my life. Love from Philly.
The fact that Harvard will allow her to remain on the faculty is truly unbelievable. Gay was and is a total fraud......a diversity hire, plain and simple. I've seen terminations of employment for people who barely embellish their resume or fudged their previous income. Its pretty obvious by allowing her to stay that Harvard leadership is terrified to terminate her employment completely. This is the perfect example of the rot brought on by diversity, equity and inclusion that has a stranglehold on board rooms and HR departments.
The Harvard Corporation leadership should be dismantled completely and here's to hoping that Jeffrey Flier, Bill Ackman, Steven Pinker and others will insist that happens. With any luck, 2024 will be the year DEI departments completely collapse in on themselves.
I loved what Michael Malice posted yesterday - "The next and final leg, the universities, will be the best. The academics are worse than the journalists by virtually every metric, and their pearl-clutching, foot-stomping shrieks alternating with pleas for mercy will hilariously fall on deaf ears."
We can only hope Michael.....we can only hope.
That Gay retains her $900k salary is a mockery of it all, though.
The resignation of Gay will merely give the legions of the Leftish chattering classes in academia and MSM the perfect excuse for remaining in denial about its 5 decade-long 'Progressive' hegemony. To 'fix' Harvard would require ridding itself of a huge proportion of its academics who are only there in the first place because they have ticked the right groupthink boxes. If the political will ever materialises (and the votes to back it) to re-establish universities as the broad-minded institutions that they once were, it would need to be an unashamedly sledgehammer legislative programme....one including:
- a clear-out of the kind of senior academics who have so cravenly caved in to spoilt-brat ‘radicalism’.
- a complete clear-out of the multi-billion ‘diversity’ bureaucracy racket.
And while such a political will existed (if it ever does which I doubt).
- ending the decades-long absurdity of left wing proselytising organisations being actually funded by the taxpayer.
- a complete overhaul of teacher training (that has long been allowed to become a training ground in progressive ideology).
- an end to public sector security-of-tenure unrelated to performance.
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
That's a heavy lift for sure.
I'm hoping new academic institutions like University of Austin will end up pulling the better leadership/faculty over time and give the MIT's, Harvard's, and UPenn's a run for their money. We'll see. https://www.uaustin.org/
The marketplace is the only participant with the power to do what is needed. Let’s hope the invisible hand does its job, swiftly.
That is the real answer.
Yep..
Competition. The American way.
This is actually likely as the "blush is off the rose" as they say. Also the Ivy League is supposed to dump legacy admits meaning attendance doesn't necessarily mean you'll be rubbing shoulders with the rich and influential so what are you paying the $350K for?
They’ve been blaming the “white Jews” for weeks now.
Talk about Augean Stables.
Had to look it up....but Yes indeed!
The academics may not be as big a problem as the army of DEI administrative staff.
Maybe not but the overall scale of the problem is hard to overstate. The dismal truth is that whilst Western publics have been mesmerised by the MSM psychodrama of elections and party-political pluralism, a 5-decade long transformation has quietly been ongoing whereby the 'educated' middle-class (the future leaders, professionals and administators) have passed through a rite-of-passage Leftist sheep-dip. A highly seductive 'education' in how to think of yourself as virtuous just by the simple and cost-free adoption of 'correct' opinions. We have quietly got ourselves and our culture into a dreadful mess and the Claudine Gays et al are merely the tip of a very big iceberg. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Best comment.
Thank you.
Teacher training, aka majoring in education, has long been a broken mess. I would love to see Bari and friends do an in-depth analysis of education departments. I taught many of these students in literature classes and several, especially the older students, knew quite well they were being indoctrinated. They were all bright students looking hard for authentic course work. Most of the younger education students in my lit classes had zero education to build on. As a result Blake and the later Romantics were simply a mystery. Some students reached for and caught that elusive thing called knowledge. Many if not most of my students were first generation college
students. And poetry scared them to death! But at the end of each semester many became converts to the power in our gorgeous language.
Isle of Palms
Imagine paying to go to Harvard and knowing that your dollars are supporting the astronomical salary of a plagarist and anti-semite.
How is anyone not appalled by this?
People who attend Harvard do not pay with their own money. They pay with Daddy's money, or uncle Bill Ackman's money.
In some cases, sure, but the point remains.
And who knows what other enticements she was given to stand down. If the salary info was easily available, there must be many other things hidden behind an NDA that some enterprising journalist would do well to suss out.
It is a matter of Law Suits that would have been filed against Harvard claiming Racism on her behalf. I worked in DEI years ago when it had another name. I know the rules.
