Harvard: Larry Summers; Claudine Gay
There is no better illustration of the extremity of Harvard’s double standards based on identity politics than the difference between the school’s treatment of Harvard presidents Larry Summers and Claudine Gay. Summers probably could never even be chosen as Harvard’s president in the post-Floyd post-COVID world – a white Jewish male with strong scholarly credentials who, although not on the right, couldn’t be said to be on the left, either. And yet from July 2001 until June 2006 – seems like long ago, doesn’t it? – he was indeed the president of Harvard.
Summers left under a cloud. One of his moves that offended the left, even before the incident that caused his downfall, was that he attacked one of Harvard’s third rails – black professor/celebrity Cornel West:
In an October 2001 meeting, Summers criticized African American Studies department head Cornel West for allegedly missing three weeks of classes to work on the Bill Bradley presidential campaign and complained that West was contributing to grade inflation. Summers also claimed that West’s “rap” album was an “embarrassment” to the university. West pushed back strongly against the accusations.”The hip-hop scared him. It’s a stereotypical reaction”, he said later.
So West was accusing Summers of being a typical white person, even before Obama perfected that sort of accusation and its acceptability when it came from a black person.
Summers was not fired, but a no-confidence vote from the faculty convinced him to resign. Among the reasons was the West incident, plus:
… financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with Andrei Shleifer, and a 2005 speech in which he offered three reasons for the under-representation of women in science and engineering, including the possibility that there exists a “different availability of aptitude at the high end”, in addition to patterns of discrimination and socialization.
It was really that latter incident – his speech about the paucity of women at the very highest and most rarified levels of science – that sealed his doom. I wrote two long posts about the brouhaha at the time, and I urge you to read them if you’ve forgotten some of the details (see this as well as this). From the latter:
… [T]his [the outraged reaction to Summers’ remarks about women in science] is a case where feelings seem to have triumphed over reason. That academics – and scientists, at that – would allow this to happen is not a good sign. Whatever happened to the Enlightenment? If Galileo were to return at this point, he might be in grave danger again – at least, if he were to suggest that the earth didn’t revolve around women.
In my own experience in an academic environment during the ’90s, after decades of being away, I was shocked at how far the PC police had come in stifling academic freedom. It seemed the new criterion for censure was whether a remark had offended someone. However careful the professor might be to couch the remark with qualifications, however delicately it was stated, if it offended the tender sensibilities of anyone in the audience, the professor was in trouble. …
The first reports of the reaction to his remarks contain the following gem from MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, “I felt I was going to be sick…My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow. I was extremely upset.”
I assume that, as a scientist, Ms. Hopkins had other, more rationally-based objections to Summer’s remarks. But I have yet to read any that make sense. How could anyone have a rational objection to Summer’s call for research into this question? Unless that person were afraid of the truth.
As far as Claudine Gay goes, you might say that she is the un-Summers – not much of a scholar (as well as probable plagiarizer), leftist, black, and a woman. The very reasons Summers had to go were the reasons she got the job. But unlike Summers, Gay has been strongly supported by the Harvard faculty, despite the fact that her academic work seems at least partly bogus, and her offensive remarks were far more offensive than his. All of a sudden, Harvard is interested in free speech – but it very much depends on the identity of the person doing the speaking and the group the person is referencing.
Quite some time ago, the left established – first in academia, but then it spread – that a member of a favored identity group (such as a black person) could not be racist no matter what that person said. Claudine Gay is protected by that sort of “reasoning.”
One of the most interesting things about what’s happening (or not happening) to Gay now is how clearly it reveals to the American public the academic rot that was noticed long ago by those of us who’ve been paying special attention. Harvard is in a bind, and it must choose. If it keeps Gay, its reputation with the general public sinks. If it fires her or encourages her to resign, it betrays its leftist principles.
[NOTE: Gay’s predecessor was also a white Jewish male, but he seems to have been a conventional leftist and he resigned, perhaps to make way for someone more in line with identity politics like Gay. That’s speculation on my part, but I’ve not yet read anything that explains his resignation except the boilerplate line that he wanted to spend more time with his family.]
The more bogus the better to tear down the entire structure…with the crown jewel of subversion, or one of them, being the 1619 Project.
