The GP made no statement as to his personal beliefs, just as to whether or not the statements violated a university's CoC, which none of us have more insight into than the current (now prior) president of said university.
I'm Jewish. It's clear to me that her actual statement has been significantly distorted; in context, it's clearly a very minor flub (and factually correct, with respect to Harvard's policies).
(Evidence of her plagiarism is also overwhelming, and she should not be Harvard's president with that record. It remains to be seen what percent of academics would stand up to that level of scrutiny.)
The fact that it’s technically true doesn’t really help her. Getting hung up on the technical details of Harvard’s code of conduct just comes across as uncaring about the big picture issue, that is, the thing people outside Harvard actually care about. Part of the job involves clear and sensitive public communication about politically charged topics, and that’s where she failed.
“At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment?” Stefanik asked.
“It can be, depending on the context,” Gay responded.
But Stefanik pressed Gay to give a yes or no answer to the question about whether calls for the genocide of Jews constitute a violation of Harvard’s policies.
“Antisemitic speech when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct and we do take action,” Gay said.
Stefanik tried again.
“So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct, correct?” Stefanik asked.
“Again, it depends on the context,” Gay said.
---
The middle part with its "that is actionable conduct and we do take action" could mean that she understood the question as "does the university take action?", and that truly depends on the context: There are situations that aren't the university's business but law enforcement's. (even though I'm not saying that she took it that way, I don't know what she thought at that moment, but it seems like it wasn't a lot.)
Even with such a 'most charitable' interpretation her communication sucks though, which makes her unsuitable for a role that's to a larger part that of a figure head. And with any other interpretation, she's even less suitable for basic decency reasons.
I'm not playing the fool here, I just am one (i.e. ignorant)... wouldn't the plagiarism stuff have come up when she was appointed President? Like would she have had a hearing or something first?
I believe they were only uncovered (re-uncovered?, but definitely largely publicized) after those who were dissatisfied with her congressional testimony looked deeper into her past for more ammunition to use in their push to remove her as president.
Doesn’t matter if some political enemies discovered it, she still owns the mess she put herself in over all of this. And let’s face it, it’s not like the political enemies she made were all on one side. There was bi-partisan outrage over the hair splitting of genocide answer she gave to congress.
Also bear in mind that Harvard tried to stick by her and even excused her congressional testimony and after investigating the initial plagerism instances. At a certain point the plagiarism instances just became way to numerous (50?) to reasonably explain them away by carelessness.
I honestly lean more towards her general beliefs politically (except on the Israel-Palestine issue) but I don't care what was the reason behind it. She still committed plagiarism, and someone who did it in such a provenly egregious way is not fit to run a place like Harvard, period.
It's only a matter of time before something like this is done. Semiautomated detecdtion of plagiarism is already possible, and with recent improvements in NLP, I suspect it'll be much more robust.
Her qualifications were the previous jobs she held - leading the DE&I initiative. Not her scholastic bonafides - I read that she had 11 published papers before getting this job.
I strongly suspect that in the future, everybody being considered for a senior role at university will have their writing sent through a plagiarism detector and rejected if they fail that test.
Harvard should already have been doing that, but it's clear the board who hired her had no real interest in verifying her credentials.
Proving plagiarism is hard work. In general that's only done when there are suspicions already, or if there's some serious (office) politics going on. Otherwise there's a basic trust among scientists that their peers work properly. (with the odd but very honest mistake here or there)
Seems like she stayed clear from raising suspicions (by simply not publishing more and going into administration instead) but now she made herself some serious enemies willing to do the work.
The consequences are a matter of trust: A simple office clerk with no scientific training going through the ranks at Harvard growing into "President of Harvard", on the understanding that they "merely" ensure that the business chugs along (and with a proven track record in doing that) while keeping a large part of such administration work off the backs of the scientists and teachers is a better fit than somebody who's demonstrated disregard for the tenets of scientific work.
It doesn't matter why President Gay's works were scrutinized right now, the loss of trust is still real.
it's a campus you get fired/rescinded/expelled for micro-aggressions and the slightlest transgression to political correctness. So the "it depends" could only be interpreted that way.
