Many black students at Harvard continue to believe that “racism,” and not plagiarism, explains Gay’s forced resignation: “One Month Later, Black Harvard Affiliates Reflect on Gay’s Resignation,” by Summer Z. Sun and Samantha D. Wu, Harvard Crimson, February 1, 2024:
Hable G. Fitsum ’27 said she believed criticisms against Gay’s credibility as both a leader and academic were racially targeted.
“I definitely feel like she was being held to higher standards or being put under more of a spotlight because she’s a Black woman,” Fitsum said.
Fitsum has things backwards. Gay was held to a much lower standard than white candidates when she was appointed as Harvard’s president, a beneficiary of affirmative action. She had produced in 20 years as a professor only ten short articles of doubtful worth, and no book. But once the Harvard Corporation had selected her, but before the die was cast and the offer officially made, what professor was going to dare to point out that in Claudine Gay’s case, there was no there there? Why subject yourself to a charge of “racism” that would only make your life miserable?
Gay wrote in the New York Times op-ed that her critics “trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument.”
Gay fails to provide a single “lie” that was supposedly said about her. And what she calls “ad hominem” attacks were merely the justified expressions of outrage at her flouting of the most elementary academic standards, in her constant practice of plagiarism. There was “reasoned argument” from Gay’s opponents, who presented the evidence of her plagiarism in almost all of her scholarly work, explained how those many examples could not possibly have been the result of simple “confusion,” as Gay had tried to suggest, and reiterated the need to uphold those standards that Claudine Gay has spent her entire “scholarly” career violating. It was those who mindlessly rallied round her, ignoring the charge of plagiarism simply because she is black, who have shown themselves incapable of reasoned argument.
“They recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament,” Gay wrote. “They pushed a false narrative of indifference and incompetence.”
No one was pushing a “narrative of indifference and incompetence” against black people in general. It was Gay’s indifference alone, her incompetence alone, that was being held up for examination, criticism, and outrage. How quick Gay was to claim that any attack on her could only be explained by white animus, and not by her own obvious defects. She has such a mediocre publishing record — no book, ten short articles, the last of which she published six years ago — that one must conclude that she has been a beneficiary of affirmative action during her entire academic career.
One of the black Harvard students who complained about Gay being forced to resign, Hable Fitsum ’27, called her resignation “unfortunate,” but also expressed displeasure with Gay’s response to campus tensions during her tenure, pointing to a lack of support for Muslim students on campus.
“The only emails that she sent were about combating antisemitism,” Fitsum said. “The people who needed protection were the Muslim students.”
It’s absurd to claim, as Fitsum does, that “the people who need protection [at Harvard] were the Muslim students.” There has not been a single noisy or menacing protest at Harvard aimed at Muslims. None of them were surrounded by threatening groups who briefly held them captive, as has happened to Jewish students. No Jews have harassed Muslims, or blocked their entry to Widener Library, or chanted endlessly about the need to destroy the Palestinians, the way Muslim protesters do when they call for the destruction of Israel – “Palestine shall be free/From the river to the sea” — and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state
Ian M. Toyota ’27 said stepping down “wasn’t the right thing to do,” adding that he “didn’t see such a big reason” for Gay to resign.
“I feel like she had a lot of potential,” he said.
Forty examples of extensive plagiarism is not “such a big reason” for Gay to resign? And what makes Ian Toyota think that Gay has a “lot of potential” when the past twenty years hav shown quite the opposite: constant and extensive plagiarism, a thin rivulet of ten short papers that were about trivial subjects? Where in any of that did Claudine Gay “show potential”? Let’s see just how much “potential” Claudine Gay shows from now on, knowing she can no longer plagiarize, and will have to treat subjects less trivial than those she has written about so far, as when she solemnly concluded one paper with the observation that black Americans are jealous of Hispanic economic success, and another with the observation that “Democratic governors direct federal housing subsidies to supportive constituencies when they have the discretion to do so.”
Jayell1 says
‘…..“I definitely feel like she was being held to higher standards or being put under more of a spotlight because she’s a Black woman,” Fitsum said…….
So there’s a problem with putting people ‘in the spotlight’ when they’re of a certain ethnic origin? But black people are always putting themselves in the spotlight ad nauseam (just look at the media!) or getting their gullible friends to do it for them – which is possibly why Ms Gay managed top get herself installed in the top job at Harvard with the spotlights on her all the time (it goes with the job, not the race) – and the spotlights showed up one or two things about Ms. Gay that perhaps didn’t suit her friends or her own ego too well. If Ms. Gay was the genuine article or had anything genuine at all about her, and actually understood what she and the top job (or any job) at Harvard was supposed to be about, shouldn’t she have seen this coming a mile off?
‘….“They recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament,” Gay wrote. “They pushed a false narrative of indifference and incompetence.”…..’
People have to ask where ‘stereotypes’ originate, and the answer is ‘reality’. And the more a ‘stereotype’ seems to be ‘tired’ or to have been ‘recycled’, the more faithful it has to be to that reality otherwise it wouldn’t stand up to that much ‘recycling’. And how stupid or deluded must one be to be talking about ‘false narratives of indifference and incompetence’ after the evidence of indifference and incompetence has been clearly set out for all to see forty times (?) over?
And as for ‘….Ian M. Toyota ’27 said stepping down “wasn’t the right thing to do,” adding that he “didn’t see such a big reason” for Gay to resign. “I feel like she had a lot of potential,” he said……’
Sorry, but isn’t the time for trying to sell people on their ‘potential’ supposed to be at the BEGINNING of their careers, not the end, because we’d normally expect high flyers to have already reached their ‘potential’ by that time, which would have been the sole justification for them being at the top; but what’s happened here is that Ms. Gay somehow managed to get herself into the job after she’d already proved she did NOT have the ‘potential’?
I believe that one of Ms. Gay’s friends and colleagues further down the pecking order at Harvard is also on the way out and in very similar circumstances, having also apparently come under the ‘spotlight’. How many more? Maybe it’s time the ‘spotlight’ was also trained on another purported historic celebrity of academia of similar provenance to Ms. Gay and whose ‘academic success’ should, according to rather a lot of evidence, have remained in his ‘dreams’.
Doc Durden says
Maybe when you get a position based upon your biological classifications then that biological classifications should be part of your evaluation