Well as '@Vulcan felt the need to point out, he is “an African-American.” So I guess we are just supposed to assume he is a pro-CRT progressive. 
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That does not follow from anything I wrote.
The NYT is not an Internet message board where anyone can post their opinion. The op-eds are selected (in many cases invited) by the editors who run the opinion pages. You think those journalists chose to run this piece because they are mad she was hired and don’t like her views?
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Could have also pointed out that he used to teach at that bastion of wokeness UC Berkeley to demonstrate his progressive pedigree. But of course he left that position to work for a conservative think tank…
The individual NYTimes Opinion writers express their own views, not the views of the Editorial Board, and McWholter’s views are in perfect alignment with what I said about what is happening here.
Why point out he was African American unless we were supposed to take something from it? What difference does it make?
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And what difference does it make that he “opposes CRT”?
Another major donor, one who has donated $270m to date, just pulled the plug on Harvard. If she somehow survives, Claudine Gay might become the $6 billion dollar woman.
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It almost sounds as if the only opinion on this matter that really matters is that of Claudine Gay herself.
The only opinion that matters is the opinion of the three scholars that Harvard appointed to investigate the allegations. They did and found it was much ado about little or nothing.
Those who are out to get rid of Gay for whatever reason won’t accept this, but that is another issue all together.
It remains to be seen whether Harvard will allow itself to be bullied into bending the knee.
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In other words, it remains to be seen whether “the only opinion that matters is the opinion of the three scholars that Harvard appointed to investigate the allegations.”
Depends on one’s worldview, I guess, and how one views bullies.
I believe what really matters is the court of public opinion, or in other words, its public reputation. That determines whether the top students choose Harvard over its peers, whether top faculty join to teach and research, and whether successful alumni donate to the school.
Harvard doesn’t remain Harvard without all three of the above. And with the dropoffs in applications and donations, it’s clearly going in the wrong direction.
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If Harvard sacrifices its institutional integrity because of some culture war bullying, it will lose more than some donations.
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Yes, let’s talk about “integrity”… [my emphasis]
“The Honor Code
Harvard College is an academic and residential community devoted to learning and the creation of knowledge. We – the academic community of Harvard College, including the faculty and students – view integrity as the basis for intellectual discovery, artistic creation, independent scholarship, and meaningful collaboration. We thus hold honesty – in the representation of our work and in our interactions with teachers, advisers, peers, and students – as the foundation of our community.
The Harvard College Honor Code
Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to producing academic work of integrity – that is, work that adheres to the scholarly and intellectual standards of accurate attribution of sources, appropriate collection and use of data, and transparent acknowledgement of the contribution of others to their ideas, discoveries, interpretations, and conclusions. Cheating on exams or problem sets, plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs.”
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The three prominent political scientists who Harvard charged with investigating the allegations disagree with you about whether Gay acted with integrity.
Should Harvard disregard its own process because you disagree with their result? Where is the integrity in that?
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Thank you for mentioning that. Harvard’s “investigation” definitely calls into question their integrity even more.
It was a perfunctory investigation at best, designed to quickly sweep things under the rug. That’s the privilege that prominent, powerful, connected people get. Legitimate investigations of that nature take months, not days. Among other things, they didn’t even look at issues with her dissertation. And in the last 24 hours we are seeing headlines like in the NYT: “Harvard Finds More Instances of ‘Duplicative Language’ in President’s Work” that highlight how incomplete and shallow the initial investigation was.
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Reminder to please not respond to posts that were flagged and hidden. Those responses will be deleted.
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A commentator I respect mentioned that Gay’s total number of scholarly articles she’d written when hired was the same as the number Larry Summers wrote in one year. And even if she wasn’t unethical in her writing, she was certainly sloppy. I don’t think her performance is up to Harvard’s standards.
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And here’s this morning’s article about Claudine Gay in the NY Times (gift link):
While there still seems to be significant faculty support for her, there are now professors willing to speak out publicly against her:
“You have to be practical, not ideological,” Avi Loeb, a professor of science who was critical of Dr. Gay’s earlier congressional testimony, said on Thursday. “If she cannot accomplish the goals she needs to pursue as a university president, then it’s obvious what needs to be done.”
… Eugene I. Shakhnovich, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology, wrote that Dr. Gay remaining as president was “unsustainable for Harvard.” … “Claudine Gay is a huge liability for Harvard and by implication for higher education in the U.S.,” he wrote. “Her presidency is a huge Christmas present” to the right.
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