Claudine Gay’s belated resignation isn’t remotely enough to turn the school around: Most members of its board must go, too — particular its chief, billionaire Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker.
They’re the ones who hired the least qualified Harvard president ever in the name of diversity, then tried to keep her on after her shameful congressional testimony and ever-growing evidence of her career-long plagiarism.
Worse, who tried to cover up that ultimate academic crime.
It is they, not the Gay, who have sunk the reputation of one of the finest colleges in the world.
“Demonstrably false” thundered the high-end lawyer Harvard called in to bully us with threats of a suit for “immense” damages, after we reached out for comment on evidence of plagiarism.
All her works were “cited and properly credited,” he insisted — before, we now know, Harvard had even begun to actually investigate.
Since then, she’s corrected several passages in her past work, but new problems keep surfacing, including even an apparently plagiarized acknowledgment.
This, for an academic who’d written just 11 peer-reviewed papers plus her dissertation before her elevation to the most prestigious post in US higher education.
Not a lot to check, if the board had done its due diligence before giving her the job.
Let alone before siccing the lawyers on us, or at least before publicly clearing her in a Dec. 12 letter — when it still hadn’t vetted all her work.
This was utter foolishness: Harvard tried to shut us up, apparently thinking no one else would look. (In fact, multiple others were investigating, and went to press before the school could sic its lawyers on them.)
In short, the Harvard board didn’t truly care about any possible plagiarism: It simply wanted to keep Gay on, and shield her from any investigation.
Even as an avalanche of shoes kept dropping, it stood by her — apparently until it realized it wasn’t working.
Maybe it was the news that former President Barack Obama (who made Pritzker his commerce secretary) had intervened to protect Gay that was the final straw; maybe it was growing condemnation from Harvard students (who face serious consequences for plagiarism).
Whatever: The board must still face its own reckoning.
It presumably stood by Gay for so long for the same reason it hired her in the first place: She was the perfect tool for remaking the school along Diversity, Equity and Inclusion lines — putting lefty ideology above all academic standards.
If Harvard is to save its reputation, it needs to reject DEI and the board members who pushed it — and preceded to try covering up for Gay at the expense of the truth and academic excellence.
An outside investigation should get to the bottom of the board’s malfeasance and force the ouster of everyone involved.
And the pressure from donors, students and families of prospective students that finally led to Gay’s exit mustn’t stop until a new board has Harvard plainly pointed back in the right direction.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
