I offer a few small comments on the Claudine Gay affair, and try to say a few things that haven’t been said many times before. *** From the New York Times Jan 7 … on Dec. 12, the board members privately asked Dr. Gay to help come up with a plan to turn things around…Over the next week or so, Dr. Gay and her staff created a plan they called a “spring reset,”…. Come the new year, she would appear all over campus, hold office hours and express her empathy. There would be task forces to address antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Gay, even resigned as president, still remains as a faculty member of Harvard and will still get paid $900,000/yr, same amount as when she was president. After knowing that, I guess you don’t really need to feel sympathetic to her
This is a governance issue. The board is responsible for material destruction of Harvard brand value. This is not surprising because as I understand it, they are not accountable to anyone. Their incentive is to go along and be part of the club. Very sad.
It is impossible to overstate the commitment of liberals to their world-view. They are the guardians of secular humanism, liberal values, democracy at home, and a "new world order" abroad. They are guarding the gates of civilization against the assaults of primitives - racists, homophobes, self-serving bourgeois. Conservatives and others who don't genuflect to the liberal catechism, especially academics who muster inconvenient facts, are turds in the punchbowl. I recently participated in a Zoom call discussing why CEOs were pulling back from their DEI commitments. Among the explanations were: lack of real commitment to the cause, reactionary response to DEI's rapid growth, racism ("anti-blackness," "whitelash,") "transphobia," fear of being replaced by people of color, mis/disinformation, the effectiveness of some pushback, such as in Florida, and lack of courage to defend DEI against these forces of darkness. No one brought up anti-discrimination and equal opportunity, as intoned by SCOTUS, including me. Why would I want to lose my liberal friends?
Great point that "Like everything else in life, 'diversity' efforts face a budget constraint." It ties back to the Supreme Court decision that questioned what the benefits of "diversity" actually are. And in which sector are they greater? The "diversity is integral to a quality education" argument would seem to imply the benefit is higher to having diversity on campus as opposed to the board room.
After stating that advocating genocide of Jews is OK at Harvard, depending on context, thereafter Gay offered a lot of mush-talk and jibber-jabber about her heroically high standards and virtues, and those of Harvard too. And suggested it was racists etc. who were after her.
Little noted: Moreover, when asked (in the committee hearing) if Israel had the right to survive as a Jewish nation, Gay responded Israel has the right to survive "as a nation." Somehow, the Jewish part dropped out.
One wonders if Gay was asked if Iran had the right to survive as Muslim nation, or any other number of Muslim states, what would be her response.
BTW: In the last 50 years, Jewish Americans have spread out across the political spectrum.
Besides, one only has to be sane, not liberal or conservative, Jewish, Catholic or Buddhist or Hindu, to find Gay's congressional testimony and plagiarism to be beneath contempt.
I wonder what kind of negative comments she gets. I'm serious on that-- I do wonder, and I'm curious if figures on the left get the same kind of vulgar and stupid comments that figures on the right do. I've just posted the negative comments from 2019 that I can find in my old email, etc. https://www.rasmusen.org/rasmapedia/index.php?title=Negative_Comments I'd be interested in any lists anybody else has.
I'm not sure that she would be a "minority super-successful top executive", at least not in a useful way. She seems to be a true believer in DEI and the corporate world has quiet enough DEI true-believers in HR departments, which is almost certainly where she would have ended up. So she's just be another HR drone mandating spending on struggle sessions led by Kendi, D'Angelo or their disciples. If she didn't then probably she'd be in marketing where the chances are she'd help another large corp do a bud-light.
I think the corporate world is doing just fine without her
as a true capitalist...who is FUNDING THIS? Answer?...TAXPAYERS on the hook for multi-Trillions of Student Debt and Federal FUNDING for places like Harvard for FAILED educations and misallocated priorities.
