Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Upside down at Harvard

Today's musing minute. 

Some may not know about it, others may remember it. I refer to the firing of Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard not so long ago. Comparing the cases of the firing of Summers and Gay is very informative, very revealing of the mindset of the decision-makers at Harvard - for some time now.

Summers was fired for the very reasons Gay was hired, and why her firing was so strongly resisted. Lawrence Summers is a white male with a distinguished academic publication and research record and unimpeachable scholarly integrity. He also proved to be an able administrator with extensive experience at the highest levels of government. He was fired because of his acadimic integrity, and because his race and gender aggravated his sin in the eyes of his critics. His sin was to express an unacceptable opinion come to as a result of his research. Even though he is a clearly identified "liberal" his careful examination of the intriguing disproportionate representation of men in the STEM fields led him to conclude that this was a matter of a difference in the distribution of IQs between males and females (for whatever reason) and *not* a result of discrimination. Apparently this opinion, whether having merit or not, was completely unacceptable and he was hounded out of office. 

Keep this in mind while considering Claudine Gay's decision to obfuscate on the acceptability of calling for genocide of Jews, or, if excused as conforming to a legal technicality, her engaging in serial plagiarism. Apparently both were worthy of a strenuous defense, not only because of their political correctness but also because Gay's race and gender made it "excusable". 

 What irony that in the very letter announcing her departure, they had the chutzpah to suggest that she was the *victim* of racial discrimination, when, in reality, she had obviously been the temporary big time beneficiary of it!

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