Harvard President’s Downfall is the Tip of the DEI Iceberg

“It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate,” Harvard President Claudine Gay wrote this week in her resignation letter.

That doubt, however, was justified, at least when it comes to Jews. When confronted in her congressional testimony about protestors who intimidate Jewish students with hateful “calls for the genocide of the Jewish people,” she cited her respect for “free speech,” suggesting this was grounds for allowing antisemitic protests on campus.

But when the victims are not Jews, that respect for free speech is nowhere to be seen.

Indeed, Harvard got the worst possible score in the nation this year in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings, coming in dead last with an 0.00 out of a possible 100.00.

In other words, when Jews aren’t involved, Harvard has consistently come down hard on speech it has found offensive or hateful. Among the examples cited in the FIRE report:

• From 2019 to this year, Harvard sanctioned four scholars, three of whom it terminated.
• In 2020, Harvard revoked conservative student activist Kyle Kashuv’s acceptance over comments he made on social media as a 16-year-old, for which he had since apologized.
• In 2022, Harvard disinvited feminist philosopher Devin Buckley from an English department colloquium on campus over her views on gender and trans issues.
• In 2019, Harvard was the site of a substantial event disruption when protesters interrupted a joint talk featuring former Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow and Graduate School of Education Dean Bridget Terry Long by occupying the stage and refusing to leave.

No wonder Gay took so much heat for claiming “free speech” when defending menacing hate speech against Jews. That double standard is not just blatant but shameful. As I’ve written before, colleges go out of their way to find safe spaces for groups that are faced with microaggressions, but can’t seem to find any safe spaces when Jews are faced with hateful macroaggressions.

In her letter, Gay also found it distressing that any doubt was cast on her “commitment to uphold academic rigor,” a “bedrock value” that is “fundamental to who I am.”

Again, that doubt was certainly justified. How does Gay reconcile her commitment to “academic rigor” with nearly 50 allegations of plagiarism?

In a Dec. 23 op-ed in the Harvard Crimson titled, before Gay resigned, “I Vote on Plagiarism Cases at Harvard College. Gay’s Getting Off Easy,” an undergraduate member of the Honor Council lamented the special treatment afforded to Gay:

“What is striking about the allegations of plagiarism against President Gay is that the improprieties are routine and pervasive,” the student writes. “Omitting quotation marks, citing sources incompletely, or not citing sources at all constitutes plagiarism according to Harvard’s definitions.”

And yet, it took weeks of a rising firestorm for Gay to finally pay consequences, as any Harvard student would have. As Professor Ilya Shapiro posted on X, Gay’s resignation “doesn’t end the school’s trouble. Indeed, it doesn’t even end the plagiarism scandal, because the board has to answer for sweeping the allegations under the rug and hiring a law form to threaten journalists who had the scoop.”

Gay made sure to include in her letter that she has been subjected to “personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.” Given that she has been a longtime champion of DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion), it should surprise no one that she couldn’t resist the urge to bring up race, which had nothing to do with the allegations against her.

The part of the letter I found most disingenuous, however, was when Gay spoke glowingly of Harvard’s “enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth.” This is when I concluded she hasn’t learned anything from her ordeal.

The DEI culture Gay has consistently promoted at Harvard runs directly counter to “open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth.”

Anything that would bring back those cherished ideals would be good for the Jews. In the long run, the pursuit of truth is our greatest protector.

She must know that in her own college, Professor Steven Pinker was compelled to confront the stifling atmosphere of DEI to create a Council on Academic Freedom. “By putting it in the open, and rounding up a posse of defenders, we hope to break the ‘spiral of silence’ at Harvard, and, we hope, other institutions will be inspired by our model,” Pinker told Karen Lehrman Bloch last year in a Journal cover story on “The Unraveling of Academia.”

“Universities are repressing differences of opinion, like the inquisitions and purges of centuries past,” Pinker wrote in announcing the council.

How does Gay square this vigorous internal dissent with a so-called “enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression?” She can’t. She didn’t even try. Maybe she hoped she would put us to sleep with her arsenal of academic cliches.

There’s a growing sense across academia that DEI is no longer this untouchable sacred cow. A recent op-ed in the Washington Examiner, “DEI is on the Run,” argued that DEI was “deceptively sold as a set of policies designed to promote ‘the fair treatment and full participation of all people,’ but “have proved to be epicenters of division and ideological conformity, stirring hostilities and imposing an intolerant monoculture.”

Universities nationwide, the op-ed added, “use mandatory diversity statements to enforce ideological conformity in disciplines as varied as physics, history, and psychology. Junking these loyalty oaths is a key step to diversifying thought on campuses.”

If the truth about DEI continues to be exposed and American universities return to the timeless academic ideals of excellence, diversity of views, open inquiry and the fearless pursuit of truth, the downfall of Claudine Gay may turn out to be a historic inflection point.

Anything that would bring back those cherished ideals would be good for the Jews. In the long run, the pursuit of truth is our greatest protector.