Claudine Gay’s resignation this week as Harvard University’s president marks the end of a shameful chapter for the institution. The debacle’s architects promise to make America’s elite institutions great again. They say they pushed out Dr. Gay and, nearly a month ago, the University of Pennsylvania’s president as a warning to the nation’s cultural institutions. How they will continue to wield their influence and if they will succeed depends on how willing we all are to keep buying age-old ideas about merit from power-hungry peddlers.

Dr. Gay’s resignation comes nearly a month after the presidents of M.I.T., Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania testified before Congress. (Columbia University was also invited. It declined. As the kids say, Columbia understood the assignment.) These particular schools were chosen not because of their academic bona fides but because of their cultural significance. Yes, Harvard, Penn and M.I.T. boast highly selective admissions and lauded faculty. But they are also institutions with strong international brands built on prestige, history and the perception of excellence. A hearing ostensibly about antisemitism on campus quickly became little more than a coordinated political spectacle about power.

You do not have to take my word for it. You can believe Chris Rufo, a conservative activist who was one of the architects of the debacle, who celebrated on X this week for having “SCALPED” Dr. Gay. Distinct from the campaign waged against Penn’s former president Elizabeth Magill, the attacks against Dr. Gay have been cut from whole cloth, from a historical narrative about merit and diversity that is a hallmark of America’s higher-education prestige hierarchy.

Rufo explained his plan for ginning up controversy about higher education’s most prestigious universities in an interview on the heels of Dr. Gay’s resignation, explaining that it was a coordinated, strategic attack that used narrative, financial and political leverage. His partners included members of Congress, wealthy donors, journalists, media and a bloodthirsty audience. Riding high on success, Rufo said his strategy could push the conservative movement back into what he considers its rightful place: the top of America’s most powerful cultural institutions.