Besides, deceit, dishonesty, dishonor and destruction have become the latest rage…well, for some time now, actually…
As VDH said, ‘Tis the Age of the Hustle’…
It is in the nature of evil to destroy itself but all too often only after wrecking a multitude of lives.
As I said before, the good news as Neo points out, is that the broader public is now aware of the rot. The bad news is to clean it out will take decades, or a complete dismantling of the whole structure.
Again, the pathology in academe is countenanced by the types who sit on boards. To some extent, it’s because boards are a train-wreck of friend-hires-friend. However there are plenty of people among our professional-managerial class from whom to chose. Requiring boards be elected by a postal ballot of alumni registered to vote in the state in which the school is located might help, as would reducing the size of boards to 5-19 members. I wouldn’t be surprised if it helped little.
As I’ve said, I don’t believe we will have to dismantle higher ed. It is imploding for several reasons.
* Demographics — College enrollment has already peaked because of fewer teenagers. Fewer students, fewer funds for the Beast.
* Economics — Student loans, federal and private, are affected by interest rates — which have risen precipitously. My niece, for one, is terrified of taking on a college loan. She’s not wrong.
* Credibility — Parents and students are no longer convinced a college degree is a guarantee of bright future nor of a real education. Neither are employers. ‘Nuff said.
* Artificial Intelligence — Anyone can now have an expert-level, soon genius-level, AI to custom mentor one 24/7 in almost any subject. Assuming one is interested in knowledge and not just a certification.
* Wokeness Indoctrination — I believe the word is out and half the country or more doesn’t want to be woke.
Academia has made its bed and will have to sleep in it.
Good riddance.
Some commenters have posited that the main reason that the Harvard board hired Claudine Gay was NOT because she fit a desired demographic profile, but because she would be the administrator to lead Harvard into WOKEness, or better said even more WOKEness than Harvard possessed when she was hired. Or to enforce WOKEness on Harvard, which she has done in her executive positions at Harvard.
Claudia Gay’s uncle, Michael Gay, P.E. , the father of Roxane Gay, appears to be a quite competent engineer-executive.
huxley
Much of the half that wants to be woke is succumbing to peer pressure. Absent the peer pressure, much less.
It is a mistake to believe that the brighter you are, the more independent a thinker you are. Maybe so, maybe not. Even very bright kids want to ally themselves with the cool kids, though their definition of cool may differ.
Cheap shot — I’m struck by how much Claudine Gay looks like the drag version of Barack Obama.
Humanities are lost cause already but it is worrisome to see STEM majors and medical schools adopting this nonsense. Both fields must be anchored in reality. Biology is reality. DNA is biology.
it is worrisome to see STEM majors and medical schools adopting this nonsense.
Mike K:
Yes, I thought STEM would be a firebreak against the Woke conflagration.
I was wrong.
The Summers-West imbroglio yielded what I consider the stupidest public utterance of all time, probably never to be surpassed:
“[Summers’s] attack on me was the wrong person, wrong professor and the wrong Negro, as it were. There is a certain level of respect that I require,” West said on Monday’s “The Tavis Smiley Show” on National Public Radio. West called Summers’s criticism an “attack on me” and referred to Summers as “the Ariel Sharon of American higher education,” a reference to the hard-line Israel Prime Minister.
“[Summers] acts like a bull in a china shop; he acts like a bully in a very delicate and dangerous situation,” West explained to Smiley.
Emphasis added.
A situation that wasn’t just dangerous, it was delicate, too!!!
Gay’s predecessor was also a white Jewish male, but he seems to have been a conventional leftist and he resigned, perhaps to make way for someone more in line with identity politics like Gay. That’s speculation on my part, but I’ve not yet read anything that explains his resignation except the boilerplate line that he wanted to spend more time with his family.
My understanding is that he always planned to be a one-term transitional president. He was already 67 at the start of his 5-year term. He toed the leftist line on things like affirmative action and climate change, and despite being Jewish, didn’t push back on the anti-Semitism that was already well entrenched.
Art Deco:
The Harvard Board:
huxley:
Well, it was – until it wasn’t.
Gay’s predecessor was also a white Jewish male, but he seems to have been a conventional leftist and he resigned, perhaps to make way for someone more in line with identity politics like Gay.