According to Harvard's campus policies these are perfectly acceptable:
- "Disgraced former Harvard President Claudine Gay is finally back picking cotton where she belongs"
- "I think the black students should be picking cotton, not studying at Harvard"
Those quotes are also protected under the 1st amendment. Regardless, they're so unbelievable vile, and the merits of the expression are so vacuous that it has virtually no value for mind-expanding endeavors that universities claim to be for. Similar to calling for a genocide.
How hard is it to say calling for genocide of a group would probably make individuals of that group less safe, and therefore a violation of university policy? University Presidents at some of the most prestigious universities didn't get outmaneuvered by a slick operator, they just let it slip how they felt about a certain group.
If we put aside the alt-realities of political polarization, that seems like a very unlikely explanation to me. Why would we believe these people are antisemetic? Is there any evidence otherwise?
I know that at least one of the universities (Penn?) they otherwise suppressed pro-Palestinian speech, including banning groups and presentations.
Whether they are antisemitic or just indifferent to the plight of Jews is hard to say. Universities have felt compelled in the past to make statements and offer safe spaces to other vulnerable groups. What is different about Jews? One could speculate, but you would have to ask them.
> Whether they are antisemitic or just indifferent to the plight of Jews is hard to say.
Of course the premise is that the answer must be one of the two, but you need to establish that premise. It's the claim of a heavily polarized group (which doesn't make it false, but I'm not taking it at face value either).
Is there evidence of it? In all the claims I've seen, I haven't seen evidence.
There is a long tradition of permitting academics to say things that we wouldn't normally allow people to say. The people saying these things normally need to back up their words in a long written argument with citations, etc, and do so in a fairly passive way (IE, publish it as an article in a journal, rather than an op-ed in a newspaper, or during a protest). Even then there can be a firestorm (see the response to The Bell Curve).
I'm pretty sure if we look back we can see historically that academics called for violence against Jews, Asians, Muslims, and many other ethnicities. At times, people have completely supported academics in their privilege, typically when the statements align with their own philosophies. Imagine what people said right after Pearl Harbor.
University presidents want to keep everybody happy- that includes professors, students, and people outside the university. A president like Gay probably thought that by making the statements she did, she was pissing off the fewest people- preserving academic freedom for professors while also carving out a space for protestors to say rather violent things. That sort of subtlety doesn't work when you're being grilled in front of congress- they want you to say "yes or no" (notice all three presidents were asked, and confirmed, their believe that Israel has a right to exist) with no context. If Gay had said "no it's not OK" then she would have returned to a firestorm by students on her campus, and if she said it was OK, then she would have returned to a different firestorm on campus.
I think a lot of the news coverage around this has unnecessarily heightened the level of severity in the claims of the protestors. I imagine many people who called for intifada didn't realize that some folks would perceive that as a direct attack on their lives. We already know many students don't know which river, or which sea is being referenced.
Of the three presidents, Kornbluth of MIT is the only one who will survive this. She has an excellent publication record, the full and total support of her institution, she is much smarter than Stefanik, and it helps that she's Jewish, because people levelling "antisemitism" claims against her just look kind of silly.
The university brass showed up to a reality tv show thinking that it was going to be a PhD defense.
If I were doing their media prep, I would tell them to just ignore the questions and launch into fiery monologues about freedom of speech, liberty, American values, etc instead. Maybe accuse one of the unfriendlies of antisemitism and political grandstanding.
Same reason evangelical Christians are willing to endorse Trump.
I don’t mean this as a gotcha. When group X criticizes a member of group Y based on standards that group X doesn’t really care about, in order to gain an advantage for group X, group Y will tend to discount those criticisms to a varying degree.
This. Absolutely this. This is group identity and culture war ideology 101. It doesn't matter what you stand for, as long as the other side is "worse".
