Claudine Gay resigns under pressure

[Dennis 8,391]

Yesterday, Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned. This comes after weeks of intense pressure starting with her failure to state whether calling for the ge*nocide of Jews violates Harvard's rules of conduct.
 

She was later accused of plagiarism. A subcommittee of the Harvard Corporation found that Gay used "duplicative language without proper attribution" in her 1997 dissertation. This finding was part of a broader scrutiny, particularly from conservative activists, related to her academic works. Independent experts, requested by Gay herself, concluded that her actions violated Harvard's policies on citations but did not rise to the level of "research misconduct."

Her handling of DEI issues at Harvard also became a source of scrutiny, as white and asian americans are found to be heavily discriminated against:



This comes as DEI faces the biggest threat to its existence. Multiple argue it's contributing to the creation of a culture of discrimination against Asians, Jews and Whites. Companies like Google and Meta have slashed their DEI programs.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/22/google-meta-other-tech-giants-cut-dei-programs-in-2023.html


But not everybody agrees, some from the left are not happy about these developments.

[Bonkers 30,860]

[Roughhouse Dandy 13,612]

Of course she's going to make every effort to defend all forms of speech on an ivy league campus; that's the point of college campuses. Interesting how the first black woman president of Harvard gets pushed to resign not even a year into her position over something her predecessors would have proudly said without blinking an eye. But she understandably caved so what's done is done. 

[PartySick 172,540]

27 minutes ago, Dennis said:

This comes after weeks of intense pressure starting with her failure to state whether calling for the ge*nocide of Jews violates Harvard's rules of conduct

I'm curious about what specific statements led to this debate.

If there's anything I've learned since October, it's that many people have many different definitions of the word "gen*cide" and both sides of a particular debate love to misrepresent the other.

"It depends on the context" is the right answer because of that simple fact.

Calls for violence are not ok. Simple enough.

Calls for an end to the occupati*n and gen*cide in G*za and the US funding it absolutely should be allowed and even encouraged. (I have no idea what words are censored help lmao)

[Not The Real Gaga 7,582]

Glad she resigned. What a horrible person.

[SevenWonder 4,747]

It was a total witch hunt because of the now infamous Congressional hearings, but, unfortunately, it turned up some irrefutable evidence that she did, indeed, plagiarize. Repeatedly. And in the world of academia that's a mortal sin. Just this past summer, the Stanford dean resigned for research manipulation, a "crime" similar to Gay's. 

She cheated and got caught. Yes, the hypocritical right wing did the catching but that doesn't change the facts.

She'll be fine though. I believe she keeps her tenured position as professor.

For the record, I don't think race had anything to do with this (the Stanford dean I mentioned above was a white guy). This was all about the money Harvard stood to lose in donor money if Gay stayed on.

[Axl Jax 634]

If it's what I've been reading about the Harvard woman who plagiarised, what a vile woman. Bye

[Dennis 8,391]

2 hours ago, PartySick said:

"It depends on the context" is the right answer because of that simple fact.

For this straightforward blanket question, there should've been a straightforward blanket answer. She asked a general question about protecting Jewish students. If people immediately tie that to I*rael and Gaza that's on them. That does not depend on the context. And it does not justify this answer.

Yes calling for the genocide of any people should violate Harvard's code of conduct, at least in theory. Her evasive answers were simply terrible. It's not hard to answer that.

I think even she realized her mistake. She wrote in the op-ed yesterday after she resigned:

"Yes, I made mistakes. In my initial response to the atrocities of Oct. 7, I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know: H*mas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state. And at a congressional hearing last month, I fell into a well-laid trap. I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate"

[Dennis 8,391]

2 hours ago, Roughhouse Dandy said:

Of course she's going to make every effort to defend all forms of speech on an ivy league campus; that's the point of college campuses.

Let's not be hypocritical though.

Many many speakers were disinvited from these universities because their views were deemed hateful or inciting violence. And I tend to agree with that to a certain extent.

However to now pretend that we're pro absolute free speech here, including genocidal speech is laughable at best.

The commonsense standard is that you have a reasonable standard that you apply across the board. 

But if you create double standards wherein a right-wing person gets censored because they said transphobic, homophobic things, but a lef-wing person is okay to say antis**tic things in the name of "defending all forms of speech", people are not gonna take the institution seriously. 