Response DEFUND these Fascists! End Federal Aid going to these obvious America Hating all Democrat institutions! You want an education....then it should be WORTH IT ON Merit....not TAXPAYERS! Democrats use Race and Gender like Fascists Nazis used Jewish Faith...as a WEAPON!
I feel like I live in a Fascist 1930's Germany, Italy or USSR for much of the 1900's.
Great respect for your commentary, except perhaps when you take us deep into the forest of economics, without conclusive commentary.
I object to your earlier comments about the skills of Claudine Gay and the potential loss of those skills to to the business community . Plagiarism is simply a form of kleptomania. Stealing other’s ideas to promote one’s own career. Our businesses need honest people with leadership skills. Dishonesty by management spreads throughout the organization like a prairie fire. It renders them unable to create a high performance culture and cripples the company. They also need leaders. People who can guide the company forward and act decisively when problems arise. There was no obvious leadership demonstrated during Harvard’s Antisemitism protests.
There seem to be few real leadership examples by University Presidents in our country, with perhaps Purdue. And example that would be useful for all of these people to follow is Edward Levi at his time as president of the University of Chicago.
I think the forces behind people like Claudine Gay are not objective. They are true believers in the methods to get to the end they desire. Additionally, many of them have scratched out nice standards of living, status, and income via the policies and methods to implement them they have chosen.
The matter of firing a university president or a university professor should be neither the Congress's business nor the business of the general public/media. The Board of Directors should decide. The university rules and the general law ought to be followed very strictly. Otherwise firing becomes highly subjective and political. For example, should Professor John Mearsheimer be fired by the University of Chicago for his position on the war in Gaza (you can check his substack and the wiki page about him)? I hope John's answer is "no". A harder question: should the far-right members of the Israeli Government be fired for publicly claiming, on the record, that all Palestinians are guilty and that Palestinians are sub-human animals? One needs to be careful with what he/she wishes for.
Gay, even resigned as president, still remains as a faculty member of Harvard and will still get paid $900,000/yr, same amount as when she was president. After knowing that, I guess you don’t really need to feel sympathetic to her
One thing that became apparent.
The silent majority decided to speak.
Look at the huge number of comments on Twitter.
Americans are tired of the lefty crap.
And the left went after Bill Ackman (and his wife). Two people with impeccable credentials.
To paraphrase Yamamoto: "They have awakened a sleeping tiger."
And millions of Americans (look at the Twitter "likes") are cheering.
And again, thanks to Elon Musk for giving us a forum.
End all federal aid to colleges, including students loan backing
This is a governance issue. The board is responsible for material destruction of Harvard brand value. This is not surprising because as I understand it, they are not accountable to anyone. Their incentive is to go along and be part of the club. Very sad.
It is impossible to overstate the commitment of liberals to their world-view. They are the guardians of secular humanism, liberal values, democracy at home, and a "new world order" abroad. They are guarding the gates of civilization against the assaults of primitives - racists, homophobes, self-serving bourgeois. Conservatives and others who don't genuflect to the liberal catechism, especially academics who muster inconvenient facts, are turds in the punchbowl. I recently participated in a Zoom call discussing why CEOs were pulling back from their DEI commitments. Among the explanations were: lack of real commitment to the cause, reactionary response to DEI's rapid growth, racism ("anti-blackness," "whitelash,") "transphobia," fear of being replaced by people of color, mis/disinformation, the effectiveness of some pushback, such as in Florida, and lack of courage to defend DEI against these forces of darkness. No one brought up anti-discrimination and equal opportunity, as intoned by SCOTUS, including me. Why would I want to lose my liberal friends?
Great point that "Like everything else in life, 'diversity' efforts face a budget constraint." It ties back to the Supreme Court decision that questioned what the benefits of "diversity" actually are. And in which sector are they greater? The "diversity is integral to a quality education" argument would seem to imply the benefit is higher to having diversity on campus as opposed to the board room.
John Cochrane is right.
