The downfall of former Harvard University President Claudine Gay has sparked more articles and think-pieces than we could ever attempt to list off. But on Wednesday, we heard about what went down and more importantly what’s to come from Gay herself. And let’s just say it was illuminating.
In a New York Times op-ed, Gay claims that the real story behind the crusade against her is about so much more than one person.
“As I depart, I must offer a few words of warning,” writes Gay. “The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there.”
Gay goes on to argue that these attacks against pillars of our society will continue — particularly as people like Gay, a Black woman, are given entry and in her case a leadership position within them. “It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution,” she writes. “Someone who views diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism.”
This idea of a broader war against even the suggestion that the halls of power should be diversified isn’t something Gay came up with on her own.
Just listen to the voices of her detractors.
After spending the last month trying to get Gay fired, conservative activist Christopher F. Rufo claimed that he had successfully “Scapled” the former university president, later correcting the tweet to read scalped. Obvious racism aside, it’s clear that Rufo views his actions as a much larger war — a point made clearer by the fact that his next tweet goes on to ask people to subscribe to his substack to “help continue these victories.”
Former Donald Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz, who it should be noted was plagued with his own alleged plagiarism scandal while at Harvard, has used similar language to describe his feelings about Gay and what she represents. “The D.E.I. bureaucracy must be dismantled, discredited and utterly destroyed,” demanded the former Harvard Law Professor in an op-ed.
The language used by both is inherently violent, and is no doubt at least partially a way to underscore the intensity of their point. Although, we’ve also seen what happens when that kind of language from someone like Trump leads to real-world violence like on January 6th.
Plagiarism is clearly one window into this broader fight, as evidenced by Republicans in Congress announcing an investigation into the matter. But, it’s not the only tool in the arsenal.
In Wisconsin, Republicans withheld pay raises from University of Wisconsin employees and slashed tens of millions from the school system’s budget in an effort to force them to shutter any programs that would increase racial equity within these schools. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ war on woke has targeted almost every facet of the state’s governance. “We reject woke ideology. We fight the woke in the legislature, we fight the woke in the schools, we fight the woke in the corporations — we will never, ever surrender to the woke mob,” he said in a speech shortly after he was re-elected.
It’s hard to call Gay’s words hyperbolic, when they so closely mirror the people and the broader forces that worked so hard to topple her.