Claudine Gay holds on to her power

I feel as if I'm quoting this ad nauseam, but

All who gain power are afraid to lose it.
—Sith maxim

Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, is one of three women who messed up royally while recently testifying before Congress about burgeoning campus antisemitism. The question was put to her, to President Liz Magill (U. Penn), and to President Sally Kornbluth (MIT): does genocide-speech violate your university's speech policies? Astoundingly, all three presidents gave the same rehearsed, squirrelly, legalistic, now-much-parodied answer: It depends on the context. All three ladies were rightly mocked and excoriated for their statements, and Liz Magill has resigned—the only one, so far, to fall on her sword. All eyes now turn to Claudine Gay, and Gay shows no signs that she, too, will resign. The rightie interpretation of her recalcitrance—which I find plausible—is obvious: Gay understands she has an intersectional advantage, being black, female, and a lesbian. That's a lot of plot armor. She also has people like President Barack Obama in her corner, this despite the fact that she has over 40 accusations of plagiarism (I saw one example, and it was pretty egregious) on top of her obtuse congressional testimony.

But another, more generic interpretation of Gay's resistance to resignation is the Sith one: Gay enjoys her power and wants to keep it even if this means torching Harvard's already-damaged reputation. The human ego is an astounding thing, especially in Western culture, where the ego stands more or less at the center of a Westerner's existence.* But yes, Gay seems ready to take all of Harvard down with her, and she doesn't seem to realize that she may end up presiding over nothing more than the ashes of a university's destroyed reputation. (Not that I care: I've lost most of my love for academe and wouldn't mind seeing it burn down.) 

I'll be morbidly curious to see what Gay and Kornbluth do. Kornbluth seems safe for the moment, however bizarre it may be to say that. I guess her rich MIT backers have no problem with her nonresistance to antisemitism. The same may be true for Harvard: people may just be waiting for all of this to blow over. I hope the Jewish students don't forget, though, and I hope they remain vocal. Those kids, and their parents, also need to stop voting Democrat.

Headline:

Claudine Gay’s resignation won’t fix Harvard’s reputation — only school admitting it ‘made a bad choice of leader’ will, Bill Ackman says

Billionaire Bill Ackman said Saturday that even if embattled Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigns over her plagiarism and antisemitism controversies, the Ivy League school’s damaged reputation will not be restored.

Ackman, an alumnus, said that Harvard can only restore its reputation as one of the world’s premier universities “when the Corporation board members acknowledge that they made a bad choice of leader, which they have been unwilling to do,” he wrote in a lengthy X post.

Gay is facing increasing calls to step down over mounting evidence that she plagiarized several dozen times in her academic work — and as Harvard faces criticism over its handling of a wave of on-campus antisemitism after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

To date, the Harvard Corporation, the school’s highest governing body, has staunchly defended its president with unanimous support.

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*This isn't to say there's no such thing as ego in the East. There is, and it often results in similar behavior by certain public figures. But Easterners are still more likely, in general, to sacrifice themselves for the greater good (or as I like to think of it, the hive mind) because the culture here remains primarily group-oriented, not self-oriented.