After stating that advocating genocide of Jews is OK at Harvard, depending on context, thereafter Gay offered a lot of mush-talk and jibber-jabber about her heroically high standards and virtues, and those of Harvard too. And suggested it was racists etc. who were after her.
Little noted: Moreover, when asked (in the committee hearing) if Israel had the right to survive as a Jewish nation, Gay responded Israel has the right to survive "as a nation." Somehow, the Jewish part dropped out.
One wonders if Gay was asked if Iran had the right to survive as Muslim nation, or any other number of Muslim states, what would be her response.
BTW: In the last 50 years, Jewish Americans have spread out across the political spectrum.
Besides, one only has to be sane, not liberal or conservative, Jewish, Catholic or Buddhist or Hindu, to find Gay's congressional testimony and plagiarism to be beneath contempt.
I wonder what kind of negative comments she gets. I'm serious on that-- I do wonder, and I'm curious if figures on the left get the same kind of vulgar and stupid comments that figures on the right do. I've just posted the negative comments from 2019 that I can find in my old email, etc. https://www.rasmusen.org/rasmapedia/index.php?title=Negative_Comments I'd be interested in any lists anybody else has.
I'm not sure that she would be a "minority super-successful top executive", at least not in a useful way. She seems to be a true believer in DEI and the corporate world has quiet enough DEI true-believers in HR departments, which is almost certainly where she would have ended up. So she's just be another HR drone mandating spending on struggle sessions led by Kendi, D'Angelo or their disciples. If she didn't then probably she'd be in marketing where the chances are she'd help another large corp do a bud-light.
I think the corporate world is doing just fine without her
BTW I went through her NY Times piece paragraph by paragraph here - https://ombreolivier.substack.com/p/a-gay-fisking
as a true capitalist...who is FUNDING THIS? Answer?...TAXPAYERS on the hook for multi-Trillions of Student Debt and Federal FUNDING for places like Harvard for FAILED educations and misallocated priorities.
Response DEFUND these Fascists! End Federal Aid going to these obvious America Hating all Democrat institutions! You want an education....then it should be WORTH IT ON Merit....not TAXPAYERS! Democrats use Race and Gender like Fascists Nazis used Jewish Faith...as a WEAPON!
I feel like I live in a Fascist 1930's Germany, Italy or USSR for much of the 1900's.
Great respect for your commentary, except perhaps when you take us deep into the forest of economics, without conclusive commentary.
I object to your earlier comments about the skills of Claudine Gay and the potential loss of those skills to to the business community . Plagiarism is simply a form of kleptomania. Stealing other’s ideas to promote one’s own career. Our businesses need honest people with leadership skills. Dishonesty by management spreads throughout the organization like a prairie fire. It renders them unable to create a high performance culture and cripples the company. They also need leaders. People who can guide the company forward and act decisively when problems arise. There was no obvious leadership demonstrated during Harvard’s Antisemitism protests.
There seem to be few real leadership examples by University Presidents in our country, with perhaps Purdue. And example that would be useful for all of these people to follow is Edward Levi at his time as president of the University of Chicago.
I think the forces behind people like Claudine Gay are not objective. They are true believers in the methods to get to the end they desire. Additionally, many of them have scratched out nice standards of living, status, and income via the policies and methods to implement them they have chosen.
They are not interested in debate.
The matter of firing a university president or a university professor should be neither the Congress's business nor the business of the general public/media. The Board of Directors should decide. The university rules and the general law ought to be followed very strictly. Otherwise firing becomes highly subjective and political. For example, should Professor John Mearsheimer be fired by the University of Chicago for his position on the war in Gaza (you can check his substack and the wiki page about him)? I hope John's answer is "no". A harder question: should the far-right members of the Israeli Government be fired for publicly claiming, on the record, that all Palestinians are guilty and that Palestinians are sub-human animals? One needs to be careful with what he/she wishes for.
I expect that Beijing will come up with a job offer.