Yeah she’s keeping the $900k/yr but this is good, I think, because as a professor she will have more lebensraum.
I would take her class just to submit other people’s work and dare her to notice
Excellent!
She is in a “protected employee class.” It is very difficult to fire a black, female, over 50 employee
(They know the law as well as people in prison)
The idea that Harvard leadership would think it would be ok to put her out front teaching students is beyond the pale.
The thought of a Jewish student having to sit and listen to her is repulsive.
Perhaps the Harvard Corporation can entice David Duke to join the faculty and start teaching some of the Race & Justice courses. Just sayin.......
Contextually, it makes sense.
It pays to plagiarize!
She kind of was a diversity hire. But really, she was an ideology/political hire first.
There were probably other black women who might have been willing and able to take the position, if that was their primary criteria. Gay likely wouldn't have been chosen if they just looked over all the "women of color" at Harvard and chose the most qualified. Over 60 percent of college graduates are female, and under 20 percent of Harvard students are white now -- so if they picked one at random, more likely than not they'd find themselves a "woman of color".
But an Eritrean woman who studies migratory patterns of birds or a Ghanan woman who studies cooling systems for quantum computers isn't really useful for advancing any message. Gay was chosen because she published 17 papers about race that advanced certain policy points and goals.
| under 20 percent of Harvard students are white now |
The stats say 35.4% white and 21% Asian but if you add them all up it only comes to about 80% so something is not being reported correctly. From working at a University, I see that Asians are the most shortchanged in terms of admissions. Whites still have legacy admissions from their parents and grandparents, with some Asians starting to move into that category, but, in general, Asians need the highest grades, extracurriculars and test scores to get into college.
Seriously, Asians are not more intelligent than others. We're all humans with same levels of intelligence and potential to succeed. It's not like if you go to China, Korea, or Japan you'll step into a land of geniuses. When the entire population is Asian, things fall into places pretty much like everywhere else. Asians in non-Asian countries fare well in academics because their kids are willing to study more, and their cultural heritage is more focused on family their self (ie not "my identity"). And they tend to come from two-parents households. That's it. It's not magic. But God forbid we recognize these basic building blocks for academic success.
Highest socioeconomic demographic in the country? Black two married parent families.
What? Asians are dominating the college landscape. And, good for them. They earn it. Nothing is given to them. But, the poor white male who excels has little chance at an Ivy.
Yes, but they need higher test scores than any other group to get admitted. Or at least until the recent Supreme Court ruling supposedly ended that.
Not if they don't identify as male!
Wait ‘til you see the over representation of joooz at Harvard. Way more than 2%. That’s why DEI’s nutz are kewl with Hamas.
Solid points.
"She kind of was a diversity hire. But really, she was an ideology/political hire first."
Six of one, half a dozen of the other IMHO.
So if someone hires Tucker Carlson, should it be equally considered a diversity hire?
WSJ reported she will continue to receive a million dollar salary for teaching. Teaching what? Is there anything original about her so called work? The college will continue to pay a cheater?
Harvard should offer Dr Carol Swain the position of President although I doubt she would stoop to take it.
Harvard has inflicted a huge wound on itself. It needs to hurt for a while so hopefully its administrators will learn something. But I think it’s reputation is shot.
I think it would be a great attack to talk about income inequality in this instance. How is it that this woman, with no real-world skills, is making a million dollars when ordinary teachers struggle to get by? There are so many targets our progressive elites have on them, but they never get hit. Thanks for sharing the million-dollar salary.
Ditto your suggestion on Carol Swain. Just made the same point.
Not sure if you'll read my comment but Christopher Rufo has a Substack...he interviewed Carol Swain recently because she was one of the people that Gay plagiarized.
I’ve been following Carol
Swain for a few years and have seen her in person twice.. She’s marvelous and her story is inspiring. I’ll need to look up Rufo’s interview. Thanks for the tip.
I have been following her for a few years as well. I would love to see her in person! She and Shelby Steele are some of my favorite people. I learn so much from their wisdom.
Here is the link to his article: https://christopherrufo.com/p/a-white-male-would-probably-already?r=fugl3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Good point! That’s a big disparity that can’t be justified by Gay’s scholarly or leadership work. But it is still justifiable when viewed through the distorted lens of the intersectional oppression olympics. Gay is still a black female and she continues to identify as an academic.
Will she be able to discipline students for plagiarizing?
*Some* students, for sure. 😉
Obviously. It depends on the context.
Only Jews.
Change Harvard's name to Bud Light U.
