Another win for AIM: Harvard President Claudine Gay resigns
January 2, 2024
Now that Claudine Gay has resigned as president of Harvard, it’s time to celebrate and to think about what needs to happen next. For this is not the end of the story – it is, to quote Churchill, only the end of the beginning.
As Accuracy in Media President (no, he’s not resigning, unlike some others) Adam Guillette has said:
“This should be a message to all of higher education that radical DEI policies destroy the reputations of even the finest universities.”
It’s worth reminding ourselves of the timeline here. The start can be seen as the actions of Hamas on October 7, murdering and raping their way into Israel. As we pointed out – and were first to do so in a significant way – student groups at Harvard blamed Israel for this:
Thirty-four student groups at Harvard University signed a letter earlier this week in response to the attack on Israel by Hamas that left 1,200 dead and at least 2,700 wounded. That letter blamed Israel for the attacks.
The university didn’t do anything to hold those students accountable, so we did. We shamed those Harvard students with the billboard trucks. We also asked you, the Good People of America, to write to Harvard’s board of overseers demanding they take a stand against antisemitism on campus. A quarter of a million and counting of you did, for which we thank you.
The issue of the trucks led to extensive media coverage of the issue. That’s the point, of course, to make the provocative public action that brings the issue to greater media attention.
Bill Ackman joins in – at one point insisting he wants to know who signed those letters so that Wall Street can make sure never to hire any of them—nothing like a threat to a career to make students rethink their positions.
The rise in public attention – driven in part by our mobile billboard – led to Congressional hearings. Which the President of Harvard, as with others, failed to deal with, fails miserably.
That some now want Claudine Gay gone means that her past research efforts are examined more closely — which resulted in multiple findings of plagiarism. After everyone said those were minor, Gay apologized and corrected. But there were many more such instances uncovered.
As we pointed out, though, plagiarism isn’t the point. Gay is a bad academic manager. Not, perhaps, because of any specific personal failings, but because of the entire ethos of her, and academic management in general, ideals. They’re working toward these ideas of DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion – not toward the pursuit of truth nor the education of the nation’s students. That’s what’s actually wrong, and that’s why Gay and all others like her need to go.
From the Rabbi who resigned from Harvard’s antisemitism board over this:
“Battling that combination of ideologies is the work of more than a committee or a single university. It is not going to be changed by hiring or firing a single person, or posting on X, or yelling at people who don’t post as you wish when you wish, as though posting is the summation of one’s moral character. This is the task of educating a generation, and also a vast unlearning.”
Getting rid of Gay is not the end; it’s that Churchillian end of the beginning. Because, as AIM’s president says, DEI is everywhere in American academia. From K-12 through every college, the more elite the university, the worse it is.
The entire belief system of how our children are educated needs to change. No, not just because we, or you, disagree with what they’re saying. But because what is being taught is wrong, simply factually wrong.
Gay’s gone. Good. Now, to get rid of the rest of them.