Oliver Wiseman and Bari Weiss consider the resignation-under-pressure of Harvard President Claudine Gay:
Why did Claudine Gay step down yesterday as president of Harvard? In a letter announcing the bombshell decision, Gay wrote that it was in “the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.”
She also blamed racism: “It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” Gay wrote in her email Tuesday.
Missing from Gay’s note was some important … context.
In particular, there was no mention of the twin scandals that have plagued Gay and captured the attention of the country in recent weeks. The first: her handling of antisemitism and free expression on Harvard’s campus since October 7, including her appalling appearance before Congress in December.
The second: the ever-growing list of plagiarism allegations against Gay. On Monday night, the dogged journalists over at The Washington Free Beacon reported six more charges of plagiarism. That brought the number of allegations against Gay close to 50 and implicated half of her published works in the scandal. The next day, Gay was gone, making her the shortest-serving president in Harvard’s history: the Kevin McCarthy of higher ed.
Within minutes the crowing began. Major props went to Bill Ackman, the billionaire investor who has relentlessly criticized his alma mater since the attacks of October 7; to Chris Rufo, the Manhattan Institute senior fellow who was early on the story of plagiarism allegations against Gay; and to Free Beacon reporter Aaron Sibarium (more about him in a minute).
But does Gay’s resignation — and apparently she will remain on the faculty — actually change things?
Our sense — and recent events have only reinforced it — is that Claudine Gay is only the symptom of a deeper rot, both at Harvard and across higher education more generally.
One of the people who has been outspoken about that deeper crisis is Jeffrey Flier, who was the dean of Harvard Medical School from 2007 to 2016 and is a member of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, a group founded by Harvard academics last year to fight the free speech crisis on their campus. (Harvard ranks dead last with a score of 0.00 in FIRE’s college free speech rankings.)
We spoke to Flier hours after Claudine Gay’s resignation. He said he sees the present crisis as a chance for the university to fix itself. “Her departure may have been necessary. But the university needs to do more than appoint a new president,” he explained.
“Before October 7, few people thought fixing problems at Harvard was a really urgent need. I am with a group that wanted real change, but relatively few people were listening. But now there is real opportunity for change,” explains Flier.