Louisiana Tech is Bud Light U
I wonder what they’re paying our awful nasty ex-Mayor Lori Lightfoot?
Would anyone in their right mind allow their children to take a class with Claudine Gay?
"WSJ reported she will continue to receive a million dollar salary for teaching. Teaching what?"
My sources tell me she plagiarized Joe Biden's U of Penn course syllabus
That’s so low I couldn’t get there with a backhoe!
Teaching plagiarism of course! Or free speech rules? Haha…
NO professor is worth that salary!
You should check out Christopher Rufo's Substack. A few weeks ago, he interviewed Carol Swain. She was one of the people that Gay plagiarized. Very good article.
Link, please?
https://christopherrufo.com/p/a-white-male-would-probably-already?r=fugl3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you.
We all need to look into the president of the Harvard board Penny Pritzker who hired her and encourages the destruction of American ideals.
Her billionaire family are involved in destructive influence schemes including the extreme leftist Illinois governor and the millions given to lgbt racketeering organizations.
"The fact that Harvard will allow her to remain on the faculty is truly unbelievable..." No, it's totally believable and de rigueur. How many times have we all read about misfeasance, malfeasance, or gross incompetence in the education system that have been 'punished' by what are essentially paid vacations.?
How can she teach university-level classes when she has committed the most egregious academic sin of all: plagiarism? Her students couldn't be expected to be held to any academic standard at all--they could rightfully protest the hypocrisy. And no one can expect that her students have actually earned the grades they receive in her courses.
At the risk of sounding like the old lady saying, “well, back in my day...”.
Back in my day we took exams with pencils and bluebooks in a classroom. No laptops, no references, no take home exams where we could look stuff up. Just our brains and a few hours.
Now? Preliminary exams to qualify for a PhD program are take home and you have several days. References are fine. Is AI being used? No doubt. Academic standards have been debased for a long time. So do professors view plagiarism as the cardinal sin it used to be? Maybe not.
I stopped teaching in 2010, so I'm not sure what is expected these days. But "in my day," plagiarism was punishable with serious consequences--in addition to failing the paper and failing the course, I could go to the dean and have it placed on their permanent academic record. I never had a situation where I went that far, but it was on the table.
I just finished my MBA and did it online at a real school. Plagiarism was punished with expulsion and many (not all) professors took it seriously. For those that did, tests and exams were taken in a program that requires a drivers license scan using the laptop camera, then it locks down your computer so the only window accessible is the test itself, and the laptop camera is activated during the test. I doubt someone was monitoring me on the other side of the camera but I assumed it was recorded.
All of my written submissions were scanned by some AI plagiarism software that returned a score indicating the likelihood of plagiarism. I had one paper during the program that had a higher score than expected which apparently indicated there was a possibly of AI input in the writing and I had to produce other examples of prior writings to prove the writing voice was my own. It was a PITA. I think the tolerance for plagiarism is very dependent on the individual professor and how much work they’re willing to put into preventing or upholding academic standards.
By the time I retired from my high school in California (2015), teachers were no longer able to ask students to put their phones away during tests. Phones were actually confiscated during standardized testing, but were perfectly okay during any situation in the classroom.
Here in Canada, the provinces of Quebec and Ontario are banning cellphones in classrooms, in effect when students return from the holiday break -- long overdue! Public elementary and secondary schools are affected.
It is punished at Harvard as well - but only for students. Suspensions for an academic year for inadequate citation are typical, according to the student who wrote an editorial in the Harvard school paper who sits on the review board.
My qualifying exams were based on even older ideas. You were one on one with a professor for 3 different areas. They guided your study from the beginning. At the end you had dozens of long discussions with each of your 3 area professors which culminated in one final public discussion in each area. It wasn't unusual for me to get notes with dozens of books to read and a date in which we were discussing them in their office. Each discussion brought on more books/studies layered on each other. Pretty effective...........
Sounds stellar.
The genie of the internet is out of the bottle so students, beginning in elementary school, need to start being taught how to identify reliable and unreliable sources rather than just how to look up information.
Academic rigor is no more. The product of systemic -ism of some sort or another and those -ists who practice it.
There's something to be said for loyalty. I'm sure they knew she wasn't that bright when they hired her. She ticked all their boxes, so she got the job. Just because the rest of the world doesn't appreciate the same standards doesn't mean Harvard should change its ways. I started meeting Harvard graduates back in the 90s, and was impressed at how mediocre their thinking abilities were, and how brainwashed and conformist. It seems like a good place for Ms. Gray, who, after all was only doing what she was taught to do and picked to do.
