There’s one unassailable truism when it comes to Black social media: We will leverage X, TikTok, Facebook and the like to ride for those of us we love or whom we feel were genuinely wronged – just look at how we got the entire planet on our page in an unprecedented response to George Floyd’s murder.
But in the case of Harvard University’s now-former President Claudine Gay, things are mighty quiet on the Black Hand side.
After nearly a month of fire following her Dec. 5 Congressional testimony in which she apparently didn’t do enough to condemn antisemitic behavior on Harvard’s campus in the wake of the Israel-Hamas War, Gay, Harvard University’s first Black president, resigned Tuesday.
At just six months, she has the shortest tenure in the 388-year history of Harvard presidents.
Essentially, Gay did what’s gotten quite a few people pink slips in recent months: Publicly suggested that the Israel-Hamas conflict is anything but one-sided with Palestine as the sole aggressor. Claims of plagiarism starting with her doctoral dissertation in 1997 were utilized as an ostensible reason to push her out the door, but it feels like good old-fashioned racism and sexism are at the core of it all.
As such, Gay is receiving support from several fellow Black academics.
There’s little doubt that Harvard, one of the country oldest institutions of naked white supremacy, would tolerate a Black woman at the helm but for so long. Her ouster should be enough for the pitchforks to come out from Black Twitter. But instead, we’re talking about swag surfin in church and Dave Chappelle’s new Netflix special.
Perhaps Gay’s battles didn’t register amongst the Black proletariat because she was president of what’s perhaps the most well-known Ivy League university and one that is generally associated with inaccessibility among Black folks in a country with a widening college enrollment racial gap. Many of us hear of anything associated with Harvard and think “meh…what’s that got to do with me?”
But hear Winkfield Twyman, Jr. — a Black author and Harvard grad – tell it, Gay shouldn’t even garner sympathy among the Black elite: Twyman penned a letter for Newsweek last week alleging that Gay targeted two high-ranking Black professors at the university, terminating Ronald Sullivan, the first Black faculty dean at the university, and suspending economics professor Roland Fryer, Jr., though Fryer was accused of sexual harassment and has since made a controversial return to Harvard.
Even that feels like internecine issues among the tiny handful of Black people working for a university that was built on slavery and which, in 2024, has just over 6 percent Black enrollment. Gay’s ouster may very well hinge on racism, but it just doesn’t feel like our problem.