Gay’s Departure Should Be Just the Beginning
Concerning the article “Harvard Pres. Claudine Gay Resigns After Antisemitism, Plagiarism Controversies” (Jan 5), the trials and tribulations of Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University who resigned this week after being exposed as both a Jew-hatred apologist and a serial plagiarist, perfectly expose America’s cultural divide.
To the Right, she is the embodiment of woke ideology and the DEI (“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”) regime – a ruthless careerist who knifed fellow black scholars in the back during her institutional ladder-climbing, a middling intellectual who has never advanced meaningful scholarship and has never even published a book under her name, and someone who, like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, was transparently picked solely due to checking some identity boxes. To the Left, she is a martyr: a black woman in a position of high prominence who came under withering assault from hidebound racists and whose defenestration should, as George Floyd’s death did in May 2020, bring about a broader “racial reckoning” about America’s continued shortcomings and injustices.
That narrative, peddled by Gay herself in both her shameful resignation letter and a New York Times op-ed a day later, is wrong. It is woefully out of touch with the commonsense sentiments of the American people, who correctly value merit and excellence (now dismissed by our decadent elites as “anachronistic” at best or as vestiges of “white supremacy” at worst) over the zero-sum identitarian scraps offered by the DEI regime.
Claudine Gay is no martyr. She managed to maintain her sinecure for more than three weeks longer than did Liz Magill, who resigned her perch as president of the University of Pennsylvania within days of the university leaders’ disgraceful, morally bankrupt congressional testimony on December 5. In this, the most-viewed testimony in the history of the U.S. Congress, these ladies smirked their way through rigorous bipartisan questioning and refused to unequivocally denounce on-campus calls for Jewish genocide. It is dispiriting that it took a massive additional plagiarism scandal (exposed by intrepid investigative journalists such as Chris Rufo and Aaron Sibarium) to obtain the justice that should have resulted from Gay’s “mere” refusal to adequately protect Harvard’s Jews.
Gay’s is undoubtedly a nice scalp for the forces of civilizational sanity in our roiling culture war against the aggressor forces of civilizational arson. But unless broader changes are made, beginning but by no means ending with the Harvard Corporation that exercises board oversight duties, Gay’s departure will end up more symbolic than meaningful. Gay demonstrated neither contrition nor self-awareness in her resignation letter and the Times op-ed, and there is no reason to think the university has engaged in self-reflection about its role in pushing the DEI cancer. Unless and until Harvard indicates that it has learned any of the lessons from the saga of its shortest-tenured president in its nearly 400-year-old institutional history, aspiring matriculants should withhold their applications, donors should withhold their checkbooks, and taxpayers should not contribute a penny.
Ultimately, the civilizational struggle against the DEI regime and the broader effort to restore commonsense values such as merit, industry and excellence to their proper place necessitates a sprawling, grassroots national effort. Salutary one-off developments, like the resignation of a high-ranking Jew-hating apologist and serial plagiarist, are helpful for energizing the masses. But that energy must be properly channeled: In the political arena, that means freezing the hiring of DEI bureaucrats on public university campuses, as Wisconsin has done, or (better yet) fully eliminating the bureaucracies, as states like Florida and Texas have done. Similar pressure should be applied to corporations, some of which seem to be heading in the right direction; Google, for instance, has slashed DEI-related job postings by 20%-30% according to data from the job listing site.
There can be no resting on our laurels. We must not rest until this cancer is fully eradicated.
Brian Goldenfeld
Oak Park, Calif.
Know Your Enemy – And Your Allies
While I support better relations between America and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it is important to understand that our relationship with Saudi Arabia is both complex and important, and understanding both bilateral issues and global strategic issues are critical.
Sun Tzu, the great Chinese military strategist, lived 2,500 years ago and his genius is still recognized today. As an example, his book was constantly on the desk of Five-Star General Douglas MacArthur, the World War II leader in charge of the American army in the Pacific. Sun Tzu’s first rule was, “Know your enemy.” And that is of the utmost importance in this case. Coordination and cooperation with the Saudis may be very wise in the struggle against Iran, a serious enemy posing a strategic threat.
For example, during World War II, President Roosevelt supplied Stalin’s Soviet army with significant war materiel in its fight against Nazi Germany. He recognized that Soviet Army sacrifices would minimize U.S. Army losses. In that fight, millions of soldiers, both Soviet and Nazi, were killed, definitely weakening the Nazi military. Roosevelt overlooked the fact that Stalin was a dictator responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people.
Iran is a serious threat to both America and Israel by virtue of its nuclear ambitions and its support of Islamic terrorism around the globe. By contrast, Saudi Arabia is a nation emerging from a medieval society, still with remnants of pre-Renaissance governance but now with a much-reduced desire to support terrorism and global Islamic hegemony. The UAE seems further along in its emergence, with less controversy. Their move toward peace with Israel shows an important improvement toward modern democratic Western values.