While I agree that she was just doing what she was hired to to that doesn't absolve her of very much. Considering all of her plagiarism, I think she knew that she was not actually worthy of the position...knew she was a bit of a grifter. But she took the job. That is on her.
Finally, reality. Thanks Par.
IDK P. Depends on how far down the rabbit hole they are as far as being able to Guage how bright she was when hired. IOWs once fully stocked with those like minds they are just replenishing the tank.
One might have thought of Claudine Gay as a simple affirmative action hire who happened to get caught in the tornado caused by Oct. 7. However, she showed exactly what kind of human being she is by penning a resignation letter that refuses to address both her extensive plagiarisms and her pathetic performance in congressional hearings. To top it all, she blames her downfall on “racism”, of course. From Adams, mayor of New York, to Lightfoot, former mayor of Chicago, to the current mayor of Chicago and now to Claudine Gay, it has become an absolute habit to shamelessly play the race card any time things don’t go their way. This is a huge blow to honest black people, who don’t play this card but get the terrible reputation generated by the opportunists who do.
For example, Carole Swain
What's it called? The soft racism of low expectations? Harvard's zeal to be ultra-progressive shows them as in fact, racist.
They need to keep DEI alive
Surely you jest! We cannot expect equal outcomes because we offer equal opportunity. It is further decisive and racist. Standards should not be lowered just because of skin color. Harvard will lose “ bigly”, as President Trump would say.
I didn't think it possible to paper shred a Harvard degree but Claudine showed us a way. Harvard is a clown show until Gay is gone. Paying a bigot liar nearly a million a year? Nothing says 'I am an idiot!' like that action.
Revisit what Gay did to Roland Fryer - it is on the Free Press website. He must be smiling ear to ear.
And of course she blames it on racism not plagiarism nor the politics of funding. And she stays on faculty with a very high salary--so clearly Harvard won’t commit to examining the validity of the plagiarism charge which if proven, the consequences must also apply to faculty. So that charge still needs to be reviewed with full transparency and care or Harvard’s lack of action on that front remains a joke. But with the lemming left think of the faculty and students remains. The reputation serious evidence of anti-semitism and ethics that plague the entire school have been addressed.
I don't think Harvard is terrified of firing Gay. They don't care because they are communists and they will do whatever it takes to break down society in this country.
NPR is already calling for her to be replaced with a “woman of color.”
It’s amazing how they get to have it both ways. If you suggest Gay was hired for her race and gender your are declared a racist, while at the same time they get to declare their intention to hire based on race and sex.
But if you see it, you’re the -ist.
That's no surprise at all.
DEI departments are never going away completely. They employ too many people who have no other “skills”. It would be similar to stopping various forms of welfare; can’t do it because the “system” employs too many people, many non-whites.
The bloom is off the rose. Just like Dems suggest for coal miners, these people should start going to continuing ed classes at their local JUCOs... or learn how to install solar panels and fix windmills.
They will at corporations if it is no longer a "thing". They will cost cut them away. The place they will be hard to get rid of is in the government.
Disappointed to learn that Shirley Tilghman is part of the Harvard Corporation. She was a great president of Princeton. Lost all respect for her.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” - Samuel Johnson. Now it’s race. Claudine Gay hurts African-Americans worse than she’ll ever know or wants to know, by invoking racism to try and cover the stench of her own arrogance, incompetence, dishonesty, lying, and cheating. She hides behind her person-of-color privilege card, instead of being accountable. Shameful.
The response by Leftists has shown that they are doubling down on the idea that black people should not be held to the same standards as anyone else.
The subtle racism of low expectations.
Not so subtle, at this point.
I of course agree with you. But in woke world, the only thing that matters is equity. Equal outcomes. Competency, originality, rigorousness, etc. are white supremacist constructs designed to hold black people back. Holding them to any sort of traditional standards is just pure racism.
Given the variety of abilities and potential present in all humans, anyone expecting equal outcomes no matter what is completely mental.
Exactly. But DEI is predicated on Tabla Rasa, so any outcomes are culturally driven. Capitalism and freedom allow each person to figure out their own strengths, and develop them. And that diversity of non-academic talents is highly beneficial for society. DEI is only academic credentials based. (Of course! They extract the maximum toll to grant credentials!)