I think the both-sides-equal analysis is not only simplistic (and very unlikely), but just serves the far more corrupt side. Yes, we can make endless arguments based on relativism, but I don't think the level of corruption is comparable. For one thing, brazenly corrupt reactionary right figures remain very popular and stay in power - they embrace and flaunt corruption.
because their own work is based on the same copy-paste. those people co-elect and co-opt one another. they're like rotten cops : everyone protects everyone else, because everyone's getting cash in their pockets... most universities are nowadays of very poor quality : they can't stand anyone with an opinion they dont like (if you're a republican you have to hide it or get in serious trouble). they are very low of intelligence because the filter is not set on selecting the best but selecting people with the good politics (left and democrat) and color (the darker, the better).
Seems like more than just "duplicative language". In one case, the language she is duplicating is coming from sentences in a paper where the author is citing others' publications. She could have at least copied his citations/sources along with, or instead of, his language. This just looks like laziness, carelessness, incompetence or perhaps something worse.
I think it’s probably worth doing some research on typical university President resumes. Laurence Summers had zero experience as a university administrator before he became President of Harvard University, although he had an impressive career otherwise. Ben Sasse is running a 50k student university; his previous experience is with a 1500 person college.
Sasse was a political appointment, to force Republican politics on the students and faculty. That's a recent GOP tactic, and has happened in Florida too (and probably other places).
What do you actually expect to be on a university president's CV? The last two chancellors of UC Berkeley have been not-very-notable professors who worked their way up the administration ranks; the presidents of most Catholic universities are priests. It matters that you're a good manager, not that you've won the Nobel Prize.
Yeah, I probably had wrong expectations, I kinda assumed that they would have significant success in something other than climbing the academic administration ladder.
Perhaps in contrast the president of Princeton was a Rhodes scholar and clerked for a Supreme Court justice before going to teaching and administration.
Yeah, Princeton seems to have a record of choosing more academically accomplished faculty to serve as president. My point is that that's not really typical.
Was this an instance of "mob justice", or an instance of her seeing the writing on the wall and then resigning rather than trying to put up a fight? I skimmed the article and it doesn't look like she was explicitly forced out, although it's certainly plausible that public ("mob") pressure was a factor.
Greater public scrutiny is bad? Or is it only bad when it's in retaliation for something? More importantly, why is this form of "mob justice" bad? It's easy to see why it's bad to subject people to extrajudicial violence, but in this case all conduct is done within the bounds of the legal system.
There's a huge difference between being "canceled" for one's opinions and/or unsubstantiated allegations, and being canceled for actual misconduct. I'm not even sure how you'd defend the latter. Suppose someone lied about their credentials to get a position, and he got found out a few years later thanks to angry partisans, are we supposed to let him off the hook because "cancel culture"?
Nowhere am I arguing she does not deserve the consequences of her actions, all I'm saying is that no-one seemed to care nearly this much until her congressional testimony.
There was no mob justice here. Congress (Stefanik) is not a mob, and the plagiarism was real (and sent in the form of an amazing letter to the board/research integrity folks at Harvard).
If anything, the Board resisted the mob pressure until it was clear that Gay had plagiarized.
She came under fire for their dry responses to a line of questioning from Republican representative Stefanik, who asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate the college’s code of conduct.
But the premise of the question was nonsense[1], as Peter Beinart has made clear. The premise being „intifada“ meaning „an attempt at genocide of jews“ when it actually means „uprising“.
It was acutally about silencing the Pro-Palestinian support at American universities in light of wealthy donors threatening to cut funding.
It means uprising. Not killing jews. - On the other hand Israel‘s cabinet (Netanyahu, Gallant, Herzog, Ben Gvir, Smotrich) actively call for genocide: Netanyahu by comparing Palestinians to Amalek, of whom the Old Testament says „kill them all, men, children, women, babies, unborn“. Herzog said: „no innocents in Gaza“, meaning justified to kill children. Gallant: „human animals!“, cuts water, food, medicines for over 80 days. These and more statements and the actions of IDF are documented on a 85 page[1] accusation of South Africa against Israel accusing them of Genocide in Gaza.
So while you insinuate „intifada“ means „genocide“, Israel is apparently engaging in genocidal acts.