[PartySick 172,540]

3 minutes ago, Dennis said:

I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate"

But see, this is my problem.

Just before I bailed on the mod status there were people reporting others left and right for "justifying genocide" or "calling for the extermination of jews" and absolutely NOBODY on this site has done that.

So I can safely assume said "calls for genocide" were likely how people described student demonstrations in support of Gaza. It was a "gotcha complaint", if that's what you wanna call it.

It's not her fault nor the fault of students that some people can't differentiate between "Gazans shouldn't be mass murdered or occupied" and "kill all jews". I'd put money on the main goal of that complaint being to shut down Pro-Palestine demonstrations.

I don't know much about this, I'm just making assumptions so forgive me if I'm missing something, but this is usually the case

A similar thing is happening in the US with LGBT rights. The right asks "is it ok to mutilate kids" and the answer is obviously "nobody is mutilating kids, but gender affirmative care is impor-", "SEE?! THIS GROOMER WANTS TO MUTILATE CHILDREN"

It's the same energy

[PartySick 172,540]

8 minutes ago, PartySick said:

It's the same energy

In other words, her response to this:

2 hours ago, Dennis said:

failure to state whether calling for the ge*nocide of Jews violates Harvard's rules of conduct.

Should have been "nobody's calling for a genocide".

[Dennis 8,391]

15 minutes ago, PartySick said:

Just before I bailed on the mod status there were people reporting others left and right for "justifying genocide" or "calling for the extermination of jews" and absolutely NOBODY on this site has done that.

So I can safely assume said "calls for genocide" were likely how people described student demonstrations in support of Gaza. It was a "gotcha complaint", if that's what you wanna call it.

It's not her fault nor the fault of students that some people can't differentiate between "Gazans shouldn't be mass murdered or occupied" and "kill all jews". I'd put money on the main goal of that complaint being to shut down Pro-Palestine demonstrations.

I agree that people misuse the word gen*cide a lot. But in this case it was a straightforward question. That's the issue. And it exposed the fact that many universities these days do not afford the same protection to Jewish students that they offer to other students in the name of DEI. 

A student attending an American university should never have to answer for the actions of anybody thousands of miles away. It does not need context.

So in such a straightforward hypothetical answer, there should've been a clear answer, that no it's not okay. Now if she hypothetically tries to bring up Israel or criticism of Israel and conflate that with a call for the genocide of Jews, that's when you make your point and reassert the meaning of genocide.

But that's not how she answered and she was asked a simple hypothetical question and she answered terribly. She acknowledged her mistake which is appreciated.

 

 

[Dennis 8,391]

13 minutes ago, PartySick said:

Should have been "nobody's calling for a genocide".

Or she could've simply answered "yes" to this question. 

We all here know too well that if Jewish was replaced with Black, Muslim, or any other ethnicity, the answer would've been different. And when people treat this double standard as normal, that's when you know we really have a big problem, which is actually helping conservatives prove their point. 

[Roughhouse Dandy 13,612]

29 minutes ago, Dennis said:

Let's not be hypocritical though.

Many many speakers were disinvited from these universities because their views were deemed hateful or inciting violence. And I tend to agree with that to a certain extent.

However to now pretend that we're pro absolute free speech here, including genocidal speech is laughable at best.

The commonsense standard is that you have a reasonable standard that you apply across the board. 

But if you create double standards wherein a right-wing person gets censored because they said transphobic, homophobic things, but a lef-wing person is okay to say antis**tic things in the name of "defending all forms of speech", people are not gonna take the institution seriously. 

You're fighting a strawman. Never once have I seen you debate in good faith on here so we're not conversing. 

[Dennis 8,391]

4 minutes ago, Roughhouse Dandy said:

You're fighting a strawman. Never once have I seen you debate in good faith on here so we're not conversing. 

Or you could simply say that you're unable/unwilling to address the issues that I pointed out with your logic and we move on.

You know absolute free speech never existed. And you know that many right-wing speakers were repeatedly disinvited from universities because of hateful things they said. And you know the left itself never defended absolute free speech (and rightfully so).

Pretending otherwise is simply intellectual dishonesty.