Gay is a product of the decades-long DEI initiative, and she played the game well -- until she got caught. If she'd kept a lower profile, she'd still be president. Harvard never really cared about the plagiarism charges; maybe it's something they've come to expect from DEI hires. She only got roasted when she testified. Even then, if she was astute and well-advised she could have put forward non-answer answers like most politicians and bureaucrats do (see, e.g., Mayorkas recent interview). Essentially this requires her to swallow whatever pride she has and just lie with a straight face (Id.). Playing the RACE card is indeed the last refuge of DEI advocates/bureaucrats; the kryptonite of defenses. When there is no actual defense, claim racism. The mob reacts in support of the idea that everyone opposed to them is racist, and therefore believes the nonsense that racism is the motivating factor. Sad. I'm glad I am 73 years old and won't be around to see how this all turns out. I hope for the best, for my three granddaughters' sake, but I'm not optimistic.
BTW, kudos to Congresswoman Stefanik for sticking with the questions until she got real answers. Textbook cross-examination, well-performed.
Will they be lowering the standards for pilots because I can see passenger liners making a comeback.
That response by progressives is expected. What's sad is that Gay is buying into that as well.
I think Gay buying into it is *completely* what one would expect. She has, for years, managed to convince herself that her wealthy background creates no difficulties in classing herself among the "oppressed." That following the rules--even the very basic and primary rule of academics: do not plagiarize--did not apply to her. Her very sense of self is completely reliant upon believing that everything she does is automatically right and good, no matter how wrong it is objectively.
True enough. She felt protected. But when you are publicly exposed as a plagiarist - you have to own up to it.
Really? HAs that happened with her yet?
No
lol
How anyone could see her as oppressed is beyond me.
But I am starting to sense that this is going to wind up with a return to male, predominantly white and if not straight, closeted, dominance.
I don't think so. That would be 100% unacceptable to the people in control.
Currently in control. ICBW but I begin to see cracks.
I think money is likely to prove to be the deciding factor. Wealthy donors are closing their purses. Ultimately, those in charge will have to do whatever is necessary to loosen those purse strings...or find an alternate source of funding.
We have recently learned about the amount of funding that is pouring into our universities from governments that *despise* the U.S. Perhaps those donors can be induced to up their contributions enough to make up the difference, so there will no need for a change of policies.
I predict that if a change of policies becomes necessary, the more devoted adherents of CRT on the board will resign in protest.
Jeff Epstein always knew how to loosen purse strings. And that's today's news item...
Lynne, you may be onto something.
One of the many criticisms of Claudine Gay is that she made life very difficult for African American males who held different political viewpoints. Ronald S Sullivan Jr who was dean at Harvard was dismissed after joining Harvey Weinstein's legal team. Roland G. Fryer Jr. was also subject to political persecution for his research that showed there was no racial difference in the shooting of unarmed men in Houston.
It's race with a strong mixture of ideology. It is the leftist decision of who is "really black" ie Joe Biden's statement 'If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12910527/Black-law-professor-says-Harvard-President-Claudine-Gay-DESERVES-attacks-credibility-helped-destroy-careers-two-African-American-scholars-work-contradicted-woke-beliefs.html
I couldn’t help contrasting Gay’s *claim* of being persecuted because of her race with the decades of Clarence Thomas’ *actual* “digital lynching” for daring to be a black conservative originalist. Gay certainly has “chutzpah”...
or as she would say, CHOOTS-PAW
🤣
Someone needs to check whose work she plagiarised for her resignation letter.
All word salad copypasta sounds the same. The Harvard Corporation board is just as compromised as Gay and should also resign. All roads lead to Obama and the DNC: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-get-into-harvard-gay-bobo-corporation
My favorite was the part about her “commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor” being her bedrock. The greatest doublespeak of all time. She will live out her days thinking she was the victim here.
If she truly believes that, that’s a true sign of mental illness.
I strongly suspect she modeled it after MacArthur's farewell speech at West Point. There's certainly one person who thinks Claudine Gay is a martyr: Claudine Gay.
She got something else right, resigning was the best thing for Harvard. Mind you her replacement will be worst, probably Ibram X Kendi.
Or better, Clarence Thomas. Do you think he'd take the job if offered?
No chance, but if that happened, I would probably die from laughter.
You’re on a roll today, Jacky!
The Babylon Bee shows her cribbing the Gettysburg Address and Nixons resignation speech
lol someone did put it through Grammarly's plagiarizing software and yup, it got flagged. Considering she couldn't even write an acknowledgement without stealing it from someone else, are we surprised? https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1742261717025927582?s=20
My take on her letter was stupid and scared are a really bad combo.
Excellent!!
I find myself uninterested in Gay's resignation. To those in the mainstream media and in academia, they will frame her resignation as racism - a "mob" coming for her.
