There is a reckoning at top colleges across America. Harvard President Claudine Gay is not going the way of now former UPenn president Liz MaGill – at least not yet.
This woman hasn’t met somebody who’s slightly right of far-left who she didn’t want to cancel or kick out of Harvard, but she gets to keep her job because she is Black, she is a woman, she is clearly a DEI hire, and she says all the right things to please her left-wing board. Well, all the right things except, of course, ‘I condemn calls for genocide against the Jews.’
Like I said to Tucker Carlson on Monday: Getting rid of Claudine Gay won’t change a damn thing about Harvard. It’s lost. They are on a different mission now than they were generations ago when the goal was to actually educate our best and brightest to become tomorrow’s leaders. Now, they’re on a mission to turn everyone into woke zombies who will vote Democrat. And that mission continues.
Claudine Gay pushed out people who were Black, who were white, men, women – it didn’t matter. She loved to target any position that wasn’t far-left woke, yet she lives to fight another day because God forbid this board get rid of somebody like that. I’m sorry, it’s absurd.
UPenn Fires Magill
The University of Pennsylvania had a different position. They forced Magill to resign over the weekend in the wake of her terrible performance before Congress last week where she was talking about the law on free speech like she was talking about, you know, her morning coffee even though it had to do with chants for the death of Jews: ‘It depends on the context.’ ‘It depends on the pervasiveness.’
Was she wrong as a legal matter? No, she wasn’t. But it doesn’t mean what she was saying had the correct tone or moral condemnation of the content, which you know we would have heard had somebody been out there chanting for death to Black people while wearing a hood. She couldn’t find the moral outrage when it was about Jews. That says a lot about Liz Magill, and Claudine Gay, and Sally Kornbluth from MIT. All these women are straight out of central casting.
Harvard Stands by Gay
So far, Gay is weathering the storm notwithstanding the fact she appears to be a cheat, too. She appears to have plagiarized not just one time in her dissertation. The examples are coming out over and over – The Washington Free Beacon has a big post today. From the look of it, Gay doesn’t really much like citing the people whose ideas she’s stealing. Harvard wants her to stay because the other idea that she is stealing is that it’s fine to condemn Jews and call for their deaths on campuses. She only reversed that position when she was browbeaten to within an inch of losing her job. Then, finally, she saw the light.
She, for today, has garnered the public support of the Harvard Corporation, which writes that they “reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University” and that “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.”
Wokeism – that’s what they’re saying. All the white racists, she’s the one to stare them down. The fact that she seems to be in favor of antisemitism, we’re going to give her a pass. We know we’ve lost a bunch of money, but it’s more important to us to appease our super woke, George Floyd-idealizing left flank, and Claudine is just the gal.
In fact, as you look back at Claudine’s dissertation – which she apparently plagiarized large, large portions of and some of her other writings coming under scrutiny – guess what they’re all about? Race, race, race. Black, black, black, white, black, white, black, white, black, white.
She’s never seen something involving race that she doesn’t want to condemn because she finds it threatening, or upsetting, or bad for black people. But if you’re a Jew, you’re on your own. Sorry, Claudine doesn’t quite see how you’ve been oppressed by all the calls for genocide. That’s where she draws the line, and apparently so does the Harvard board. They, too, don’t give a damn.
Free Speech at Harvard
They’re saying she’s the one to lead Harvard forward in its fight against antisemitism. Oh, she is? Okay. So, here’s what’s going to happen now that she’s been reaffirmed. She is going to triple down on any call that sounds like antisemitism because she’s scared. She’s scared for her own hide. She doesn’t want to be fired as the president of Harvard, right? It’s embarrassing.
She’s going to double down on that and, while she does, she’s going to double down on all other ‘hateful statements.’ Harvard is going to go a different way. You mark my words: Instead of learning its lesson about free speech and universal applications, they’re going to crack down on things even more. There’s not going to be a Riley Gaines – or anybody who sounds like her – appearance at Harvard University ever.
There is going to be an overcorrection. This whole thing will end up hurting free speech even more than it already has been at Harvard.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 684 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.