That’s possible, but their personalites may also have been very different. Summers could be quite abrasive (what with two Nobel Prize winners in his family and all that), and Bacow apparently doesn’t have that reputation. Bacow’s an academic lifer who follows academia’s trends. Summers’ time spent in DC as Bill Clinton’s man made it harder for him to fit back into academia and adopt its recent progressive dogmas.
Most of what’s recently said about Gay is pretty much standard in such areas of Higher Ed as are afflicted with DIE or its predecessors. .
In my opinion, a far different and far worse example is the treatment of Roland Fryer. The process was bad enough. The reason for it is damning.
I found this paragraph from the faculty letter to be almost worthy of the Babylon Bee, it is such an absurd misstatement of what actually is happening at the university (from the NBC story Neo linked).
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/hundreds-harvard-faculty-members-urge-university-not-oust-embattled-pr-rcna129027
“The critical work of defending a culture of free inquiry in our diverse community cannot proceed if we let its shape be dictated by outside forces,” the letter goes on to say.
Harvard has gotten itself in some deep doo doo and there’s no easy way out. Either they keep Ms. Gay and destroy their reputation by keeping as president a fraud, a serial plagiarist, and one who couldn’t respond to the burgeoning Jew-hatred on her campus in an appropriate manner. Or they fire her, receive the opprobrium of the woke and be on the receiving end of a lawsuit from the fraud herself.
I vividly remember the reaction of the female biology prof to Summers’s remarks. As a mean old guy who long ago grew disgusted with the constant cynically opportunistic feminist switching between “I am strong, I am invincible” (“I Am Woman”) and “Your mean remarks is making me tremble and feel faint,” I enjoyed it greatly.
Young feminists seem even more willing to trade in that kind of stuff. “I am literally shaking as I write this” etc. in response to…whatever they don’t like.
“…destroy their reputation…”
Already have.
But they don’t care about that. They take it as a point of honor.
Besides, destroy their reputation with whom? With white supremacists? With conservatives trogs? With uppity Jews?
As mentioned: POINT OF HONOR.
(“Honor” to be sure being a matter of definition!)
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WRT to the Ivy’s losing money, well…there’s always that principled and long-standing supporter of free enquiry and higher educational values, Qatar, to pick up the slack—or whatever slack there might be… And Qatar’s friends.
(File under: Smart investing!)
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AF, well the Bee IS the paper of record. (Or one of them…)
I think the only reasonable explanation, though, is that the Bee has thoroughly infiltrated Cambridge Yard…
Regarding that Harvard Board of Overseers: Apparently the more powerful governing entity is the Harvard Corporation, which consists of the President and 11 Fellows (surprising they still use that term). The Fellows are not chosen by alumni, but apparently “elected by the Corporation with the consent of the Board of Overseers.” One of the fellows is Penny Pritzker. I don’t recognize the other names. But on that link they have a strong statement (from two weeks ago) of support for Gay. Of course they refer to her plagiarism as “a few instances of inadequate citation.”
Liars, every single one of them.
(But then, where power is involved, TRUTH is not exactly a priority…such that the credo on Harvard’s shield (VERITAS) and Yale’s (EMES or EMET)—both meaning “TRUTH”, the former in Latin, the latter in Hebrew—should be updated to fit those exalted institutions’ current values, probably by adding an asterisk with the note “Depending on Context and/or Necessity and/or Politics” printed below in small, perhaps even miniscule, letters….)
It’s easy to photoshop—besides it doesn’t mean anything at all…in keeping with everything else that goes on in those hallowed—um, make that hollowed—spaces).
Harvard has two governing bodies. The more important one is the Harvard Corporation, not the Harvard Board. The Corporation appoints the president and does a lot of fundraising. The current head of the Harvard Corp. is Penny Pritzker, the Hyatt heiress who was an early supporter of Obama and helped fund his campaigns. The Harvard Corp. is somewhat opaque and it is self-perpetuating, in that new members are chosen by current members.
Hyatt makes the Trump hotels and resorts look like amateur hour. For what it’s worth, Hyatt also has a significant (and fast-growing) presence in the Middle East.
SR:
Several members of the Pritzker family are big on pushing trans ideology. Don’t know whether Penny is part of that effort.
