Home » Harvard: Larry Summers; Claudine Gay

Comments

Harvard: Larry Summers; Claudine Gay — 37 Comments

  1. 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’…

  2. It is in the nature of evil to destroy itself but all too often only after wrecking a multitude of lives.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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

    * Wokeness Indoctrination — I believe the word is out and half the country or more doesn’t want to be woke.

    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.

  7. Cheap shot — I’m struck by how much Claudine Gay looks like the drag version of Barack Obama.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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!!!

  11. 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.

  12. Art Deco:

    The Harvard Board:

    Today, there are 30 overseers, all directly elected by alumni, with the president and the treasurer of Harvard serving as ex officio members of the board.

    Each year, Harvard alumni elect five new overseers to serve six-year terms. Overseer candidates are nominated by the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA), and those not nominated by the HAA (petition candidates) must gather signatures from Harvard alumni to appear on the ballot.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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.

  16. 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.

  17. 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.

  18. “…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!)
    – – – – – – – – – – – – –
    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!)
    – – – – – – – – – – – – –
    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…

  19. 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.”

  20. 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).

  21. 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.

  22. SR:

    Several members of the Pritzker family are big on pushing trans ideology. Don’t know whether Penny is part of that effort.

  23. 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.

  24. 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.

  25. 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.

  26. “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.

  27. 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.

  28. 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.

  29. 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.

  30. 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.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>