{"id":139857,"date":"2024-01-03T00:22:35","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T05:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/?p=139857"},"modified":"2024-01-03T16:56:31","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T21:56:31","slug":"harvard-corporation-members-should-resign-in-wake-of-gay-fiasco-watchdogs-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/harvard-corporation-members-should-resign-in-wake-of-gay-fiasco-watchdogs-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvard Corporation members should resign in wake of Gay fiasco, watchdogs say"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATED<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Unless the board itself undergoes a revolution, nothing at Harvard will change\u2019<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Members of the Harvard Corporation must also resign, say a growing chorus of observers and watchdogs just hours after news broke Tuesday that President Claudine Gay was stepping down in disgrace amid plagiarism and antisemitism scandals.<\/p>\n

Gay announced Tuesday she would resign as president after only five months on the job and return to teaching at the Ivy League institution, blaming<\/a> in part \u201cracial animus\u201d for her decision in a statement that ignored controversies that engulfed her presidency over the last three months.<\/p>\n

Harvard\u2019s first black, female president resigned after shrugging off the deadly terrorist attacks that targeted Israeli civilians Oct. 7 and the rabid antisemitism on campus that followed, then telling a congressional committee in December that calls to annihilate the Jews do not necessarily violate Harvard\u2019s codes of conduct.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks it came to light that Gay\u2019s scholarly work contains dozens of instances of plagiarism, and what\u2019s more, the Harvard Corporation, the 13-member board in charge of the nation\u2019s most prestigious institution, was likely complicit as university brass tried to cover it up by threatening<\/a> the New York Post<\/em> with a defamation lawsuit and claiming an investigation found the plagiarism did not amount to academic misconduct.<\/p>\n

The months of controversy has cost Harvard a parade of billion-dollar donors who have pledged to stop giving money to the scandal-plagued school. Early applications to Harvard also took a nosedive, according to stats released in December, falling 17 percent, Inside Higher Ed<\/em> reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These facts have not gone unnoticed by observers and watchdogs who say members of the corporation are ultimately responsible for the entire affair, first for hiring Gay despite her mediocrity to advance a left-wing agenda and then for allowing an attempt to cover up her shoddy research and scholarly dishonesty, which in late December after everything came to light prompted<\/a> a congressional probe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Harvard Corporation that so recently appointed her president should resign,\u201d famed civil liberties attorney and Harvard alumnus Harvey Silverglate told The College Fix<\/em> on Tuesday. He called the entire situation a \u201cdisaster\u201d and said he will continue<\/a> his efforts to be elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers to clean house.<\/p>\n

\u201cClaudine Gay\u2019s problem was that she was never suited to be president of Harvard,\u201d Silverglate said via email. \u201cHer career has been mainly that of an academic bureaucrat. She famously devised programs to inculcate students and even faculty members in the mantra of \u2018diversity, equity and inclusion,\u2019 in which students would look different but think alike.\u201d<\/p>\n

Silverglate isn\u2019t the only one who argues the buck stops with the Harvard Corporation, which the New York Times<\/em> reports<\/a> is a cadre of rich and influential progressives, mostly wealthy business owners, attorneys and philanthropists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no indication from either the Gay resignation letter or the Harvard Corporation follow-up that the university is moving away from identity-based scholarship, hiring, and admissions,\u201d wrote<\/a> scholar Heather Mac Donald for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c…If the Harvard Corporation had learned anything from the Gay debacle, it would have left out that coded rhetoric of \u2018inclusiveness.\u2019 Unless the board itself undergoes a revolution, nothing at Harvard will change,\u201d Mac Donald wrote.<\/p>\n

University of Tennessee College of Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, on his personal Substack<\/a>, wrote Tuesday that \u201cNext to go should be Penny Pritzker, senior fellow (essentially chair of the board) of the Harvard Corporation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fellows of the Harvard Corporation hire the president,\u201d Reynolds wrote. \u201cPritzker had a responsibility to learn if Claudine Gay had a history of plagiarism, and if she had the personal and intellectual qualities to lead a top university. (The answer to both questions is now clearly \u2018no.\u2019)\u201d<\/p>\n

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni also weighed in, arguing in a statement posted<\/a> Tuesday on X that the \u201cwhole sordid episode is not really about Gay and it isn’t over because she has stepped down; it is about the misguided governance at Harvard, the trustees who put her in this untenable position, thinking that they were inoculated against any scrutiny and criticism because \u2026 Harvard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have a lot to answer for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Billionaire businessman and Harvard alumnus Bill Ackman agrees, writing on X in a lengthy statement<\/a> Jan. 2 that Harvard’s embrace of DEI is behind the mess and the board needs to be completely revamped.<\/p>\n

“The Board Chair, Penny Pritzker, should resign along with the other members of the board who led the campaign to keep Claudine Gay, orchestrated the strategy to threaten the media, bypassed the process for evaluating plagiarism, and otherwise greatly contributed to the damage that has been done,” wrote Ackman, one of the wealthy donors who yanked support early on.<\/p>\n

“…The new board members should be chosen in a transparent process with the assistance of the 30-person Board of Overseers. There is no reason the Harvard board of 12 independent trustees cannot be comprised of the most impressive, high integrity, intellectually and politically diverse members of our country and globe.”<\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican who led the congressional questioning that brought Gay under the spotlight for antisemitism, said in a news release Wednesday that she will continue to keep the heat on Harvard.<\/p>\n

“Ms. Stefanik says the House Education and the Workforce Committee\u2019s probe into Harvard will ‘uncover the absolute negligence and failures of the Harvard Corporation,’ the university\u2019s highest governing body. ‘It\u2019s going to expose an institutional rot of antisemitism in Harvard as an institution, its failure to protect Jewish students, and its shirking of academic integrity,'” the release stated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Editor’s note:<\/strong> Updated with statements from Bill Ackman and Elise Stefanik.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

MORE: At Harvard, there are 2,600 more administrators than undergrads<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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