Isn’t she herself trans? One of the kids is, I think…
From Wikipedia:
Jennifer Natalya Pritzker (born James Nicholas Pritzker; August 13, 1950) is an American investor, philanthropist, and member of the Pritzker family. Pritzker retired as a lieutenant colonel from the Illinois Army National Guard (ILARNG) in 2001, and was later made an honorary Illinois colonel. …
She [sic] is the cousin of current Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker and former US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker.[2]
…
As of August 16, 2013, J. N. Pritzker will undergo an official legal name change, will now be known as Jennifer Natalya Pritzker. This change will reflect the beliefs of her true identity that she has held privately and will now share publicly. Pritzker now identifies herself as a woman for all business and personal undertakings.
Looks like the Hotel California has added more than a few franchises…
huxley and neo – A very large number of STEM majors reject traditional religious belief. They study (and many of them master) a subject matter that, to the uninitiated, appears to be magic. It’s really not surprising to me at all that STEM would evolve into an ideological priesthood. You need some form of idea structure to explain all of that. And it’s easy to mistake technical mastery for wisdom.
https://www.realcleareducation.com/2023/12/25/how_claudine_gay_learned_to_play_the_game_at_harvard_1001062.html?utm_source=rced-today-auto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mailchimp-newsletter&mc_cid=3c99273383
Overseers?
Fellows?
So triggering…
“Yes, I thought STEM would be a firebreak against the Woke conflagration.”
-huxley
STEM is now transitioning to STEAM- the A is for Arts.
One of these is not like the other. Hint- no wrong answers.
“Harvard has gotten itself in some deep doo doo and there’s no easy way out. Either they keep Ms. Gay and destroy their reputation by keeping as president a fraud, a serial plagiarist, and one who couldn’t respond to the burgeoning Jew-hatred on her campus in an appropriate manner. Or they fire her, receive the opprobrium of the woke and be on the receiving end of a lawsuit from the fraud herself”
It appears to be Mr/Ms Pritzer and Obama against the Jews here. Pritzer/Obama have the power, while the Jews have the brains and the money. And losing a lot of their Jewish students and faculty would affect their standing as one of the most elite universities in the world. We are already seeing the effects, with a significantly reduced number of early admit applicants for next year.
Bruce H.-
Harvard cares little about its elite standing. DEI has reduced the percentage of Jewish undergrads from ~30% to ~10%, while lowering its merit based standards to allow BIPOC to increase. It’s also famously and illegally restricted the smart Asian kids with similar intent and results.
Obama vs Jews? There are 2 kinds of Jews. “Jews” and Jewish Jews. Pritzker and their kind are Jews, or JINOs, who have a deranged hatred of Jewish Jews, the ones who actually practice and live the Jewish Tradition, support Israel, and are unafraid for others to know about it. Oct 7 has caused the transition of some Js into J-Js, but not nearly enough (more in Israel than the US). American Js cling to the hope that the alligator will eat them last.
Just curious, has anyone seen President Gay’s CV and academic accomplishments compared to the other Ivy League presidents? I keep seeing observations about her slim research and publication record so a comparison might prove, or not, of value when discussing her qualifications for her current position.
See miguel’s link just previously.
You’ll get some idea of the tribalist evil that’s taken over the academy.
Specifics about Gay, though?
Probably get as many specifics about her as one was able to get about Obama.
Great post.
Marisa hit the nail on the head,
Erronius
Claudine Gay’s CV is available on Harvard’s website:
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/aaastest/files/claudine_gay_cv.pdf
8 refereed papers plus 3 other publications; pretty slim for someone who has spent her entire life in academia. Lots of committee work, however.
CVs for other university presidents can probably be found online too.
Claudine Gay was Faculty of Arts and Sciences Provost, I understand, and put in charge of implementing DIE there. Thus, from that platform, she became the Magic Negro Token anointed to complete the Transformation of a once august institution into an SWJ, CRT, neo Marxist, Wokery credentializing organization, still spitting out activist drones. Just of the far Left type.
This braindead takeover is unfathomably bad.
CORRECTION
Dean of FAS, not Provost
https://facultyresources.fas.harvard.edu/claudine-gay-1