1. Background In case you didn’t follow academia’s most exciting recent story, Claudine Gay was the first African American woman to be president of Harvard University. She resigned in disgrace this month, after just 6 months on the job. (Note: She resigned from the presidency, not her job as a professor. She’ll still be teaching Harvard students, for $900,000 a year.) This was in the wake of criticism over:
This does not concern your post (which I liked). I'm thinking that maybe you should be on twitter just to post a weekly link to your blog. Fakenous is one of my favorite places on the internet, and I feel that it's not getting the attention it deserves (judged e.g. by the number of comments compared to that of other substacks). Perhaps being on twitter would help generate some more exposure. I'm not much of a twitter person myself, so I'm speculating here. It's just that I wish more people would read your blog.
"Claudine Gay was hardly an icon of scholarly excellence. (See her CV.) She is a mediocre scholar with a total of 11 published papers and no books, over a 23-year career."
My first reaction was to search those articles on google scholar to see if they were high impact papers. They certainly seem to be enough to make tenure at my rather low-ranked PhD program. Her highest-cited paper, "Spirals of trust? The effect of descriptive representation on the relationship between citizens and their government," has over 500 citations. Of course some professors in my department have papers with over 2k citations so take that FWIW.
My second reaction was to compare that scholarly record to the record of another Harvard president forced to resign in disgrace: Lawrence H. Summers.
He has *multiple* papers with over 3 or 4 thousand citations, one with over 8 thousand citations. It is pretty obvious that, among Harvard presidents at least, Gay's scholarly output was the absolute lowest of the low.
You're right, of course, that Harvard doesn't care about free speech. (Or Harvard cares deeply insofar as the university's real position is that the left should be free to do and say whatever they want and even the mildest objections or questions should be punishable by death.) But this part seems strange, to say the least:
"It’s only when the people calling for genocide are leftists that suddenly we see this deep commitment to free speech."
Were there, in fact, leftists "calling for genocide"? I've been trying to find out whether anything like that happened. Were the protesters in fact "leftists" or were many of them perhaps Arabs and Muslims unhappy about the mass killing of Palestinian civilians? Perhaps there were people saying that slogan, "From the river to the sea", which the pro-Israel people tell us is a coded call for the genocide of Jews. But I'm not sure why we should believe that. I don't know. Why do you think there people calling for genocide?
You also overlook an important point about Gay's comments. She was asked a *hypothetical* question: If someone *were* to call for the genocide of Jews, would that be a violation of the bullying and harassment policy?
Sure, it may be correct in some legalistic sense to hem and haw and "context" or "nuance" or "case by case" reasoning.
But a reasonable interpretation of the hypothetical question is that the questioner is asking about the context under discussion: Big protests on campus, at a school where there are probably quite a few Jews going about their business. If people in that context were yelling out "We should kill the Jews!", that would presumably count as some kind of "bullying" or "harassment" of Jewish people who live or work or attend school right next to this loudly pro-genocide speaker.
Maybe I lack the expertise needed to interpret Harvard's specific policies. I'm certainly going to bother reading that garbage, whatever it is. But a "bullying and harassment" policy that leaves it seriously uncertain whether that kind of behaviour on campus would really count as "bullying and harassment" probably needs some fine tuning. Is it really possible that Harvard has a policy so vague and toothless? Maybe that's really how it is. But I'm guessing that Gay wasn't being honest. She was in an impossible situation politically. No matter she said, one of the two competing identity groups would be out to destroy her. (Not that she didn't deserve to be fired.)
This piece is takes a nuanced approach while taking an unequivocal stance against extremism on both sides of the political aisle and a clear position against the anti oppressor-oppressed ideology.Quite a desirable combination. Thank you.
This does not concern your post (which I liked). I'm thinking that maybe you should be on twitter just to post a weekly link to your blog. Fakenous is one of my favorite places on the internet, and I feel that it's not getting the attention it deserves (judged e.g. by the number of comments compared to that of other substacks). Perhaps being on twitter would help generate some more exposure. I'm not much of a twitter person myself, so I'm speculating here. It's just that I wish more people would read your blog.
Peter
"Claudine Gay was hardly an icon of scholarly excellence. (See her CV.) She is a mediocre scholar with a total of 11 published papers and no books, over a 23-year career."
My first reaction was to search those articles on google scholar to see if they were high impact papers. They certainly seem to be enough to make tenure at my rather low-ranked PhD program. Her highest-cited paper, "Spirals of trust? The effect of descriptive representation on the relationship between citizens and their government," has over 500 citations. Of course some professors in my department have papers with over 2k citations so take that FWIW.
My second reaction was to compare that scholarly record to the record of another Harvard president forced to resign in disgrace: Lawrence H. Summers.
He has *multiple* papers with over 3 or 4 thousand citations, one with over 8 thousand citations. It is pretty obvious that, among Harvard presidents at least, Gay's scholarly output was the absolute lowest of the low.
Nice piece Mike. I'm glad you are writing about this, it's important to speak out against the Wokists. Our silence is their victory.
Gay's story is emblematic of how widespread this problem has become.
The comparison to the MAGA crowd is extremely apt and I'm going to be using that from now on.
It's a great idea. I hope the galactic emperor listens to your suggestions.
You're right, of course, that Harvard doesn't care about free speech. (Or Harvard cares deeply insofar as the university's real position is that the left should be free to do and say whatever they want and even the mildest objections or questions should be punishable by death.) But this part seems strange, to say the least:
"It’s only when the people calling for genocide are leftists that suddenly we see this deep commitment to free speech."
Were there, in fact, leftists "calling for genocide"? I've been trying to find out whether anything like that happened. Were the protesters in fact "leftists" or were many of them perhaps Arabs and Muslims unhappy about the mass killing of Palestinian civilians? Perhaps there were people saying that slogan, "From the river to the sea", which the pro-Israel people tell us is a coded call for the genocide of Jews. But I'm not sure why we should believe that. I don't know. Why do you think there people calling for genocide?
You also overlook an important point about Gay's comments. She was asked a *hypothetical* question: If someone *were* to call for the genocide of Jews, would that be a violation of the bullying and harassment policy?
Sure, it may be correct in some legalistic sense to hem and haw and "context" or "nuance" or "case by case" reasoning.
But a reasonable interpretation of the hypothetical question is that the questioner is asking about the context under discussion: Big protests on campus, at a school where there are probably quite a few Jews going about their business. If people in that context were yelling out "We should kill the Jews!", that would presumably count as some kind of "bullying" or "harassment" of Jewish people who live or work or attend school right next to this loudly pro-genocide speaker.
Maybe I lack the expertise needed to interpret Harvard's specific policies. I'm certainly going to bother reading that garbage, whatever it is. But a "bullying and harassment" policy that leaves it seriously uncertain whether that kind of behaviour on campus would really count as "bullying and harassment" probably needs some fine tuning. Is it really possible that Harvard has a policy so vague and toothless? Maybe that's really how it is. But I'm guessing that Gay wasn't being honest. She was in an impossible situation politically. No matter she said, one of the two competing identity groups would be out to destroy her. (Not that she didn't deserve to be fired.)
This piece is takes a nuanced approach while taking an unequivocal stance against extremism on both sides of the political aisle and a clear position against the anti oppressor-oppressed ideology.Quite a desirable combination. Thank you.