Charles Winfield
Boca Raton, Fla.
Reparations a Bad Idea
Governor Kathy Hochul’s signing a bill to fund the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies is disappointing.
Since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, both the private sector and government at all levels have spent trillions of dollars funding various programs that benefited African American citizens. This included minority quotas for both employment hiring and admission to college, awarding of contracts to disadvantaged business enterprises, minority business mentoring programs, workplace mentoring programs for promotion to higher positions, and more. Every glass ceiling in the workplace and in government was broken years ago.
It has been common for decades to find African American citizens holding senior management positions in government and business, with many African American millionaires today. There is also a large, growing and prosperous African American middle class.
My Jewish ancestors did not own any plantations and did not poison any slaves on Hebrew National Salami. They were too busy running away from the Cossacks and the pogroms.
Several generations of African Americans have benefited and grown since 1964. It is time to move on rather than go back 158 years to re-litigate the Civil War. We have long since accepted the principles of the late Civil Rights icon Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Larry Penner
Great Neck, N.Y.
Beyond ‘Never Again’
A recent letter writer observed that an encouraging development of the October 7 pogrom and its aftermath has been that Israel is emerging stronger (and more united).
American Jewish individuals and legal organizations have become proactive and successful in using the judicial system to enforce our civil rights and insist on unbiased diversity, equity, and inclusion. With divine help, may it go on from strength to strength.
Rabbi Meir Kahane tried to awaken Israel to the fact that American aid (if they got any at all) has always come with defeatist strings attached. Those conditions only serve to promote American interests and to prolong, complicate, and encourage wars and terrorism against Israel.
I concur with another reader who wrote a while ago that it is time for North American Jews to be more proactive in our own physical defense as well. Members of the synagogue I attend were distraught to find every wall defaced with pro-Hamas slogans one morning last November, but frankly, I was surprised it took so long to happen, given that we had started receiving threats just after 9/11 and vandalism of synagogues has become a popular pastime.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe was once asked if a Holocaust could ever happen here. He said it could start as soon as tomorrow morning. The terrifying speed and viciousness of pro-Hamas Palestinian/Arabs in North America and Europe, the cowardice of so many educators, politicians and law enforcement agencies to protect their Jewish constituents waves an unmistakable red flag in our faces.
It seems to me that “Never Again” has devolved in the Diaspora to a slogan on museum walls. But the educational strategy is a failure. Pro-Hamas demonstrators have learned that no matter how genocidal their threats or how violent their actions, not only will no authority bother to stop them, but those authorities will not even criticize them. Education has failed to make inroads against antisemitism.
When will enough of us (myself included) stop giving lip-service to “Never Again,” but internalize its message and learn to act on what Israeli history proves: that Jews everywhere are able to rise in our own defense, and should start doing so by any and every legal means necessary.
May it be divine will that we continue to unite and gather publicly in increasing numbers to chant loudly enough for all to hear, “Never again! From the river to the sea, Jews will stay free!”
Phil Kouse
Redmond, Wash.
Where Are the La Guardias and Deweys of Today?
Today in New York City we are witnessing the supporters of Hamas marching through the streets sowing mayhem and spreading hatred of Jews everywhere. They carry signs calling for the death of all the Jews in Israel and pictures of garbage pails with signs saying “Jews.” Swastikas have even been observed.
Masked “protestors” disrupted the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and then tried to disrupt the Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center, blocked access to JFK Airport, LaGuardia Airport, Penn Station, Grand Central Station and the World Trade Center. They threatened to disrupt the New Year’s Eve party at Times Square. Their supporters and college groups disrupt campuses at NYU, Columbia, Cooper Union and many others.
They do this without any permits; few if any are arrested and even fewer are prosecuted. Where are Mayor Adams, Governor Hochul, senators Schumer and Gillibrand, District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban – and President Biden?
In the late 1930s, New York City witnessed a similar wave of antisemitism. Then it was the American Nazi Party (German American Bund). Would-be fuhrer Fritz Kuhn led them in jack-booted rallies culminating in a1939 Nazi standing-room-only rally at Madison Square Garden.
But then courageous Americans like New York District Attorney Thomas Dewey and Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia stood up to these “brown shirts” and used any means available to stop their vicious antisemitism.
The book Gangsters vs Nazis, How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America by Michael Benson relates the history of those days. Unfortunately, today we have Hochul and Adams, as well as Schumer and Gillibrand who are afraid of confronting the anti-American antisemitic far left, and DA Bragg, who is busy releasing criminals from jail, Caban, who is missing in action, and finally Biden, who seems to be always enjoying “Weekend at Brandons.”
One solution is to vote these cowards out of office, while the other is to stand up to these new Nazis and show that we will “Never Again” be cowed.
Jack Lipsky
Great Neck, N.Y.