Well, do you compare the whole leadership of a western nation to a terror group? Shouldn’t a civilised country avoid calling for genocide? Or held accountable if they did?
This is a good example of what I just said. I don't think there's much for us to learn, or to hash out, or to be curious about, by trying to pick apart what you just said there. It's written in a way to foreclose further discussion.
That's fine, though; this subthread has not all that much to do with Claudine Gay.
> Nobody, on either side of this conflict, is being careful with their words.
I don't know for sure, but Hamas and Netanyahu's coalition have been masters of public communication. I think they are very careful and strategic, and know what they're doing. I think it's like saying an experienced, highly expert developer isn't being careful with their code.
I don't think anybody has established that the "average palestinian on the street" (or what's left of it) believes this, and given it's such a hyperbolic claim, I'd recommend you support your claim with more data.
I watched the testimony. I’m left leaning these days (mostly because the right went batshit crazy), but I hold a lot of conservative values (which are reflected in the moderate left too so nbd).
I found her testimony to be insipid and not worthy of someone who has the position of leader and president.
She should have clearly stated “if someone calls for violence or genocide of any people, that is against harvards code” (and if that’s not true then amend the code please). It should have been a lay-up.
Instead she kept saying “it depends on the context” which sounds like politician speech for dodging accountability. That’s fine for most people, but is this what we want from society’s leaders?
If there were questions about “intifada”, she should have said something like “I don’t speak that language, so I can’t tell you what it means, but calls for genocide are not okay”.
> I found her testimony to be insipid and not worthy of someone who has the position of leader and president.
How much leeway do you give her for being out of her element? That's part of the point of these hearings, to put people under extreme pressure and play gotcha.
A harvard president gets no leeway in this context; they are expected to be absolutely perfect, handling gotchas with aplomb. She was just not qualified for this.
I don’t consider this to be out of element for a president.
She tried to outplay the gotcha game, which is why she did poorly.
Instead she should have come in and said “At Harvard this is what we believe - …”.
Being able to state the values of your organization is core skill for the president and leader of the school. It should be down pat, a solid set of words that ring true and inspire. If you can’t do that, then let’s find someone who can. That’s the difference between leaders and managers.
I don't know about Gay, but let's be careful that it's not character assasination campaigns by the reactionaries, seeking to seize control of these (educational) institutions too.
Such situations are tricky: If you dig through every aspect of someone's long career and life, there's a reasonable chance of finding something problematic or even serious [edit: also, in every field, the way sausage is made can be a little messier than the public's innocent, simplistic imagination]. On one hand, we want to maintain the integrity of the institutions and our society. On the other, we need to be careful about incidentally empowering political suppression.
I suppose part of the solution is not making it political, and not replacing people like Gay with their political enemies - ensuring there is no political benefit. Another part is to hold reactionaries and allies to the same standards; now egregious behavior and corruption is tolerated, and even encouraged as a way to flaunt power and disrupt order. (I don't mean that as whataboutism - if Gay did wrong, Gay should go.)
> I don't know about Gay, but let's be careful that it's not character assasination campaigns by the reactionaries, seeking to seize control of these (educational) institutions too.
You don't have to question this - the guy who originally started the campaign against her literally stated that this was his plan on Twitter. Both his motives and his tactics were public record long before the mainstream media picked up the story.
The most egregious part of this story is the part Harvard University pays white-shoe law firms to threaten newspapers reporting about their administrator's misconduct. Casual abuse of power by those with far too much of it.
I'm very much of two minds about this. The first is that, at the very least, the three women up in front of Congress did a very, very poor job dealing with Congress. That reflects the unequal treatment by the administration of different groups, depending on the types of speech being said. Saying that schools considered calls for genocide against Jewish people's protected speech ... was a bad tactic to take, given all of the other examples raised at that session.
Rules for thee, not for me, has been Ivy League's privilege for years now. She previously ran the DEI initiative that was found to discriminate against Asians at Harvard by the USSC. It's only equitable if some are more equitable than others.
