VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON CLAUDINE GAY & HARVARD

In his article below Victor Davis Hanson asks some pertinent questions about Harvard's future, the fate of its governing board, Claudine Gay's shoulder-shrugging indifference to shockingly high and obvious levels of anti-Semitism on Harvard's campus, her intellectual dishonesty, her mediocrity as a scholar as well as what might be her eventual fate despite the anxious intercession of Barak Obama on her behalf with Harvard's Board of Governors.

Afraid of being exposed for hiring someone as Harvard's president who was woefully inadequate to hold such a lofty position and afraid of being accused of racism if it dismissed Claudine Gay based on her inability or, worse still, her unwillingness to act in defense of Jewish students at Harvard being subjected to frighteningly aggressive demonstrations of anti-Semitism and Hamas flag waving on campus, Harvard's governing board permitted her to resign after more than 40 instances of plagiarism had been discovered in her papers.

Many of us popped the cork on the champagne we had been saving for just such an eventuality, but the effervescence began to fizzle when we realized that Ms. Gay would remain as a professor at Harvard with a salary of over $800,000.00 per year. Based on recent revelations about her being an academic fraud it comes as no surprise that most parents now consider having her teach their children for free would be far too expensive. 

Nevertheless, Ms. Gay can now frisk about in the faculty common room with failed mayors Bill de Blasio and Lori Lightfoot together with failed CNN news anchor Brian Stelter all of whom Harvard has employed as lecturers. 

Failing upwards is a cherished prerogative of leftocrats. After all, we have a serial plagiarist taking up space in the White House. The difference between stupidity and genius, Einstein is alleged to have observed, is that genius has its limits which makes one wonder where Kalamity Harris will land. The prospects are limitless. We are dealing with people who would have promoted Captain Bligh to an Admiral of the Fleet.

It is an enormous relief to see Ms. Gay clear out of the president's office at Harvard, but it was disappointing to read her letter of resignation where somewhat inevitably for a "diversity hire" she played the race card, admitted to no culpability and failed to apologize for her divisive stewardship. On December 8th., wearing spectacles that looked as if they had kidnapped her face, Ms. Gay did apologize for her remarks at the end of her testimony before a congressional committee. Her apology reminded me of the husband who came home with a bouquet of flowers after a late night of carousing but failed to understand that the flowers didn't matter if he wasn't wearing his pants. 

Few, if any, will miss Claudine Gay at the helm of Harvard, but many think allowing her to resign over plagiarism instead of being dismissed for her abject moral failure to confront and enforce penalties for blatant anti-Semitism and against Harvard's supporters of Hamas is a bit like Al Capone being convicted of tax fraud instead of numerous murders. I suspect this was an attempt by Harvard's governing board to obtain absolution without forsaking its original sin of embracing the destructive absurdities of D.E.I. in the very first place.

Harvard—Out the Frying Pan Into the Fire - Victor Davis Hanson (victorhanson.com)