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Claudine Gay resigned from her position as Harvard University president following a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism and heavy criticism from Harvard alumni in the wake of the testimony. Gay’s resignation completed a tumultuous year for the historic university, which found itself in the center of various public debates throughout 2023, including the debate on affirmative action and race-based admissions quotas.
Straight Arrow News contributor Larry Lindsey summarizes the role of an ideal university president, and then contrasts that ideal with Gay’s actions and behaviors. Lindsey contends that Gay’s resignation was the natural result of her incompetence, and argues that Harvard itself has lost sight of its core academic values.
Not only that, the university, under this board and under President Gay and her predecessor, have moved away from merit as the basis for admissions, towards what are essentially racial quotas. The quotas were so explicit that the Supreme Court found that they discriminated, and had to end the discrimination, and that suit was against Asians.
But it’s also widespread that other groups were discriminated against, in particular Jews. Jewish admission had averaged about 20%. Now it is down to 5%. The merit-based distribution in society hasn’t changed. It was just that Jews and Asians who had higher SAT scores were excluded in order to admit other, more favored groups of individuals.
Not only that, the university really has no conservative professors. That wasn’t always true. In the mid-20th century, for example, some very famous and leading academics were from the conservative side of the spectrum, were prominent Harvard professors. They include Joseph Schumpeter, Harvey Mansfield, who was a history professor, and of course Henry Kissinger, who was plucked from Harvard by Richard Nixon to be secretary of state.
Today, 98% of all political contributions by members of the Harvard community go to Democrats. 98%! It’s hard to imagine that, there really is no intellectual diversity anymore at Harvard. And there used to be diversity of thought, probably the most important kind of diversity that any university can have, that supposedly is what they’re in the business of.
Well, this lack of intellectual diversity, the nature of the board, and Ms. Gay’s incompetence, all combined to not only exclude her, but should suggest to Harvard that they change their ways. After all, a university is supposed to stand for intellectual merit and academic freedom. Harvard does not.
