OPINION:
The old saying “damning with faint praise” seems particularly apt. The Fellows of Harvard College, the members of the leading oversight board of Harvard University, have expressed their support for President Claudine Gay, but they have done so in such a manner that they have made it clear that she is not deserving of such support and that her days as president are numbered.
In their statement of support, the Harvard fellows note that the university’s initial pronouncement in the aftermath of the Hamas massacre of Israelis — a pronouncement blessed by Ms. Gay — was inadequate. The fellows’ statement goes on to indicate that Ms. Gay has had to apologize for how she handled her congressional testimony.
The statement also addresses the accusations of plagiarism that have been leveled at Ms. Gay. It suggests that there were several failures by Ms. Gay to provide appropriate support for statements in her dissertation, seemingly lifted virtually word for word from other texts, but that they were not significant enough to warrant criticism. In most major academic institutions, the failures cited would be grounds for severe discipline, if not expulsion.
And then the statement, seemingly intended to buttress the Harvard president’s position, goes on to contradict her congressional testimony by noting that “we are united in our strong belief that calls for violence against our students and disruptions of the classroom experience will not be tolerated.”
Of course, this is precisely the opposite of what Ms. Gay said publicly. She chose rather to emphasize “context” and refused to unequivocally acknowledge that the threats to which many Jewish students have been subjected violate Harvard’s standards of comportment.
It is difficult to understand why the fellows have chosen to throw their clearly ambivalent support behind Claudine Gay. She has amply demonstrated that she does not merit this support, as the very statement issued by the fellows itself demonstrates.
The most plausible explanation for the odd expression of support given to Ms. Gay is that the Fellows of Harvard College are embarrassed by Ms. Gay’s performance. But since they only recently selected her for the post of president, with their selection having been feted with all kinds of hyperbole, they are not prepared to give effect to their embarrassment. The ultimate outcome may thus merely be delayed until a time when less attention will be paid to the acknowledgment of a monumental error.
The fellows, in their statement, may also have sought to demonstrate their rejection of pressure from the outside world and to express solidarity within the ivory tower. This would constitute a kind of know-nothing stubbornness that is not entirely unknown in the academic world.
Infused by the progressive ideology that has taken hold of so much of academia in the United States, the fellows may have actually come to believe that they are serving the cause of academic independence by refusing to accept a growing consensus that it is time for a wholesale housecleaning of our academic world. They also seem willing to sacrifice moral clarity and intellectual quality to avoid being ridiculed.
Neither of these reasons can withstand genuine scrutiny, and neither can Claudine Gay. Academic rigor must be the first principle in our centers of higher education. Embarrassment has to be relegated to a secondary position, if any.
As for resistance to the outside world, this is also contrary to the alleged openness of the academy. Universities need to be accepting of ideas and influences from all venues, including those with which the guardians of academia may not be in accord. Closing the doors to the outside world and rejecting notions that emerge from there may provide comfort to professional academics, but it does not engender thoughtful analysis and dialogue.
For too long, our academic establishment has been creating a false world of its own. Ideas perceived as threatening to the accepted progressive catechism have been systematically excluded from our universities and deemed threatening to the psychological health of both the faculties and the student bodies. The result has been an atrophy of serious thinking and intellectual discourse.
Layered on top of this ideological uniformity has been an increasingly intolerant social culture, which has imposed strictures that have nothing to do with rigorous thinking and academic excellence. In the name of diversity, diversity of thought has been restricted. Promoting inclusion has resulted in the exclusion of anything that deviates from progressive orthodoxy. And the application of theories of equity has resulted in the most inequitable outcomes, with academic excellence having been sacrificed for the ability to parade immutable characteristics on websites.
When Ms. Gay failed to condemn the student groups that saw fit to attack the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre and to praise the perpetrators, she demonstrated her inability to react to unquestionably wrongheaded statements.
When she was unable to express an unambiguous moral position as she was being questioned on Capitol Hill, she exposed a defective moral compass.
When it was disclosed that she had failed to comply with the most elementary academic requirements in some of her scholarly writings, she demonstrated an absence of intellectual rigor.
If those three failings are not deemed adequate to have Claudine Gay move on, it is not just Ms. Gay who is demonstrating that she is unworthy of leading one of the great universities of the world. It is those who are willing to accept those failings who have shown their unworthiness to be the overseers of that institution.
Ms. Gay will leave soon enough. Her errors are simply too flagrant. The really important question is whether the fellows will feel any shame for their inability to acknowledge the importance of those errors and for their inability to confront them, as is necessary for the sake of our educational establishment and of future generations of students.
• Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington office of a national law firm. He is the author of “Lobbying for Equality: Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights During the French Revolution,” published by HUC Press.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.