That said, this will only further the restrictions on speech at universities, which has been weaponized to an almost inconceivable degree, as it was in this case.
> Saying that schools considered calls for genocide against Jewish people's protected speech
That's the power of talking points. Once people internalize them, then the conclusions are inescapable. If you can frame the question, you've already won the debate. It's like calling abortion the murder of children - if you accept that, then the abortion debate is of course over for you.
The only protection is to question our premises. Did Gay say that? It would seem pretty odd ...
It's pretty easy to interpret "from the river to the sea" as the extermination of Israel. It's also easy for those who define Intifada at face value when they say that only with the death of every Jew will the Second Intifada be complete.
This is like people stating in 2000 that when Bin Ladin said Jihad against America, it didn't count - he was talking about Big Jihad and not small Jihad.
It's "pretty easy" to type anything in to an HN comment box, or say anything as a talking head on a news broadcast, but that's not evidence. Strong, highly prejudicial claims require strong evidence.
"Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north,” Khaled Mashaal, the group’s former leader, said in a 2012 speech in Gaza celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas, the Associated Press reported."
Mashaal's quote doesn't say anything about extermination.
Hamas' manifestos also claim the land (and so do many Jewish Israeli groups and, afaik, their manifestos) and rule of it. But where is there advocacy of extermination?
Could you point to where that very long survey supports your claim? I read and skimmed parts, and searched for some words, but didn't find it.
it's too late. saying in public that calling for killing of jews because they are jews not being a problem (after the holocaust) is unnacceptable. they got killed by millions using gas and you have your students calling for a second extermination and you see no problem there ? second, she's a fraud. if you check her "intellectual production" she barely published 10 papers in YEARS while the norm at the university is about 10 papers or so PER YEAR. if you study her own work, it's a fraud based on stealing other's people work and copy paste.
seriously : if ANY student currently at harvard did the same as she did in plagiarism, that student would get, AT MINIMUM a 3 years suspension. if not getting expelled forever from getting a diploma from harvard.
why did she get that job ? her skin color, and her leftist politics. nothing else. her university and intellectual production is worth nothing, and she's clearly not the brighest lamp at harvard, by a very long shot.
it's too late. where i work, anyone from harvard gets ejected to the nearest trash bin if they try to get in. bosses told us they will never, ever, get someone from harvard as long they will be around, which is at least 10 years at minimum. and those big CEOs they all know one another, and talk with one another.
harvard students, good luck finding a job with your crap diploma.
117 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadThe GP made no statement as to his personal beliefs, just as to whether or not the statements violated a university's CoC, which none of us have more insight into than the current (now prior) president of said university.
(Evidence of her plagiarism is also overwhelming, and she should not be Harvard's president with that record. It remains to be seen what percent of academics would stand up to that level of scrutiny.)
“At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment?” Stefanik asked.
“It can be, depending on the context,” Gay responded.
But Stefanik pressed Gay to give a yes or no answer to the question about whether calls for the genocide of Jews constitute a violation of Harvard’s policies.
“Antisemitic speech when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct and we do take action,” Gay said.
Stefanik tried again.
“So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct, correct?” Stefanik asked.
“Again, it depends on the context,” Gay said.
---
The middle part with its "that is actionable conduct and we do take action" could mean that she understood the question as "does the university take action?", and that truly depends on the context: There are situations that aren't the university's business but law enforcement's. (even though I'm not saying that she took it that way, I don't know what she thought at that moment, but it seems like it wasn't a lot.)
Even with such a 'most charitable' interpretation her communication sucks though, which makes her unsuitable for a role that's to a larger part that of a figure head. And with any other interpretation, she's even less suitable for basic decency reasons.
A hearing doesn't imply that they thoroughly checked.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38848351
Also bear in mind that Harvard tried to stick by her and even excused her congressional testimony and after investigating the initial plagerism instances. At a certain point the plagiarism instances just became way to numerous (50?) to reasonably explain them away by carelessness.
Imagine chaos that Google could cause if it looked for common phrases across its corpus of sites/books/papers.
