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Racists Force Gay, Harvard’s First Black President, to Resign

Tuesday, January 2, 2024 at 8:23 PM
Written by Anthony L. Hall

The prevailing presumption is that Black women must be three times better than White men. And even then White men might deem them ‘unqualified’.

Gay resigns

On December 6, I published the blog post “Calls for Presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT to Resign: Sexism, Racism, and Hypocrisy.”

Today, Harvard President Claudine Gay became the second forced to resign, despite the glaring sexism, racism, and hypocrisy from her critics.

Harvard President Claudine Gay announced Tuesday she is stepping down just six months into her presidency amid a firestorm of controversy at the university. 

‘It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president,’ Gay wrote in a letter to the Harvard community. … She also noted that ‘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.’

(CNN, January 2, 2024)

The Harvard Corporation accepted her resignation ‘with sorrow.‘ It lamented the ‘unbearable slings and arrows of outrageous racism’ critics hurled at Gay.

So it might be that she resigned not despite but because of the sexism, racism, and hypocrisy I cited. This is Trump’s America, after all. We’re just living in it.

Racism triumphs amid antisemitism

Truth be told, I not only anticipated this resignation but said all I cared to in the previous post I cited above.

Claudine Gay testifying before Congress about antisemitism with images of powerful Black woman and billionaire Bill Ackman inset

But the racism Gay and the Harvard Corporation complained of compels me to share just a few more points: 

  • Bill Ackman, a Jewish billionaire, led the baying chants for Gay’s head. He must feel vindicated. Perhaps Ackman will now demand Harvard abolish its “woke” diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) policies. After all, he’s on record claiming that only those policies explain Harvard hiring this “unqualified” Black woman as president. 
  • Remarkably, Ackman was too blinded by racism to see the irony or hypocrisy in hurling racist slurs to combat antisemitism. The wonder is that this smug, racist SOB didn’t ape Trump by demanding this Black woman show her transcripts; you know, the way the Nazis demanded Jewish people show their papers.
  • White supremacists said Barack Obama was the worst president in US history – simply because he was the first Black US president. In a similar vein, Ackman says Claudia Gay has done more damage to Harvard’s reputation than any other individual in its 500-year history – simply because she’s the first Black Harvard president.
  • Frankly, Ackman seems more interested in executing an anti-Black agenda than in combating antisemitism. That explains him acting like a useful idiot for White supremacists.
  • Of course, White supremacists detest Jews like Ackman even more than they do Blacks like Gay. Consequently, they must be reveling in the division Ackman is fomenting between Jews and Blacks. You know, divide and conquer.
  • Fareed Zakaria suggested that DEI and safe spaces explain why Gay hedged about disciplining students calling for the genocide of Jews. Critics demanding her resignation often cited his take. But Gay survived. 
  • Then came the plagiarism scandal that enabled her critics to mete out career death by a thousand slights. But her defenders should have cited how Zakaria survived his own plagiarism scandal to explain why Gay should survive hers.
  • And so Harvard’s first Black president has also made history for having the shortest tenure of any president. And her critics would have you believe that’s academic. 
  • Alas, hypocrisy prevails. And, apropos of the sexism and racism afoot, I can just hear the chauvinists and White supremacists chortling: This is what happens when you let a woman or a Black do a White man’s job.