I don't think that's true, but it's how most within these institutions genuinely see it.
The problem is so much deeper. It's a generation of leading universities bloating with layer upon layer of administration. Faculty still has to pledge fealty to administrative ideology.
Gay's tenure might be the most egregious example - one of the most prestigious universities led by someone who probably shouldn't even be considered for tenure as a professor. But we'd be mistaken if we didn't recognize that this is going on at hundreds of other feted research universities.
They're not scared. They're indignant. And as we've seen recently at UCSD with its new code requiring student indoctrination to "climate science," this problem is so pervasive that MIT can dig in and protect Sally Kornbluth without even a shred of hesitation. Nor should we, again, have any interest in her removal. Just another symptom of the blight of critical thinking spreading through higher institutions in the '10s and '20s.
"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned" - Richard Feynman.
If she didn't lose the money, she didn't really lose.
They won't feel pain until you cut off their money, because at the end of the day it's about the money and it always was. Study after study is the same. Secular people care about money more than anything, and "equity" always means "more money for me".
Tell university students. They put you in debt for life so they can make morons obscenely rich. Stop giving the universities more money.
While I agree money is always a huge factor, I believe the prestige that goes with the job is actually the bigger loss.
"...feted research universities."
I think at this point, they're fetid.
I don't think anyone without agenda actually buy the racism claim. For one thing, Liz McGill was sacked too, and earlier than her. Then the fact that her academic credentials were thin. The final death knell was the plagiarism. There's just no way to defend that anymore. And then for her to cry racism after the way antisemitism was allowed to run rampant on her campus, it all sounds so hollow.
This racism claim won't stick except with the already very woke.
They are supposed to have plagiarism standards for their professors at colleges. It blows me away they would keep her there.
A major feature of this administrative bloat is the lack of diversity of thought. Since every professor and administrator has a similar view of the world, they see issues without nuance.
They don't recognize the antisemitism. If challenged (and that would never happen from someone within their circle), they would make a comment like "criticism of Israel is not criticism of Jewish people." To them, all the work and actual academic thought that went into the NHRA is "just one viewpoint."
Then they turn a blind eye when it's obvious the protests are, after all, targeting Jewish people. In Ann Arbor, this has been going on for decades - a group of antisemites stationed outside of a temple in a nice residential neighborhood every Saturday. Just a mile from campus.
The racism claim shouldn't stick, but within the new ivory tower, it's pervasive. And now that the mainstream media is more talking heads who stay in their comfortable spaces instead of going out and learning about the world, they're buying it, too.
Whether it was race-adjacent or not, it is crystal clear that a mob came for Gay. A mob led by Ackman and Bari, among others.
And that doesn't mean I defend Gay or her past. It's simply a reading of the facts. The woman was mobbed out.
We live in a time when language has become less precise. Word games are played.
One such game is to take a word that has specific negative connotations, like "mob", and apply it in an imprecise manner. Mob implies a physical crowd and organization. Neither was true here.
When you say "a mob came", you conjure an image of populism - of a group of non-diverse rabble-rousers screaming non-thinking slogans in hatred . A mob didn't come. It was instead many people from many backgrounds in many different manners talking about the problems illustrated clearly in this article.
What was notable about this not-a-mob at all was that people were very specific about the issue. People reasoned that Jewish students are also entitled to safety on campus. That a double-standard was being applied in which some groups could exercise "hate" speech and some groups could not. That Gay herself had been involved in several cases where professors were censored while she was claiming here that Harvard was powerless to deter what really was a mob with most of its connotations. That Harvard ranks dead last among major universities in academic freedom. And that she had engaged in academic misconduct on many occasions and was far less published (even counting the plagiarized work) than others who had held her position.
Very nice.
Excellent retort to an unworthy, and ignorant, comment.
Well said.
Harvard is where young minds go to DEI.
👏👏👏🤣
It's where young minds go to DIE.
On Twitter, the Leftists are screaming that we ought to subject the academic work of ALL university presidents to the same scrutiny. I don't think they expected the critics of Ms. Gay to say, "Yes, absolutely!"
Personally, I think every professor at every American university ought to have their academic work subjected to the same scrutiny. I suspect that if discovered plagiarists were actually *fired* from teaching, some of the indoctrination on campus would diminish. The "By Any Means Necessary" professors very probably attained their degrees and published the necessary volume the same way.
This is a common leftist counter when you point out obscene corruption. They'll attempt to normalize it by saying "it's always been that way" or "well everyone does it".
Yeah guys, it's no big deal that they had cocaine in the White House. The problem is your expectation that our leaders are accountable to the law like we are!