Harvard should already have been doing that, but it's clear the board who hired her had no real interest in verifying her credentials.
Seems like she stayed clear from raising suspicions (by simply not publishing more and going into administration instead) but now she made herself some serious enemies willing to do the work.
The consequences are a matter of trust: A simple office clerk with no scientific training going through the ranks at Harvard growing into "President of Harvard", on the understanding that they "merely" ensure that the business chugs along (and with a proven track record in doing that) while keeping a large part of such administration work off the backs of the scientists and teachers is a better fit than somebody who's demonstrated disregard for the tenets of scientific work.
It doesn't matter why President Gay's works were scrutinized right now, the loss of trust is still real.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/16/us/jews-harvard-antisemit...
- "Disgraced former Harvard President Claudine Gay is finally back picking cotton where she belongs"
- "I think the black students should be picking cotton, not studying at Harvard"
Those quotes are also protected under the 1st amendment. Regardless, they're so unbelievable vile, and the merits of the expression are so vacuous that it has virtually no value for mind-expanding endeavors that universities claim to be for. Similar to calling for a genocide.
The interactions that people got mad at were part of a longer exchange of wordplay set up by the congressperson.
The hearing was not in good faith.
I know that at least one of the universities (Penn?) they otherwise suppressed pro-Palestinian speech, including banning groups and presentations.
Of course the premise is that the answer must be one of the two, but you need to establish that premise. It's the claim of a heavily polarized group (which doesn't make it false, but I'm not taking it at face value either).
Is there evidence of it? In all the claims I've seen, I haven't seen evidence.
There is a long tradition of permitting academics to say things that we wouldn't normally allow people to say. The people saying these things normally need to back up their words in a long written argument with citations, etc, and do so in a fairly passive way (IE, publish it as an article in a journal, rather than an op-ed in a newspaper, or during a protest). Even then there can be a firestorm (see the response to The Bell Curve).
I'm pretty sure if we look back we can see historically that academics called for violence against Jews, Asians, Muslims, and many other ethnicities. At times, people have completely supported academics in their privilege, typically when the statements align with their own philosophies. Imagine what people said right after Pearl Harbor.
University presidents want to keep everybody happy- that includes professors, students, and people outside the university. A president like Gay probably thought that by making the statements she did, she was pissing off the fewest people- preserving academic freedom for professors while also carving out a space for protestors to say rather violent things. That sort of subtlety doesn't work when you're being grilled in front of congress- they want you to say "yes or no" (notice all three presidents were asked, and confirmed, their believe that Israel has a right to exist) with no context. If Gay had said "no it's not OK" then she would have returned to a firestorm by students on her campus, and if she said it was OK, then she would have returned to a different firestorm on campus.
I think a lot of the news coverage around this has unnecessarily heightened the level of severity in the claims of the protestors. I imagine many people who called for intifada didn't realize that some folks would perceive that as a direct attack on their lives. We already know many students don't know which river, or which sea is being referenced.
Of the three presidents, Kornbluth of MIT is the only one who will survive this. She has an excellent publication record, the full and total support of her institution, she is much smarter than Stefanik, and it helps that she's Jewish, because people levelling "antisemitism" claims against her just look kind of silly.
If I were doing their media prep, I would tell them to just ignore the questions and launch into fiery monologues about freedom of speech, liberty, American values, etc instead. Maybe accuse one of the unfriendlies of antisemitism and political grandstanding.
I don’t mean this as a gotcha. When group X criticizes a member of group Y based on standards that group X doesn’t really care about, in order to gain an advantage for group X, group Y will tend to discount those criticisms to a varying degree.
Larry Summers for example.
If anything, the Board resisted the mob pressure until it was clear that Gay had plagiarized.
But the premise of the question was nonsense[1], as Peter Beinart has made clear. The premise being „intifada“ meaning „an attempt at genocide of jews“ when it actually means „uprising“.
It was acutally about silencing the Pro-Palestinian support at American universities in light of wealthy donors threatening to cut funding.
[1] https://twitter.com/hahauenstein/status/1734608990628348303/
So while you insinuate „intifada“ means „genocide“, Israel is apparently engaging in genocidal acts.
