Claudine Gay-ouster triumphalism

It's overstated and maybe counter-productive

A consensus has formed around Claudine Gay’s ouster as president of Harvard. Both the conservatives who led the anti-Gay charge and the left-liberal mainstream media view her fall as a victory in the fight against DEI.

Christopher Rufo, justifiably proud of his role in exposing Gay’s plagiarism, sees her ouster as a case study in conservatives prevailing in the culture wars. The Washington Post agrees. It views the “conservatives activists” victory over Gay as a “key point in DEI fight” (carryover headline in paper edition). And Gay herself says her exit is “bigger than me.” In her opinion, it’s a win in the culture war struggle against enlightened folk who “view diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism.”

These opinions strike me as self-serving. Those who helped bring Gay down want to believe they struck a blow not just against Gay and Harvard, but against DEI. Gay wants to see herself as someone who lost her job not because she stole the words of others, but because she stands for a great cause the right can’t abide.

As for the Washington Post, I suspect it wants to portray Gay’s ouster as a victory for the right in order to make sure Harvard doesn’t let it become one. That purpose will be served if, seeing Gay’s removal touted as a a blow against DEI, Harvard steels itself to stand firm in the culture war by naming a president similar to Gay (but one who isn’t a plagiarist) and by maintaining all pillars of DEI — its DEI bureaucracy, its hiring practices, its admissions policies (to the full extent it thinks it can get away with them); and its lack of intellectual diversity.

Thus, in my opinion, the Post’s report could be called: “Memo to Harvard: Right-wingers are claiming victory; don’t let them win.” Accordingly, Gay-ouster triumphalism by conservatives may serve the left’s interests.

However, just because portraying Gay’s ouster as a victory over DEI is self-serving doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. Maybe her exit really is such a victory.

But I don’t believe it is.

Understand first, that Gay didn’t lose her job because she was a DEI hire or because she advanced the DEI cause. Her testimony before Congress, arguably rooted to some extent in DEI, didn’t sink her. She easily survived the furor over her unwillingness to state categorically that advocating genocide of Jews violates Harvard’s anti-harassment policy.

Gay lost her job because she was shown to be a serial plagiarist. Even the initial wave of plagiarism evidence wasn’t enough to end her time as president. It took a steady flow of evidence.

Gay’s demise in these circumstances isn’t a blow against DEI, any more than the failure of Zoë Baird’s nomination as Attorney General due to hiring illegal immigrants and failing to pay social security taxes for them was a blow against left-liberal DOJ policies — or, for that matter, a blow against illegal immigration.

It’s true that some alumni billionaires who generously support Harvard are now attuned to the problem of wokeness and DEI at the University, thanks to Gay’s testimony before Congress. (That this was news to them astounds me.) So maybe these suddenly-awake billionaires will push Harvard in a new, less pernicious direction.

I’m not counting on this, though. It wasn’t Bill Ackman and other like-minded financial backers who pushed Gay out. As far as I can tell, their complaints fell on deaf ears among Harvard’s governors in the aftermath of Gay’s congressional testimony.

Gay fell when liberal alums with forums in the mainstream media turned on her because of the drip-drip of plagiarism evidence. Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post is the best example. Susan Estrich is another.

Do Marcus, Estrich, and other liberals like them want Harvard to back away from DEI? I doubt it.

Instead, I think they just want Harvard to find a president isn’t an embarrassment — i.e., one with solid academic credentials who isn’t a plagiarist — and to make Harvard more hospitable to Jews.

I expect Harvard to do both. I don’t expect it to do anything about the pillars of its commitment to DEI (as I listed them above).

Heather Mac Donald is of the same view. She writes:

There is no indication from either the Gay resignation letter or the Harvard Corporation follow-up that the university is moving away from identity-based scholarship, hiring, and admissions. The Harvard Corporation asserts that Harvard’s core values are “excellence, inclusiveness, and free inquiry and expression.” That latter item—free inquiry and expression—can be ignored. It is so far from the truth that it means nothing. Harvard has tolerated a reign of academic conformity and the informal silencing of intellectual dissent. Its left-wing leaders, including the Harvard Corporation, remain blind to their own hypocrisy regarding free speech, since they apparently do not believe in the legitimacy of non-dogmatic views on race, sex, or personal responsibility.

But the Corporation’s reassertion of its commitment to “inclusiveness” is an important marker of the future. The term is particularly charged following the Supreme Court’s ruling this summer invalidating racial preferences in college admissions. When the decision came down, then-president Lawrence Bacow signaled that Harvard would do everything it could to retain its regime of “inclusiveness.” Its subsequent actions have only confirmed that intent. At present, “excellence” and “inclusiveness” (as the latter is currently defined) are mutually exclusive. Thanks to the academic skills gap, a university can be meritocratically excellent or it can be demographically inclusive. It cannot be both. That is why inclusiveness must be affirmed as a separate value from excellence. In a meritocratic world, the only values a university would care about including are those pertaining to academic achievement.

If the Harvard Corporation had learned anything from the Gay debacle, it would have left out that coded rhetoric of “inclusiveness.” Unless the board itself undergoes a revolution, nothing at Harvard will change.

The same applies to academia generally.

DEI seems to be facing a reckoning in corporate America, but I see no signs of such a reckoning on college campuses. Cracks may start to appear there. But for the reasons I’ve stated in this post, Gay’s resignation isn’t one.