The editor of Campus Reform, Zachary Marschall, a PhD and an adjunct professor at the University of Kentucky, is far less diplomatic about Claudine Gay’s video statement (here) than I was yesterday (at the same link), but I substantially concur with his points in “ANALYSIS: Harvard president Claudine Gay is a hypocritical fraud.”

Among the details I only generally alluded to or failed to mention that he highlights:

• In 2022, Harvard ranked  as having the most anti-Semitic incidents of any campus in the country. 
• Though Gay claimed that Harvard “embraces a commitment to free expression,” in 2018, Harvard investigated a professor after students complained that he was making “verbal or non-verbal” microaggressions in class. Says Marschall, “A cohort of leftist university administrators that believe both speech and silence can be violence devoted more interceding in a nothing-burger incident than Gay has expended in response to student activists clamoring for more dead Jews.”
• “In 2020, then Harvard University President Lawrence Barcow issued a statement supporting the Marxist political movemnet Black Lives Matter, which just this week is celebrating the Hamas terror attacks.” Gay’s words suggested that Harvard would never do such a thing.   Marschall writes,

The anti-Semitic idea that Jews are benefactors of white supremacy informs Gay’s inability to take a consistent and morally sound stance on her students’ safety. Whatever capacity academics had for compassion and respect for people’s differences died in 2016 when Donald Trump’s candidacy drove the left into a radical combative hysteria. “The 6 justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again. It is our civic duty to accost them every time they are in public,” Harvard Law clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo stated after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Harvard scholars only know peace and empathy for their side, and Gay has made it clear that she considers Jews not on their side. 

Do read the whole thing.

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, subsequent remedial actions taken by an alleged tortfeasor cannot be introduced at trial to prove a party’s negligence, wrongdoing or culpable conduct. It is considered unfairly prejudicial. But the Court of Public Opinion isn’t bound by the Federal Rules, and neither is Ethics Alarms. Now that Biden has said “Never mind!” to the earlier cash for hostages deal with Iran, I look forward to Sec. Blinken and paid liar Karine Jean-Pierre babbling their arguments for why the 6 billion dollars given back to Iran for “humanitarian” purposes couldn’t possibly be connected to the sneak terrorist attack and its aftermath by Hamas. The reversal of the utterly reckless and irresponsible deal is more eloquent that they can ever be, and thoroughly rebuts their spin.

This is the Barn Door Fallacy: a negligent party taking now pointless measures to prevent what its previous incompetence already caused. It is cynical grandstanding,but in this case, it is also an admission, Federal Rules of Evidence or not. Donald Trump was right, conservatives were right, multiple Middle East experts were right, and anyone familiar with why it was once supposed to be insane to exchange money for hostages were right, while Biden, Barack Obama and the entire Democratic Party along with its mainstream media propaganda mouthpieces were wrong.

Would Hamas have attacked if Trump had been President? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the consequences widely predicted after Biden agreed to unfreezing billions in Iranian assets occurred, and he and his administration is accountable….which means they must be held accountable. They have blood on their hands.

If President Biden had any integrity or guts—he has neither—his position would be that Iran didn’t carry out the attacks, the released assets couldn’t possibly be connected to the carnage in Israel, U.S, policy was and is sound, and the deal stands.

Instead, the administration is saying “Oopsie! Guess we screwed up! Well, we’ll try to make it better. Sorry for all the blood and beheaded babies!”

If the Republican Party can’t clean out this gang of fools, it should disband and reorganize as a competitor for Cirque du Soleil.

At least a lot of Harvard professors were sufficiently disgusted by 31 Harvard student groups attacking Israel for “making” Hamas launch a sneak terrorist attack and further engaging in objectively evil conduct—

—to issue this open letter, signed by about 160 professors (including Alan Dershowitz–twice!):

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….Kwame Anthony Appiah, the New York Times ethics advice columnist, gives a rambling, barely-responsive and contradictory answer that only reaches the obvious conclusion after downing the issue in verbiage. The question:

I’m a dual Swedish and American citizen and have lived in Sweden for the past five years, with no plans on moving back to the United States. I have a Swedish husband, pay Swedish taxes and vote in Swedish elections.

I still maintain my American citizenship and file taxes in the United States every year. But I’ve made a choice not to vote in U.S. elections. Because I no longer live (or plan to live) in the States, I don’t think I should have a say in selecting its government.

I have expat friends who strongly disagree. They all vote and think that I should. What’s your take?

Easy, easy call. It is unethical to vote. Not living in the nation for five years, the inquirer cannot possibly be sufficiently aware of U.S. conditions, culture or public needs. Not intending to return to the U.S., the inquirer has no serious stake in the outcome of the election either. For the writer to vote in the U.S. would be like me being allowed to vote in Massachusetts elections when I haven’t lived there for years. The “expat” friends are wrong, and frankly, warped. I’ve had experience with Americans who are in the foreign service and seldom even visit the U.S. I found them to be culturally estranged from the nation I know, arrogant, detached, and biased. In fact, it is a serious problem that many of the people who represent the U.S. abroad no longer understand the nation they represent.

But I digress. Launching into long-winded equivocal academic mode, “The Ethicist” waxes on about whether one should have to pay taxes to have a vote, the wisdom of allowing people who aren’t citizens or have been convicted of a crime to vote, and “Does having made a contribution to your country over a period mean that you should be allowed to vote even after you’ve retired to another country?”, he finally proclaims, “A reasonable conclusion is that people granted the legal right to vote are morally free to exercise it.” Oh, shut up, man! The question wasn’t whether the inquirer had a right to vote or should have a right to vote. The question is whether it is ethical to vote under the conditions listed in the question!

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Brilliant.

Saying you “stand” with someone represented by a figure who isn’t standing. Referring to “Palestine,” when there is no such country to stand “with.”

And, of course, proclaiming solidarity with a terrorist group that just slaughtered innocent people.

Some of us realized that Black Lives Matter is an irresponsible, racist, violent and crooked movement run by despicable people from the very beginning. The latest example is no surprise.

One minor source of satisfaction from BLM’s fatuous “statement of solidarity” with Hamas: my silly neighbor who has inflicted on our neighborhood a large Black Lives Matter display on her front lawn for almost three years quietly took the eyesore down.

When are all the groveling politicians, corporations and organizations who proclaimed their support for these “social justice” scamsters going to take similar action?