Jan
4
2024

The Fateful Lightning of Our Terrible Swift Sword

The AP detects a weapon of Mass-Ave destruction:

(I hate to explain a vile pun, but for those not familiar with Cantabrigian cartography: Harvard's main campus is off Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, MA.)

There's an unintentionally funny headline on an op-ed at the New York Times, authored by the ex-President Claudine Gay: What Just Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me. Allow me to point out that, according to the grammar pedants, that really should be "Bigger Than I". But maybe the NYT has a newer stylebook.

Anyway, Gay wastes no time in describing herself as a victim:

On Tuesday, I made the wrenching but necessary decision to resign as Harvard’s president. For weeks, both I and the institution to which I’ve devoted my professional life have been under attack. My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.

About that last bit: Gay wants to dismiss her critics as the sort of people who eagerly deploy the N-word. Convenient! And a drive-by ad hominem!

I am certain that (a) those racist people may exist, but if so (b) their influence on the controversy was negligible.

But (c) Gay's N-word claim lacks details or evidence. I have to wonder how many of these alleged uncountable N-words were actually Jussie Smollett-style hoaxes, concocted by sympathizers or perhaps Gay herself.

Also (emphasis added):

My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.

What, no justice, nor the American way?

I will take the cheap shot: her newfound respect for "truth" is progress compared to last month when she repeatedly referred to "my truth".

I've also emphasized a bit in this next part:

As I depart, I must offer a few words of warning. The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there. Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.

Even as a very bad Lutheran, I remember how Hebrews 11:1 defines "faith": it is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." We take things on faith despite the lack of solid evidence. When Gay bemoans the decay of faith, she simply wants us to believe her, not our lying eyes.

Gay ignores the extent to which the decaying reputation of the "pillars of American society" is self-inflicted. Nobody (for example) forced Harvard to enact policies that caused the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression to award it an "Abysmal" bottom-of-the-pack rating for its policies on free expression. Nobody forced it to actively discriminate against white and Asian kids in its admission policies.

And nobody forced Gay to make (what she calls) "citation errors" or to be outwitted by (of all people) Elise Stefanik.

At Reason, Robby Soave asks the Betteridge-Law question about that AP story: Does A.P. Really Think Conservatives Invented Plagiarism Accusations?.

To make things abundantly clear, the media has never chosen to ignore a plagiarism scandal or write it off as trivial or unfair, merely because the accuser has a political agenda. Plagiarism allegations derailed the 1988 presidential campaign of then Sen. Joe Biden (D–Del.), who was accused by The New York Times and others of copying elements of a speech by British Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock. Biden also copied from both John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and "did something very stupid"—his words—in law school, when he stole five pages from a law review article and submitted them as part of a legal brief.

You would have to have been born yesterday to think that allegations of plagiarism are a new political weapon invented by conservatives.

And we were not born yesterday. Neither were those twitter context-adders.

But what's the important thing here? Charles C. W. Cooke proposes: The Important Thing Is Harvard Lost.

Ihave heard it lamented in recent days that, despite the scale and consequence of the evidence that was presented against her, the removal of Claudine Gay from the presidency of Harvard University still took “far too long.” This, undoubtedly, is true. Had Gay been a student, she would have been removed 15 seconds after the first tranche of documents was made public. Had Gay been a conservative, she’d have been summarily launched into the sun. Nevertheless, what seems important about this case is not that it confirmed once again that our elite institutions are playing Calvinball, but that, despite the best that they could throw at it, Harvard was unable to make the objections to Gay’s behavior disappear into thin air.

This was not for want of trying. On the contrary: Every card in the pack was played, played, and played again. Gay’s critics were accused of racism and of misogyny, and of every foul combination of the two. Her conspicuous plagiarism was denied, redefined, falsely investigated, and ultimately recast as a tool of politics or of privilege. Her critics were attacked and maligned as the wrong sort of people, to whom a victory could not possibly be accorded. Even Barack Obama got in on the action, lobbying Harvard to stay the course.

But Harvard lost.

For extra fun, read that to yourself with a British accent.

Also of note:

  • Worried about Trump winning in November? You shouldn't. Because, according to George F. Will, A Constitution-flouting ‘authoritarian’ is already in the White House.

    Overcaffeinated Cassandras continue to forecast an “authoritarian” and anti-constitutional Donald Trump dictatorship. They are mistaken about the near future because, among other reasons, they misread the recent past. Also, they are oblivious to, or at least reticent about, the behavior of Trump’s successor: Joe Biden is, like Trump, an authoritarian recidivist mostly stymied by courts.

    When Trump wielded presidential power, he could not even build his border wall. But next time, the fevered forecasters warn, the entire federal apparatus, which mostly loathes him, will suddenly be submissive. Such alarmism, which evidently gives some people pleasurable frissons, distracts attention from the similarity of Trump’s and Biden’s disdain for legality.

    Instances of Trump’s anti-constitutional behavior have been amply reported and deplored. Biden’s, less so — although they (e.g., the eviction moratorium, the vaccine mandate, the cancellation of student debt), and judicial reprimands of them, have been frequent. Now, consider the lack of attention to his contempt for the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, and the Senate majority’s supine complicity.

    I was totally unaware of the saga of Ann Carlson at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, so check that out.

  • Only three? Veronique de Rugy's first 2024 column proposes Three Economic Myths to Put To Rest This Year. One is rising inequality. Two is globalization's deleterious effect on American manufacturing. And…

    Finally, I wish politicians and pundits — and more of us citizens — would become a lot more skeptical about the idea that government is the solution to all problems. At the very least, I hope they consider the sheer scale of today's government. Despite all the enormous spending and extensive regulating, dissatisfaction among the public persists, and in many cases, problems seem to be worsening. Correlation isn't causation, but this observation alone should puzzle those who believe that simply expanding government is a solution.

    I predict… Vero's advice will not put these myths to rest.