America


Harvard Scandal Opens Door to Reform Higher Ed


Conservatives see opportunity to curb leftist ideology at elite schools — and many businesses.


T BY ERIC MACK


he downfall of harvard President Claudine Gay presents conservatives with a new weapon against the


“woke” trend in higher education. The left’s mantra of diversity,


equity, and inclusion (DEI) has been denounced by the likes of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Harvard legal legend Alan Dershowitz, who call it divisive, exclusion- ary, and indoctrination. Although Gay’s resignation


in January came amid accusa- tions she lifted language from other scholars in her doctoral dissertation and journal arti- cles, it followed a backlash over her disastrous congressional testimony in which she failed to outright denounce antisemi- tism on campus. Gay was a professor at Har-


vard and Stanford and headed Har- vard’s largest division before being promoted but, critics charge, she only got the top job because she is a Black woman.


Christopher Rufo, a conservative


activist, celebrated her departure as a win in his campaign against elite insti- tutions of higher education. “Tomorrow, we get back to the


fight,” he said on X, formerly Twitter, describing a “playbook” against insti- tutions that are too liberal. His latest target: DEI in education


and business. “We must not stop until we have abolished DEI ideology from every institution in America,” he said. Gay did not directly address the plagiarism accusations in her resigna-


16 NEWSMAX | FEBRUARY 2024 Gay’s defenders claimed plagia-


rism only came to light as part of a coordinated campaign to force her from office, in part because of her involvement in efforts for racial justice on campus. Her resignation came after calls


for her ouster from prominent con- servatives including Rep. Elise Ste- fanik, R-N.Y., a Harvard alumna, and Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has donated millions to Harvard. The campaign against Gay and


other Ivy League presidents has become part of a broader effort to remake higher education, which has been the bastion of liberalism. Republican detractors have sought to gut funding for public universities,


tion, but she indirectly nodded to the December congressional hearing that started the criticism, where she did not say unequivocally that calls for the genocide of Jews would violate Harvard policy. Her departure came just six months


after she became Harvard’s first Black president.


roll back tenure, and banish initiatives that make colleges more politically biased. They also have aimed to limit how race and gender are indoctrinat- ing classrooms. Reviews by conservative activists


CLAUDINE GAY


and then a Harvard committee found multiple shortcomings in Gay’s aca- demic citations. In dozens of instances first unearthed by the New York Post and Washington Free Beacon, Gay’s work includes long stretches of prose that mirror language from other pub- lished works. Columnist Michael Good-


win wrote in the Post that Gay’s removal should shift the focus of “the sordid affair” to the small group of people who hired and protected her — the members of the secretive gov- erning board that had threat- ened the publication for dar- ing to question her background and qualifications. “Why, in its vetting process,


did the board not discover the numerous examples of her


copying other people’s work without giving credit? And why, when ram- pant plagiarism emerged, did the board continue to ignore or downplay her unprofessional work?” The case illustrates the moral rot


that has turned many of the nation’s most prestigious campuses into leftist indoctrination factories, he wrote. Her appointment came after what


has been reported as the fastest search in the university’s history. Unverified claims that white candidates were not seriously considered should be investi- gated, Goodwin wrote. Board members didn’t want to


know too much about Gay, he sug- gested, lest it spoil the shared sense of superiority that she and they were cut from the finest cloth.


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