Sick Celebration of Claudine Gay’s Resignation
Now former Harvard President Claudine Gay
Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday, much to the celebration of many and the discouragement or anger of others. While Gay, and her strategically-challenged advisors at the university, put themselves in the position to where, culturally speaking, she had to step down or be terminated, there is also an additional story at play.
In the article, Harvard president quits: Claudine Gay resignation highlights new conservative weapon, reporters Collin Binkley and Moriah Balingit at the Associated Press detail what else is happening and it’s important to know, regardless of where one resides on the socio-political spectrum.
“Conservatives,” they wrote, “zeroed in on Gay amid backlash over her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus. Her detractors charged that Gay — who has a Ph.D. in government, was a professor at Harvard and Stanford and headed Harvard’s largest division before being promoted — got the top job in large part because she is a Black woman.”
You can see where that article is going. Yes, those points are factual yet it appears there is also an agenda being communicated. Yet stay with me on this, this column is not going where you think it might.
It is certainly true, I contend, that Gay’s failing or perceived failing about her tolerance and responses about antisemitism on campus were the match that led to the very public aggression regarding plagiarism and a second wave of efforts to oust her from her post.
Chris Rufo
Regardless of Gay’s errors, and she committed some egregious ones, “Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the effort against Gay, celebrated her departure as a win in his campaign against elite institutions of higher education,” the AP reported.
“On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote ‘SCALPED,’ as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans and also used by some tribes against their enemies.”
That cannot under any circumstances be considered socially acceptable language, if one is a mature, well-functioning adult, no matter how hated your declared enemy.
The ugliness of communication and zeal for helping oust, or if you prefer, force someone out of a position of authority and power at a school of higher leaning because you disagree with their socio-political beliefs, is tolerating and permitting dangerous and socially disturbing behavior.
There is an old negotiation saying that goes, “Be hard on the problem and soft of the person.” In this story, critics of Gay or those who consider her an enemy, can be hard on the problems that they believe she created and committed, without talk of her being “scalped.” They can be “soft” on her in the context of the quote, as a person and a fellow human being.
She did not commit a felony or act of evil. She put Harvard and herself in a no-win position, for which it and she are being socially punished as that has become more a more a cultural habit.
