Well, this is an upset. I would have bet almost anything that Kamala Harris or Joe Biden would eventually nail down the 2024 Ethics Alarms Authentic Frontier Gibberish Award, but no. A dark horse has grabbed the award, and with eleven full months to go! But no one can compete with this.
The Harvard Divinity School’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging hosted a head-exploding “Gathering to Breathe and Heal” event this week to—are you ready?— help students grieve over the resignation of former President Claudine Gay, who was, in reality, fired, and who richly deserved to be. Moreover, the justification for her removal was irrefutable and beyond debate. “Grieving” for the exit of any incompetent occupant in any job is proof of warped values. “Grieving” for for a cheating and dishonest occupant of any position of leadership demonstrates astounding ignorance of the essentials of being a leader and role model. “Grieving” for the appropriately rapid demise of an incompetent leader and dishonest scholar as the head of a prestigious university is deranged. The exitance of this event on campus is almost as humiliating for Harvard as the debacle of Gay’s short-lived presidency.
I’m saving the spectacular gibberish announcing this loony “Gathering to Breathe and Heal” event until last, because nothing could follow it. Trying to write anything after this is like being next on the program after Houdini, Al Jolson, Judy Garland, Jerry Lee Lewis or Ray Charles. Submit your favorite babble: I’m leaning toward “it is a container for holding emotions in community knowing that the circle holds us all.” Rarit!
Here it is…
Ethics Alarms 
This reads like an obituary. “…discuss and process the departure…” makes it sound like she’s dead!
“This reads like an obituary. “…discuss and process the departure…” makes it sound like she’s dead!”
But she isn’t! Harvard Corp. made a lateral move by offering darling Claudine a severance package of nearly a million U.S. American/year and a tenured professorship. Will that be a part of the circle of compassionate discussion?
No doubt this sweet deal will help to soothe her ego after being publicly disgraced and humiliated, although she will likely have to contend with direct student challenges, disrespect, and snickering behind her back.
“she will likely have to contend with direct student challenges, disrespect, and snickering behind her back.”
Snickering…heh…the humanity, am I right?
Anywho, the Lefty Protection Phalanx will continue their despicably paternalistic coddling, and any criticism whatsoever will be haughtily dismissed as both RAYcism, with a heapin’ helpin’ of SEXcism, most foul.
PWS
“This is not a space for debate.”
That’s diversity for you.
-Jut
Just a place for snowflakes to melt together with one another. What happens after these snowflakes melt, do they have to reinvigorate themselves with a visit to a walk-in freezer?
“What happens after these snowflakes melt”
It creates a WAHVALANCHE
PWS
So much I want to write about this that I’ve already written in one way or another, so I’ll include a few links to my blog for additional info to think about.
That flyer reads like it was written by a thoroughly brainwashed, delusional, card-carrying member of the 21st century DEI cult. Make no mistake about it, these people are quite delusional and quite obsessed.
AM Golden wrote, “This reads like an obituary. ‘…discuss and process the departure…’ makes it sound like she’s dead!”
It sounds like that because ANY win for rational reality and critical thinking against their DEI cult of delusions is equivalent to a death of some sort to these brainwashed snowflakes.
I wonder if anyone actually attended this delusional “Gathering to Breathe and Heal” and if so can someone get a list of the attendees names so they can be forwarded to the Harvard University Psychology Department, I’m sure there is a sane grad student or two that could devote their entire dissertation(s) on this nation-wide intentionally divisional cult.
Years ago the public at large could simply ignore the one or two wackos on the streets spewing their absurd nonsensical gibberish, no one took them seriously. What’s happening to our society and culture is not one or two wackos yelling on the street corner in some far off place that can be ignored, it’s infected our entire education system including places that you would have thought would be immune to such things – institutes of advanced learning, it’s permeated everything in our lives, it’s happening in your backyard. What’s happening is absurd and these people sound like a bunch of thoroughly ignorant adolescents rebelling against the world around them. The absurdities are abounding.
Back when I started my blog Society’s Building Blocks, lotta good that’s effort has done – hardly anyone reads the damn thing, I chose to focus on “Critically Thinking About Things That Change Our Society” because I saw a shifting trend that was quite disturbing. At the top of my list for blogging contents is the absurdities and bastardizations emanating from the the ignorant and immature extremes political left that have grabbed ahold of our society, culture and country as a whole and started dragging it into the oblivion of persecution, intolerance, bigotry, violence, etc with what seems to be an end goal of totalitarianism.