[1]: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
That's fine, though; this subthread has not all that much to do with Claudine Gay.
Why on earth do you think we're even discussing claudine gay then?
I don't know for sure, but Hamas and Netanyahu's coalition have been masters of public communication. I think they are very careful and strategic, and know what they're doing. I think it's like saying an experienced, highly expert developer isn't being careful with their code.
I found her testimony to be insipid and not worthy of someone who has the position of leader and president.
She should have clearly stated “if someone calls for violence or genocide of any people, that is against harvards code” (and if that’s not true then amend the code please). It should have been a lay-up.
Instead she kept saying “it depends on the context” which sounds like politician speech for dodging accountability. That’s fine for most people, but is this what we want from society’s leaders?
If there were questions about “intifada”, she should have said something like “I don’t speak that language, so I can’t tell you what it means, but calls for genocide are not okay”.
How much leeway do you give her for being out of her element? That's part of the point of these hearings, to put people under extreme pressure and play gotcha.
She tried to outplay the gotcha game, which is why she did poorly.
Instead she should have come in and said “At Harvard this is what we believe - …”.
Being able to state the values of your organization is core skill for the president and leader of the school. It should be down pat, a solid set of words that ring true and inspire. If you can’t do that, then let’s find someone who can. That’s the difference between leaders and managers.
Such situations are tricky: If you dig through every aspect of someone's long career and life, there's a reasonable chance of finding something problematic or even serious [edit: also, in every field, the way sausage is made can be a little messier than the public's innocent, simplistic imagination]. On one hand, we want to maintain the integrity of the institutions and our society. On the other, we need to be careful about incidentally empowering political suppression.
I suppose part of the solution is not making it political, and not replacing people like Gay with their political enemies - ensuring there is no political benefit. Another part is to hold reactionaries and allies to the same standards; now egregious behavior and corruption is tolerated, and even encouraged as a way to flaunt power and disrupt order. (I don't mean that as whataboutism - if Gay did wrong, Gay should go.)
You don't have to question this - the guy who originally started the campaign against her literally stated that this was his plan on Twitter. Both his motives and his tactics were public record long before the mainstream media picked up the story.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/25/harvard-threat... ("A Law Firm Said Plagiarism Allegations Against Harvard President Gay Were ‘Demonstrably False.’ Then She Submitted Corrections.")
Rules for thee, not for me, has been Ivy League's privilege for years now. She previously ran the DEI initiative that was found to discriminate against Asians at Harvard by the USSC. It's only equitable if some are more equitable than others.
That said, this will only further the restrictions on speech at universities, which has been weaponized to an almost inconceivable degree, as it was in this case.
That's the power of talking points. Once people internalize them, then the conclusions are inescapable. If you can frame the question, you've already won the debate. It's like calling abortion the murder of children - if you accept that, then the abortion debate is of course over for you.
The only protection is to question our premises. Did Gay say that? It would seem pretty odd ...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38848351
This is like people stating in 2000 that when Bin Ladin said Jihad against America, it didn't count - he was talking about Big Jihad and not small Jihad.
---
Attitudes about Isreal, including using Intifada/armed uprising metrics: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestinians-attitudes-...
Could you point to where that very long survey supports your claim? I read and skimmed parts, and searched for some words, but didn't find it.
More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38844980
seriously : if ANY student currently at harvard did the same as she did in plagiarism, that student would get, AT MINIMUM a 3 years suspension. if not getting expelled forever from getting a diploma from harvard.
why did she get that job ? her skin color, and her leftist politics. nothing else. her university and intellectual production is worth nothing, and she's clearly not the brighest lamp at harvard, by a very long shot.
it's too late. where i work, anyone from harvard gets ejected to the nearest trash bin if they try to get in. bosses told us they will never, ever, get someone from harvard as long they will be around, which is at least 10 years at minimum. and those big CEOs they all know one another, and talk with one another.
harvard students, good luck finding a job with your crap diploma.
Rules for the but not for me.