That Harvard University is standing by its beleaguered president, Claudine Gay, should not be a surprise: Gay is a perfect representation of the arrogant mediocrity of the university and its brand.

Harvard announced that it would be standing by Gay, with the unstated reason being that the university doesn’t want to give Republicans a “win” by vindicating Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and her assertion that Gay should resign. "Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing," the Harvard Corporation said in a statement. She was also backed by the Harvard Alumni Association Executive Committee and 700 faculty members.

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Harvard is a shell of itself, more of a cesspool of corrupted ideologues (both among the faculty and the student body) with wealthy connections than it is an institution of true academic rigor. Gay is a prime example of that, having been caught plagiarizing sections of her academic works. Were she any undergraduate student on campus, Gay would be facing a long list of punishments, including expulsion. Instead, Harvard downplayed it as “instances of inadequate citation.”

But Gay is no mere mediocre academic. She is also a rabid acolyte of social justice, progressivism, or whatever other label you want to give to the identity-obsessed ideology of the academic and activist Left. She pushed for Harvard to fire a black professor who had the gall to question the narrative of police shootings offered by Black Lives Matter, using an unsubstantiated accusation of sexual misconduct for which even Harvard’s Title IX kangaroo court found no wrongdoing. Gay was the arts and sciences dean at the time, asking Harvard’s president to revoke that professor's tenure.

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Gay is a product of the identity-obsessed environment that left-wing administrators, professors, and students have fostered on college campuses. That is why Harvard is OK with her plagiarism and with her being unable to say that calling for the genocide of Jews is against Harvard’s code of conduct when the same university has threatened discipline against students for using the wrong pronouns. She is a mediocrity mired in a hateful, divisive ideology. That is exactly what Harvard wants from its president.

Harvard’s current prestige is unearned, based solely on its name and the connections it has to wealthy alumni in halls of power. It is coasting on an academic reputation to which it no longer lives up, becoming a pit of intellectual dishonesty and racial obsession. No one, then, is better suited to serve as its president than Claudine Gay.