I owe Tom P. this Comment of the Day. In the post, I asked EA readers to check out the Times’ readers’ reactions, because I dreaded reading them. He was the first to provide an overview. I am most grateful.

It is not surprising, but still discouraging, that the early responses were positive to Gay’s truly awful attempt to shift the blame for her rapid demise as Harvard’s president to the critics and “racial stereotypes,” as well as implying what Hillary Clinton would call a “vast right wing conspiracy.” I cannot conceive of any good faith examination of the events leading to Gay’s resignation leading to the conclusion that anyone was responsible for her forced exit other than her, and to a lesser extent, the Harvard Corporation that elevated her, enabled her, and tried to cover for her, ultimately making a bad situation worse. Every attempt to defend Gay has fallen into three categories, and often all three: ignoring the facts (which Gay does in her Times op-ed), excusing plagiarism and endorsing the untenable double standard of holding students to a more exacting standard of integrity than Harvard’s faculty, deans, and president; race-baiting, which is particularly hard to justify under these facts when Gay’s race (and gender) have been the Golden Tickets that got her the job in the first place, and a “we can’t let them win!” rationalization. None of the four is rational or worthy of respect.

Tom’s survey, however, is encouraging. It suggest that all the metaphorical dust being thrown in the eyes of the public by Gay, progressives, pundits and the media, isn’t going to be sufficient to fool enough of the people enough of the time, as Honest Abe might put it.

Here is Tom P.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Its Post-Harvard President Firing Tantrum Shows That The Left Is Even More Corrupt Than We Thought! Part II: Claudine Gay’s Disgusting NYT Op-Ed”...

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Per your request, below are my observations of NY Times readers’ comments.

I performed a cursory review of three sets of reader comments. I looked at approximately 25 comments and replies in each set. The oldest comments were ~10 to 1 supportive of Gay. The newest set of comments was about 2 to 1 against Gay. In the “Reader Picks” set of replies, they are overwhelmingly against Gay. See copies of three of the more popular comments below.

Maybe there is hope for our republic after all.

“She takes little responsibility for how here plagiarism complicates the lives of Harvard students. Having been in academia for more than 30 years (now retired), I sadly witnessed many students being suspended or expelled for similar lapses in academic judgment. Surely there were racist attacks and they should not be diminished. But, this sounds very defensive and self-righteous and does not reflect a person with true leadership abilities.” 

(51 Replies, 4514 Recommend/ Share)

“Ms. Gay continues to ignore the fact that nearly half the country no longer trusts our traditional institutions to not lie to them or even have their best interests at heart. In particular, they don’t trust higher education, which has turned from a bastion of classical liberty and thought to an Orwellian farce of liberty where only one side of a debate over morals and ethics is allowed.

In addition, Harvard’s student body has an academic honor code and has every right to expect and demand the university’s faculty and leadership to comply. Ms. Gay didn’t. Had she been a student her penalty would have been suspension or expulsion.”

(10 Replies, 2108 Recommend /Share”)

“She defends her work. But scholars have pointed out that the regression coefficients she used in her key paper appear inconsistent with the public data and she has not released the data she used. All good scientists release their supporting data so their work can be validated. Why won’t she?”

(11 Replies, 1597 Recommend /Share)