With all the delusional absurdities happening all around us as if they’re “normal” it’s hard to have hope. Where’s the hope for a better tomorrow that we once shared as a society? Please steer me towards hope if you can.
“21st century DEI cult”
Apparently, it is not DEI anymore: it’s Diversity, Inclusion and BELONGING (?).
What the Hell is that? Isn’t Inclusion and Belonging kind of the same damn thing.
I am completely baffled by the way progressives (not necessarily you, Curmie) keep changing the language they use. For a while, everything was BIPOC. I don’t hear that much anymore.
It used to be racist, now it’s all about white supremacy, which may now be morphing into colonizer.
I don’t know if it is just muddy thinking, if it is like a linguistic fad that keeps changing, or if they deliberately keep changing the way they talk about things to make their arguments a moving target.
Are they changing it to DIB because we mocked DEI by calling it DIE?
-Jut
JutGory,
DEI or DIB makes no difference whatsoever, you can’t put lipstick on that anti-white racism pig and try to hide it.
Curmie a “progressive”, no way. A true progressive would call Curmie a Conservative maybe even a Republican.
Why does Harvard have two offices for diversity? Is it because the glory of diversity can’t be contained within a circle celebrating our special needs?
jvb
That was my question. Or do they only have two? There’s undoubtedly one for the overall university. The one referenced here is for the Harvard Divinity School. Does every department have one? For all I know there’s one for every floor in the dorms.
By the way, I’d be grieving too if I thought it looked like the tide might be turning, my job at the local DEI office might be at risk, and I might be reduced to finding work selling widgets for corporate America, if they’d have me.
The last part of the announcement answered my questions. My first questions was “Why does Harvard still have a divinity program?” I mean, they used to be a Christian school, so it makes sense that they had on. However, I would be surprised if Christianity were ALLOWED at Harvard today. Then I read the last part, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging is the religion. That is what Harvard’s religion is.
The announcement seems to evidence they have at least three deans for “Belonging” in the Divinity school alone (and maybe as many for “Inclusion”?).
And some wonder why college costs for worthless degrees have become so outrageous.
I wonder if their container for emotions can fit all of my schadenfreude.
In retrospect, I wonder how many people showed up to heal. One hour isn’t a very long time, given that most visitations last two to three hours. I would think a Divinity School would be well aware of that.
And the lingering questions I have…
Was a picture of Claudine Gay there on an easel – ensconced in flowers, of course – for students and faculty to commemorate?
Did someone take the time to put together a picture board or two, showing Ms. Gay at various points in her life…maybe on a vacation, or smiling with some students, or at a chair in the library copyi…I mean, researching…material for one of her papers?
Video montages are great, especially if the volume isn’t terribly loud and the music is reflective. Ms. Gay is the right age, so some selected pieces from Milli Vanilli might be ones she would think appropriate. Was there a video? It could contain some clips of Ms. Gay…oh, I don’t know…speaking at a commencement, or bouncing a child on her knee and laughing…maybe talking with Elise Stefanik, or getting in her car with her husband as they leave for their honeymoon. Those moving images, especially ones that are old and grainy and move a little faster than real time, are really nostalgic.
Were those assembled there allowed to “say a few words?” I can imagine a few individuals walking up to a lectern, clearing their throats, and speaking to how their lives have been influenced by Ms. Gay’s time as president. A devotee could have selected a few portions from one of Claudine’s papers and read it to the group. I realize that debate was not allowed, but maybe someone with courage – probably a faculty member, choking back tears – could talk about how “Republicans Pounced” like foxes on little mice. An individual could do a dramatic re-enactment of Ms. Gay’s responses to the House Committee on anti-Semitism. Someone could mention how Ms. Gay was sacrificed to the god of right-wing racism and sexism” for barely even fifty instances of plagiarism. A student could elaborate on how the former president has inspired they to work harder, do just basic research, give credit only when it’s deemed necessary, and then play the race/sex/gender card when accused of copying the work of others.
I hope some of those elements, maybe even all of them, were present at the healing and breathing time. If so, I would actually be kind of sorry I missed it.