To admit she has performed poorly is to raise basic questions about the entire ‘diversity’ enterprise.
Why did the University of Pennsylvania hold Liz Magill to a higher standard than Harvard is holding Claudine Gay?
Both presidents were guilty of indulging antisemitism on campus, repeatedly equivocating on what should have been a straightforward response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, and embarrassing their institutions when testifying before Congress. Yet Ms. Gay has kept her job and Ms. Magill has been shown the door. You don’t need a Harvard degree to understand that Ms. Gay, the school’s first black president, advances the diversity imperatives of her institution in ways that Ms. Magill, who is white, doesn’t.
Anyone suggesting that Ms. Gay deserves the same treatment as Ms. Magill stands accused of racism by liberal elites who maintain that all black people not named Clarence Thomas are off-limits to criticism. The head of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, insisted that disapproval of Ms. Gay’s leadership is “nothing more than political theatrics advancing a white supremacist agenda.” More than 80 black faculty members at Harvard signed a letter stating that “any suggestion that her selection as president was the result of a process that elevated an unqualified person based on considerations of race and gender are specious and politically motivated.”
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
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