Good riddance. Embattled Harvard president Claudine Gay ends the university’s protracted nightmare, finally stepping down.
She does so after mounting pressure over her appallingly shoddy handling of antisemitism on campus in the wake of the Hamas’ October 7 terror attacks and accusations of plagiarism, seemingly compounding by the day.
At last count, over two dozen.
But Gay, who is the school’s first black president, didn’t leave her prestigious perch without loudly plucking the strings of the insidious, grievance-driven, ideology of DEI — and playing a swan song that ultimately blamed racism.
One more for the road.
In her resignation letter, she wrote that she was stepping down as president, “with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard” adding, “Amidst all of this, 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.”
But Gay punted any blame for her failure to combat naked Jew-hatred the way the school obsessively penalized misgendering or other transgressions against intersectional orthodoxy.
Her resignation letter, however, is about three weeks late — nearly a month that could have salvaged, at the very least, her academic reputation.
And maybe that of the school, which had reportedly lost $1 billion in donations since she, along with UPenn’s president Liz Magill and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth, collectively embarrassed themselves in a Congressional grilling by Rep. Elise Stefanik over antisemitism and genocidal chants on campus.
During the hearings, Gay shamefully said calls for Jewish genocide only violated the school’s code of conduct, when it came to bullying and harassment, in certain contexts.
The disgraceful display was enough for UPenn to wisely fire Magill almost immediately.
Meanwhile Gay stayed on with the full support of the school’s governing body, the Harvard Corporation.
Then, another shameful bombshell — a deluge of plagiarism accusations against her, covering her academic career from 1993 to 2017.
It was ultimately a storm she could not weather.
How does a school like Harvard enforce their standards when their president has so many public dings for academia’s cardinal sin?
It’s like the old anti-drug PSA where the dope-smoking dad confronts his son after he finds pot in his dresser and the kid says, “I learned it by watching you.”
All credibility is out the window when you install a double standard.
But don’t take it from a non Ivy grad. A Harvard Honor Council member, someone tasked with enforcing sanctions against offending students, said Gay’s “getting off easy” and her “improprieties are routine and pervasive,”
In a letter published anonymously in The Crimson, the student wrote, “When students — my classmates, peers, and friends — appear before the council, they are distraught.
“For most, it is the worst day of their college careers. For some, it is the worst day of their lives. They often cry.
“First-time plagiarism infractions — which can stem from omitted quotation marks, and incomplete or absent citations — typically result in one term of probation and the stripping away of the student’s ‘good standing’ status, which prevents them from studying abroad or even graduating.”
Meanwhile members of The Crimson’s op-ed board admitted she plagiarized but argued she lacked “intent,” Nice to know that intent conveniently matters again.
Ultimately they uncovered yet another vast right wing conspiracy, saying the accusations were “manufactured by conservative activists intent on discrediting higher education.”
But you can’t blame the messenger for simply telling the truth: that Harvard’s president wasn’t fit to lead.
Harvard even used lawyers to try to bully The Post as we investigated the claims back in October.
The Free Beacon, anti woke activists and yes The Post’s own Isabel Vincent continued to aggressively investigate plagiarism, while other prominent media outlets showed a generally dismissive attitude toward bubbling scandal (with the exception of common-sense John McWhorter calling for her ouster in the New York Times).
You might expect that from our liberal media. But not from the world’s most prestigious school.
And for that, Gay’s tenure will rightly be the shortest in school history — and Harvard will have to pull itself from a putrid swamp of its own making.