While I was certain that Harvard would not have the integrity or guts to dump its albatross of a president having trapped the university in DEI Hell by selecting a black female social justice warrior in the first place, I have never held any illusions that this reflex circling of the progressive wagons and rote vote of confidence would do anything to slow Harvard’s demise. To be curt: the nation’s most prestigious university—for now—has a flat learning curve.
Isn’t that ironic.
Here are three updates on the ongoing Harvard debacle:
1 In what struck me as obvious and insincere groveling, President Gay attended a campus menorah lighting this week, as if that meaningless gesture somehow proves that she really has the backs of her school’s Jewish students, who now have to get their college education on a campus where other students called for their elimination. She joined a gathering of 100 people at the daily Chanukah lighting ceremony organized by the Harvard Chabad. The next day, she hosted a special showing of “Fiddler on the Roof” in Sanders Theater as the audience lunched on latkas, kugel and gelt.
OK, I was kidding about that last part.
Afterward the lighting ceremony, Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi of Harvard Chabad revealed to reporters,
“On our campus in the shadow of Widener Library, we in the Jewish community are instructed, ‘We’ll let you have the menorah, you made your point, OK. Pack it up, don’t leave it out overnight because there will be criminal activity we fear and it won’t look good.’ You know when change is gonna happen on this campus? When we don’t have to pack up the menorah!”
He wasn’t kidding.
2. About that “campus free speech” thingy that was supposedly the reason Gay took no action to stop students from calling for the eradication of Israel: two days after Gay’s performance before Congress, Harvard canceled a student event featuring a member of Congress who had criticized Gay’s testimony. Harvard’s John Adams Society, a conservative-leaning student group, was to host a discussion on the future of U.S.–China relations and their ramifications for American industrial policy on December 8. Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D- Mass.) was a featured speaker. But the day after Gay’s Waterloo, Rep. Auchincloss published a statement in which he opined, “Harvard ranks last out of 248 universities for support of free speech. But when it comes to denouncing anti-Semitism, suddenly the university has anxieties about the First Amendment. It rings hollow.” The next day, a day before the planned event, Harvard announced that there would be no program, and no forum for Auchincloss. The stated reason was that the event had been canceled becaus it was co-sponsored by a non-Harvard entity, American Affairs, the policy journal. The John Adams Society, however, had scheduled the event a month earlier, and had all the approvals and paperwork in order.
Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe it really was just a snafu, and the cancellation had nothing to do with the fact that a Gay critic would be speaking. The suspicion that the oddly-timed decision created, however, demonstrates that Harvard, through Gay and the Harvard leadership support for her, has forfeited trust in its motives and values.
3. But don’t despair, Harvard fans! There’s silver lining in this dark cloud: Gay has an ally in race-baiting “1619 Project” creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, who told CNN that the criticism of Gay was “racist.” “It’s laughable to think that the first ever black woman [to be president of Harvard]…is the one who’s unqualified….This is how racism works.” “No one has produced a shred of evidence that shows that the sole qualification that President Gay had was that she is a black woman,” the unqualified tenured black professor at Howard added. “She’s clearly qualified..There is no reason why she should have been ousted.”
NAACP president Derrick struck a similar chord with his support for Gay, writing, “Enough is enough. Harvard President Claudine Gay is a distinguished scholar and professor with decades of service in higher education. The recent attacks on her leadership are nothing more than political theatrics advancing a white supremacist agenda.”
Ethics Alarms 
The progressive party platform is to promote black supremacy, colonization of the United States by the third world, and the destruction of capitalism. I’m sick of listening to them. I haven’t heard them say a single thing worth saying in over a decade. They have captured every major institution in the country and are systematically destroying them. Whenever anyone dares to point out that their methods are destructive, racist, and regressive they start screaming racist nonsense about how much they hate white people and freedom. It is disgusting. They seem to think the list of rationalizations on this site is a list of ethical principles that should be followed with religious zealotry.
This is an interesting story.
First thought, does anyone think that it’s coincidental that Gay lit the menorah with a tiki torch, or do with it’s possible that someone was trying to allude to Charlottesville?
Second thought:
“She’s clearly qualified..There is no reason why she should have been ousted.”
I think she’s being focused on because of this issue and the political lightning rod that it was, and there are a lot of unqualifies plagiarists in offices around America. But. She’s not clearly qualified. And she’s a plagiarist.
In fact, perhaps due to how little time I spend looking at the credentials of university presidents, I can’t think of a less qualified person to be a university president. Having less than a decade of experience and having published only 11 papers, some of which have some pretty obvious plagiarism, I can actually think of a couple people I know who are arguably more qualified (although they might not be considered, not having graduated from Harvard, which seems a requirement for them). There’s approximately a 0% chance that Gay was actually the most qualified candidate, which meant that there’s an approximate 100% chance that she was actually a diversity hire.
None of which actually matters, because there’s also no universe where the President of Harvard was ever going to be anyone other than someone who loves diversity almost as much as they disdain free speech.
Wrote this on a phone, and fuck autocorrect.
“do with it’s”
“do we think it’s”
Here was the commentary on “Victory Girls” regarding the torch:
“Yes, that’s Harvard president Claudine Gay trying to ingratiate herself among the Jewish community on campus by using a Tiki torch to light a Menorah. The same object that neo-Nazis used in the Charlottesville, VA, “Unite the Right” rally of August, 2017. The same object they hoisted while chanting “Jews will not replace us.” To be fair, I’ve seen images of outdoor menorah lightings where the rabbi used such a torch to light a candle. But for Claudine Gay, with her history, this was not a good look. It’s the context, right?”
I missed the torch detail entirely. But if you are seeking a photo op with PR value, someone in your camp had better be thinking of such things, and Harvard used to specialize in PR chess. Now it can’t play PR Tic-Tac-Toe.
I’m so sick of the fake cry of “RACISM and White Supremacy”. I don’t care about color, I care about the character as is true of the majority of people I know. So I guess if one lacks in that area color is the only thing they have to fall back on. Strangely, since the 60’s until Obama, the black community and white community in our small area in the shadow of the Appalachian Mountains were all getting along just fine. Sure there was and is a fringe group that hate on both sides of the isle but now one of those groups is suddenly looked upon as a bad representation of the rest of us. But on the other side, that same hatred and bias are acceptable as long as it excludes everyone but white people. I could add more but I’ll stop here by saying this, some people can never be satisfied and happy no matter how much is given them. They will always be the victims and feel like the world owes them more!
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