I guess I have to thank my mama for curing me of "but everybody else is doing it". Some response about a bridge
My parents used a cliff.
Mine used cliff as well.
There has been an examination of other university presidents for their academic work and it has resulted in the resignation of a white male president! Stanford's president Tessier-Lavigne was forced to resign due to "serious flaws" in his research. The first report about possible faulty research was reported by Theo Baker a 19 year old reporter for Stanford Daily.
I think that is good although I wonder if he was targeted for an ignoble reason. Merit is merit. Cheating is cheating. Standards are standards. It is not complicated.
A review found that there were significant flaws and data manipulation in his lab. While he did not commit the fraud, it happened on his watch. Cheating is cheating, but some cheating has consequences that extend to and impact the real world.
Dr Tessier-Lavigne published papers and researched nerve cell responses to injuries with the goal of producing effective treatments for brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases. Allowing bad data to establish false medical conclusions is inexcusable and we should have learned that lesson from the Dutch study that supported trans therapy or the Covid "research." Maybe Tessier-Lavigne was targeted for ignoble reasons, but it is dishonorable to not have solid research. Maybe what happened to him as what happened to Gay will work to ensure better academic research and more thorough reviews.
I was thinking the same. These journalists should continue their impressive work by digging into one elite institution at a time. And then investigate the state schools.
All professors academic work is not scrutinized? Do we have legions of false Phds running around the country?
Quite possibly. If the person's committee approves their completed dissertation, no one else is going to ask questions. If the committee members are not particular.....
I used to edit papers for M.A. and PhD students of a former college acquaintance who is now a department head. I was unimpressed with the work of many (fortunately not all) of these students. The lack of writing skills and the difficulty they had making proper citations would not have passed muster with me if I were the one making the decision to pass or fail.
Fortunately, I wasn't. And some of my clients were genuinely bright, scholarly people whose first language was not English. But there were times when I felt ethically soiled by the work I was doing for students who did not, in my opinion, deserve the degree they were using my skills to help them get.
How did they react when people said "Yes absolutely"?
So far? Abashed silence.
The wokies don't counter with things in hopes of debate or change. Whatever they shout, what they are really saying is "Stop pointing out how my side is wrong and shut up." That is why their go tos are "Racist" or "TERF". They are generally just trying to stop discussion. In this case, their bluff was called...they don't have a backup plan.
Bill Ackman’s most recent X post outlines his well reasoned plan about what needs to happen next to dismantle DEI and return to a meritocracy in search of Veritas. The pressure on all institutions must continue.
Cornel West posted a virulently racist , antisemitic attack in defense of poor Claudine Gay. Worth reading to better understand how deeply entrenched this Woke garbage is and what it will take to fight these ideologues.
Thanks for the info.
Martin Gurri - whoever the hell he is - can call Trump all the names he wants. But the Free Press, as good as it is, still does not understand the reason why many sane people support him. Much of the FP rightly exposes the utter rot of the elite institutions. All of them are aligned against Trump with both real power and deranged behavior. The gut reaction of many is “if the rotten crew hates Donnie so much, maybe he is not so bad”. Or, “he has flaws but does not support DEI based racism, hatred of Jews, open borders, green energy debacles, etc. I wish we had a better choice but he will at least try to stop the insanity”. Much of life is a lesser of two evils dilemma, hence his popularity.
Here it is FP - the basis for a good investigative journalism article. People don't vote for Trump because they like him as a person - they vote for him because they hate what they see going on in the institutions of America and can only see one person who truly challenges those institutions and their policies.
For the immediate future, if there's an "R" on the name, you vote it. Otherwise....
Including George Santos??
Even Pedro Santos.
At this point I think a fair amount of his support is support for an underdog. Most people would have cratered under the mountain of legal proceedings. I am genuinely impressed. Additionally, everyone who has ever thought they got a raw deal at the courthouse, which is practically everybody who has been there, is sympathetic.
A very good point. Lawyers are not beloved in society (unless you need one), and this adds to the empathy for the orange man. If all of these governmental entities, save the money on investigating and prosecuting him, since 2016, and devoted it towards infrastructure on I-95, the world would be better off.
Had not thought of this. Excellent point. I always say the more money you have, the more justice you can get. What I mean is if you have enough money, you can hire a good lawyer to counter the amount of money they will use to try and convict you.
