It used to be that the people chosen to lead our colleges and universities were noted scholars. They had written serious books in their fields of inquiry. Harvard has now broken away from that tradition, as David Randall of the National Association of Scholars explains in this article.
He writes, “Harvard has just appointed Claudine Gay to be its newest president. Among the encomia directed to her is that of Shirley Tilghman, president of Princeton University from 2001 to 2013: ‘She is a brilliant scholar of political science.’ And this, obviously, is not the case. Gay’s CV, current as of October 2022, includes a grand total of eleven articles, published between 1998 and 2017, and one co-edited book published in 2013. The brilliant scholar of political science, who is now to lead Harvard University, has not published one academic book.”
I have a strong hunch that she will lead Harvard into increasing wokeness, and DEI will flourish.
Oh, and there’s a little matter about Harvard’s evident discrimination against highly qualified Asian applicants that the Supreme Court will decide next year. Randall offers his idea that “Harvard’s appointment of Gay should be seen in part as a preemptive statement of defiant opposition to an adverse Supreme Court ruling.”
I’d bet on that.
Read the whole thing.