Introduction

The worst part of writing a daily ethics commentary blog arrives when a juggernaut ethics train wreck starts causing carnage in all directions. Following the story is critical to the mission here, but doing it thoroughly makes Ethics Alarms less interesting, more predictable, and boring both for me and the readers. Examples of this phenomenon are, unfortunately, numerous. I’m sick of writing about Donald Trump’s miserable habits and rhetoric. I’m sick of writing about the Left dividing the nation, wrecking democracy, and crushing institutions to try to avoid having to defeat him fairly. I got thoroughly sick of writing about a dumb, corrupt, arrogant Democratic Representative who pulled a fire alarm like a 13-year-old to disrupt a House vote, and who should have been harshly punished for it…but was allowed to get away with an obvious lie. Etcetera: the mainstream media bias that so many progressives refuse to admit…the George Floyd Freakout…the DEI scam….the January 6 narrative….you can list them as easily as I can.

And I am really sick of writing about Harvard’s unethical culture, but having to watch and write about the Claudine Gay scandal is the worst yet. This story should have been quickly resolved, allowing Ethics Alarms to concentrate on more legitimately contentious matters. The facts aren’t in dispute, or shouldn’t be, embarrassing though they may be: [Added: I’ll get around to placing links to the corresponding EA posts, I hope, when I have time. You can also find them by searching for “Claudine Gay,” Harvard,” or by clicking on the “Claudine Gay” tag after the post.]

1. Harvard University, hard in the throes of militant wokeness that EA flagged years ago and that prompted me to renounce my degree and boycott my class reunion, appointed Gay, an under-qualified president who had not distinguished herself as a Harvard dean, to signal a full-thrust by the university to make its diversity, equity and inclusion obsession the major focus of its existence, as part of the American Left’s grand agenda. The new president had not distinguished herself as a scholar or a manager: the first time Gay’s name appeared in Ethics Alarm was here, in another disgusting Harvard episode where it (and she) abandoned basic principles of fairness and due process to “believe all women.” (I never revisited this mess: here is the latest.)

2. Gay almost immediately, after emitting standard woke blather upon being officially installed, botched her first substantive challenge, the shocking pro-Hamas, anti-Isreal demonstrations by Harvard students proclaiming their ignorance of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, their knee-jerk obsession with a binary “white oppressors vs. of-color oppressed” world view (because Harvard teaches them this), anti-Jewish bigotry, or all three. She repeatedly tried to employ vague language to avoid taking what should have been the obvious principled stand, which was “No, students may not threaten other students belonging to an identifiable group by endorsing a genocidal agenda, and those who do will be punished.”

3. Called to testify before Congress, the new president looked and sounded like an ill-prepared fool, unable to articulate a basic truth, which is that anti-Semitic demonstrations on a college campus constitute unethical and intolerable conduct that creates a hostile environment for Jewish students. Following nearly unanimous criticism of her weasel-worded answers to easy questions from Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanek, Gay made the situation worse with a mewling statement about her “truth,” thus endorsing ethical relativism.

4. That her performance was worthy of termination, except under the progressive principle that blacks are to be always be held less accountable than whites and assessed under less challenging standards, was neatly demonstrated when the white female president of UPenn was quickly dismissed after giving virtually the same unforgivable answers as Gay in the same hearing.

4. Harvard’s leadership moved to protect Gay (and their poor selection of a president based on color and gender rather than experience and demonstrated ability), only to have her scholarship revealed as shoddy by the gradual revelation of repeated instances of plagiarism in her past work. These were of a sufficiently serious nature that, as virtually all agreed, an undergrad who behaved similarly would be flunked and suspended. To this, the Harvard Corporation moved to minimize the offense, and, incredibly, gave Gay leave to edit some of her works to remove the evidence of her academic violations. Meanwhile, Harvard had its lawyers threaten the New York Post for publishing the facts about Gay’s, and Harvard’s, developing disgrace.

5. The scandal did not fade away; it intensified. Harvard’s student-run newspaper was openly and fairly critical of Gay and Harvard’s “circling the wagons.” Calls for her to leave came from Republicans, Democrats, African-American scholars, and editorial pages on both sides of the ideological divide. Harvard donors renounced their pledges. Over and over again, commentators opined that Gay’s continued tenure as president would erode Harvard’s prestige, influence, academic standing and “brand.” This week, more allegations of plagiarism surfaced.

6. She was forced to resign. Of course. Yet instead of doing so with dignity by making the appropriate expressions of responsibility, remorse, acceptance, and honesty, Gay defaulted to the wokeism playbook of blaming her critics for racial animus. In doing so, she proved her critics correct: she lacked the character and integrity a president of Harvard, indeed the president of any institution, indeed any effective leader in any setting, must have.

Despite this sequence of events leading to the unavoidable conclusions that a) Gay was an irresponsible choice for the job to begin with; b) she had immediately demonstrated that she was not capable of a minimally acceptable level of performing her duties at a time when Harvard needed the most effective leadership it could find, and group membership be damned; c) the extent of her scholarship deficiencies made her rehabilitation as a respected university leader impossible, and d) she had lost the trust and respect, not just of Harvard’s Jewish students, but of an unacceptably large number of other students, faculty and alumni as well, much of America’s Left is declaring her a a martyr and the victim of racism!

Astounding.

Nothing in the increasingly extreme and unethical conduct of the progressive cabal should surprise me after the past ten years, but I keep getting surprised anyway. I hope Americans are paying attention, and not just circling their own wagons. What we are seeing, hearing and reading has significance that goes far beyond Harvard and pathetic Claudine Gay. I am duty bound to try to describe the reaction so its import is clear.

There is no better place to start than Gay’s head-exploding op-ed in the New York Times.

I will examine it in Part 2.

[And do consider signing my petition to draft Barack Obama to be Gay’s replacement.]