Claudine Gay’s Resignation Letter and New York Times Editorial Make the Case for her Firing
January 5, 2024
[Black former law professor and Harvard grad Winkfield] Twyman claimed [Claudine] Gay … disrupted the careers of prominent black male professors … [and] coordinated a “witch hunt” against [black Harvard] economics professor [rising star] Roland G. Fryer Jr. after his research into the [police] killings of unarmed black men in Houston, Texas, found no racial disparities [contradicting the “liberal” narrative].
—New York Post, Dec, 29, 2023
In response to widespread criticism of her “disastrous” testimony on Capitol Hill, in which she declined to say that calling for the genocide of the Jews is inconsistent with Harvard’s Code of Conduct because this “depends on the context,” Harvard President Claudine Gay issued a typical non-apology apology,
There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.
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Gay is right about that because she herself confused the right to free speech with calls for violence against Jewish students.
Her sudden grasp of the obvious appears to have been generated by her realization that her job as Harvard president was at stake.
However, the damage had been done and calls by the students at Harvard for her to resign, coupled with proliferating accusations of a long career of plagiarism, Gay finally resigned her position as Harvard president, making her time in the position the shortest term (6 months) in history. Unfortunately, her resignation letter and New York Times editorial after the fact show that since she still doesn’t grasp her errors, she should have been fired.
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In her resignation letter, after stating how hard the resignation has been, Gay states how “painful” it has been to:
witness the tensions and divisions that have riven our community in recent months, weakening the bonds of trust and reciprocity that should be our sources of strength and [mutual] support …
Yes, especially since Gay herself is a major source, in her testimony on Capitol Hill and her moral ambiguity prior to that in dealing with the threats against Jews on campus, of those tensions that have “riven” the community.
Gay then states how distressing has been 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.
Unfortunately, it was Gay herself who cast doubt on her commitment to these “bedrock values …” in her stubborn refusal to state the obvious in her testimony, and in her moral equivocation dealing with threats against Harvard’s Jewish students. That is why she was called to Capitol Hill. Has she forgotten?
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Gay then states that these last weeks have:
… helped to make clear the work we need to do to … combat bias and hate in all its forms, to create a learning environment in which we respect each other’s dignity and treat one another with compassion, and to affirm our enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth.
Note first that Gay here does not admit any mistake on her part but merely affirms the platitude that we need to combat bias and hate. However, it was Gay’s own moral equivocation that failed to combat “hate and bias in all its forms” at Harvard in leaving Jewish students on campus fearing for their safety. It was her moral equivocation that failed to extend compassion to respect the dignity of Jewish (and other) students on campus and treat them with compassion. It was her fault more than anyone else’s in that period after the October 7 attacks on Israel that pro-Hamas demonstrations on the Harvard campus led to these fears.
Gay only states a highly abstract defense of “open inquiry and free expression” when, in fact, Harvard “finished dead last in the 2024 College Free Speech Rankings from … the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.”
Gay still seems to think that all the problems at Harvard just fell on her from the sky with no culpability on her part.
Gay begins the next paragraph in her letter talking about herself:
When I became president, I considered myself particularly blessed by the opportunity to serve people from around the world who saw in my presidency a vision of Harvard that affirmed their sense of belonging—their sense that Harvard welcomes people of talent and promise, from every background imaginable, to learn from and grow with one another.
It is not clear why Gay thinks her feeling of blessedness upon being appointed president of Harvard is relevant to the crisis that resulted in her resignation, except, perhaps, that it may have distracted her from doing her job. The Left is always talking about how “historic” an appointment is but one is not appointed to be historic. One is appointed to do a job and it appears that Gay was too focused on her historical significance to do hers properly. Similarly, it is not clear why Gay thinks that the fact that many people “saw in [her] presidency a vision of Harvard that affirmed their sense of belonging” is relevant to the crisis that resulted in her resignation except that she let them down. The appointment of the first black woman at Harvard will now be seen as a failure that exposed the perils of the “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” program.
Gay concludes by praising her own significance:
When my brief presidency is remembered, I hope it will be seen as a moment of reawakening to the importance of striving to find our common humanity—and of not allowing rancor and vituperation to undermine the vital process of education.
On the contrary, Gay’s brief presidency will be remembered as a period in which the rancor and vituperation literally rose, through her “woke” failures, to dangerous levels, and all the fluff in her resignation letter will not change that.
As bad as her resignation letter is, her New York Times editorial is worse.
It seems that Gay, the daughter of some of Haiti’s wealthiest and most politically connected, and possibly corrupt, men, is the victim here.
As Gay sees it:
at a congressional hearing last month, I fell into a well-laid trap
…as…
demagogues” sought to “weaponize [my] presidency.
Actually, no!
New York’s Republican Rep. Elise Stefanak asked her a simple question with an obvious answer but Gay, incomprehensibly, gave irresponsible answers that even eventually led Harvard students, not “the vast right-wing conspiracy” or “white racists” to call for her resignation. Gay still does not understand that her appointment as Harvard president was not about her. It was about the proper free and open education of Harvard students.
Thirty years ago, black Democrat Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan inspired praise from both sides of the aisle because she spent less time thinking about herself and more time about doing her job with the highest standards of fairness to both sides.
Claudine Gay is no Barbara Jordan. If she were, she would still be the president of Harvard.
Image: Twitter screen shot
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