That is very, very true. It is also why even "winners" are also bitter. Even on the civil side. I have to hope the appellate and Supreme Court see Trump's various litigation and prosecutions as a chance to restore faith in the system. By that I do not mean rule as I wish them too but rather rule in accordance with the law and offer an articulate opinion in support of the ruling. Of course I thought they did exactly that in Dobbs and that was not well received.
Instead of acknowledging her mistakes - not condemning antisemitism and multiple accusations of plagiarism with lots of proof, Ms Gay resorts to playing the racism card. Yet another nail in her coffin.
It’s as reflexive as your knee jumping when tapped with a hammer.
The worst kind of non-apology. Boils my blood. The lack of accountability and the pointing of spineless little fingers.... even the Harvard Crimson said she got off easy.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/31/honor-council-member-gay/
" . . . the pointing of spineless little fingers ...". Superb Mrs. M. Superb. And oh the mental image planted.
Thanks Lynne!!!
It would seem that Ms. Gay is a very intelligent person. Stop and consider that she could have done the work, but the DEI industry told her she didn't have to. How many young people has DEI ruined by doing this?
It snickered at Diversity, most campuses don't have it.
It fiddled with Equity, telling the students they could get the same outcome without the effort.
It applauded Inclusion, creating marginalized groups with members that could ignore the rules.
Finally, and IMHO, the most damaging, was telling students to examine each interaction with other people for "micro-aggressions". Ruining the social fabric around them.
Excellent observations.
“It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am"
I think she must be enjoying saying things that are absolutely the opposite of the reality that people can see. "Because of 'who I am,' I can stand here in a nimbus of self-righteousness and lie to you, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Neener-neener."
They have no compunctions about lying to your face. I guess it's the Wokeist version of Taqiyya?
There's always the possibility that Ms. Gay, like some teenaged daughters, is so delusional that she actually believes her own shtick.
She absolutely believes it- along with hundreds of thousands of propagandized humans. The DELUSION is their Reality.
Anyone remember M. Scott Peck's book, "People of the Lie"?
This is merely another run-of-the-mill example of the constant gaslighting and projection that has ruled our culture since St. Floyd of Minneapolis. Ideology is consistently substituted for reality, because...”my truth”.
She's not lying to us, she's lying to herself and her allies.
I go back and forth between thinking that she believes herself and thinking that it's all a deliberate act.
It is the logical result of all the reimagining going on. They think they have redefined reality.
Reading her resignation letter, I am always interested in the racism attack. First, let me state the obvious. In some comments or messages, a lot of trolls and a fringe group of men with IQs less than 70 could and probably did send some personal and racial attacks.
But the broad middle and reasonable middle pay no mind to her race, look at her testimony, read the evidence, and don't think about race first, just the truth. For too long, the political right has cowered in fear of the Claudine Gay's of the world. We have given them this moral authority to impose their values on society. This example shows that our institution's leaders are idiots who are educated in parlor games rather than achievement.
To get rid of DEI, a focus on performance, results, and responsibility have to happen. Brave people have to attack the premise of the charge of racism. The changes of systemic racism have to get pushed back on strongly with style and substance. This is an opening to defeat this lousy ideology, but if the leaders of that resistance sound like idiots who have little style or substance, there is a chance for them to remain on their perch. How the opposition fights are critical to winning this battle.
Well stated. As for her acknowledging her fear of the fringe, that was foolhardy because it rewards their behavior.
Time for frank and naked honesty. The situation described at Hillcrest High School in NYC is symptomatic of the anti-White hatred launched by none other than our imbecile in Chief - the corrupt JR Biden. Talks of "puttin' yo back in chains." "Reparations" to people who were never slaves just because of their skin color. Creating a deep sense of unwarranted grievance and division. You can see it in the half-witted lunatic who stabbed two white girls in Grand Central Terminal, announcing he wanted to "kill all white people." In the replacement rhetoric of some of the politicians, exulting in a supposed "white minority status" for the country's future. In the barely concealed hostility and simmering glares on the subways. This is nothing less than a devolution to tribalism. It is dangerous and anti-American. And racist to its core. And it will lead to nothing good. I know it and you know it. Time to put a stop to it. The Democrat Party is behind this. Stop pretending otherwise.
ALl of this started under Obama
Perhaps the Harvard students and faculty will devote Jan 15 to listening closely to the I Have A Dream Speech and really hear the words : content of character.
Not a chance.
Progressives are some of the most dangerous people on earth. They all need to be fired and handed the door and have it slam their asses hard on their way out.
Great job Aaron and the Free Beacon! Followed both on Twitter last night. Best wishes - we FP people support you ! Thank you Bari and team as always. You’ve so profoundly changed my life. Love from Philly.