Melissa Chen on X - "Dear Professor Kendi, Comparing what it took to fire Lawrence Summers (white male) vs Claudine Gay as president of Harvard, your own thesis here has been disproven. One was a former US Treasury secretary and economist; the other was a serial plagiarist in a dubious academic field with a thin publishing record. Summers was fired over speech in which he offered reasons for the under-representation of women in science and engineering, including the possibility that there exists a "different availability of aptitude at the high end" in addition to “patterns of discrimination and socialization." In other words, he was investigated, surveilled, harassed and written about for basically citing valid research in psychology and social science. Claudine Gay was rightfully investigated, surveilled, harassed and written about for systematic plagiarism, an offense Harvard’s own students would be suspended or expelled for. You still think it’s racial animus?"
Fetterman: Harvard was a 'little Pinko' but I 'don't recognize it' anymore - "In an interview this week, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman slammed the BDS movement and said that although Harvard University has always been a little "pinko" he doesn’t "recognize" it 25 years after he attended the school following Claudine Gay’s resignation as president. "As an alum of Harvard — look, I graduated 25 years ago, and of course it was always a little pinko," Fetterman told Semafor this week. "But now, I don’t recognize it."... Fetterman also told Semafor that "Israel is really a beacon of the kind of values, the American values and progressive ideals, that you want to see."... Fetterman also addressed calls for a "cease fire" in Israel from within his own party. "More and more of my colleagues are calling for it," Fetterman said. "It’s so strange. Why aren’t you calling for Hamas to surrender? If Hamas surrendered, and turned over their guns, all the killing and all the misery would.""
Wilfred Reilly on X - "Fetterman's a regular union guy. You see them in bars all the time. They dislike Republicans...but they HATE Communists."
Heidi on X - "Fetterman literally went to a mental hospital and now he's no longer a progressive. Whatever therapy he went through should be studied and replicated across the country and world."
Cenk Uygur on X - "Now @JohnFetterman is telling everyone how he's not a progressive, he rejects us and is now calling Harvard "pinko." What the fuck? This is why people lose hope, because of frauds like Fetterman. You work hard to get a progressive elected and they turn into Republicans instantly."
Scott Adams on X - "Or he's a normal guy from Pennsylvania with non-crazy views."
FischerKing on X - "There is a broader lesson here. Rufo is unusually effective because he didn’t come up through Con Inc. He produced documentary films for PBS, he learned how to tell a story. Narrative skill is essential to persuasion. The mafia stuff will only add to the mystique, provide new story lines. Normal hits don’t work on guys people find interesting and entertaining. A big part of ‘conservative’ activism must be about training in storytelling and persuasion. How to make messages palatable and relatable that run contrary to established ideas. You can’t just sell a tax cut - someone has to know why an issue matters on a personal level. That means reading novels, watching films, being cultured. Wooden, boring people don’t achieve change. If they did, George Will would be much more than a conservative Alan Colmes, propped up as a foil to lose a debate on TV"
Eli Steele on X - "The great shame here is that by playing the race card on her way out the door, Claudine Gay not only evaded responsibility and accountability but found nobility in victimhood. America has lowered herself to the level where victimhood is the self-esteem of our times."
Olivia P. Walker on X - "“victimhood is the self esteem of our times” … still trying to figure out how she’s a victim with a $900,000 salary (as she currently has as faculty)"
Charles Cooke: Claudine Gay's Defenders Are the Reactionaries - "“DEI is a terrible, evil philosophy,” Cooke said, “that smuggles in, under otherwise unobjectionable terms, a worldview that would take us back to the worst moments in human history.” Cooke pointed out, “It is a worldview that is antithetical to free inquiry, antithetical to free speech, that wants to group people by their immutable characteristics.” Cooke noted that “since we last talked about Claudine Gay . . . one-hundred percent of [the media coverage] has been on the color of her skin and her sex.” Even worse, Cooke said, “the argument has been that she must be replaced with another person who has the same immutable characteristics. . . . That is regressive. That is reactionary, not the opposite, not the people who want to judge people based on their behavior and their qualities and their virtues. “And in any other context,” Cooke said, “it would be clear if you changed slightly the makeup, if you said we have to have a Harvard president who’s Jewish, we have to have a Harvard president who’s a man, we have to have a Harvard president who is straight: It would be patently obvious that is a bad way of looking at it. That does not change if you substitute those for the word black or woman or gay.”"
Claudine Gay exit may signal beginning of end of the woke DEI cabal - "The performance before Congress of the three university presidents, where Gay and the heads of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania declared that it did not breach their schools’ codes of conduct to preach genocide against Jews unless it became “action” (i.e. actual genocide), was so contradistinct from their overt revulsion against any “microaggression” toward non-Jewish minorities and so shocking that it brought much of academia into disrepute. It may now lead to the dissolution of the entire woke academic cabal. Over the last couple of years, before the Hamas massacre, I had been asked to speak to many Canadian Jewish groups about how to fight anti-Semitism in their unions and workplaces. It is not merely that Jews in the throes of history experienced more racism than others. In 2021, according to Statistics Canada data, a Canadian Jew was 36 times more likely to be the victim of a police-reported hate crime than an Indigenous Canadian, 18 times more likely than a Muslim and 3.5 times as likely as a Black Canadian. Jewish Canadians therefore have expressed repeated concern at not being viewed as a minority facing discrimination, being instead lumped in as an over-class at diversity seminars. Since Oct. 7, anti-Semitic hate crimes have gone up significantly, far more than those against Muslims, although our prime minister and his Liberal colleagues have insisted on erroneously coupling the real anti-Semitism (i.e. physical assaults) and bombings with Islamophobia, which has not reached anywhere near those heights... The term “white privilege” was aggressively used to inculcate the concept of original sin into every Caucasian idiotic enough to believe it such that they had to apologize for success and relinquish the product of their hard work to others. It reached its apotheosis in Ontario when teacher Richard Bilkszto, who had previously taught in Buffalo, committed suicide after correctly disagreeing with DEI instructor Kike Ojo-Thompson’s ridiculous claim that Canada was more racist than the United States. She responded with, “You and your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on with black people,” and proceeded to mock him over a period of time in an open classroom. He later killed himself in shame and despair. News of his suicide caused the first major backlash we have experienced in this country against the institutionalized DEI lobby. Racial bigotry used to be associated with small-town Republican Archie Bunkers — not with the well-heeled elites and academics who have increasingly become our society’s primary racists. And where is our society today? Massive hate marches which commenced prior to Israel’s counterattack on Gaza. Not in response to killings of Palestinians but to the raping, burning and desecrating of Israelis by terrorists. Jews historically were an easy group to incite hatred toward. A small, generally successful group created an easy target for resentment and pogroms when societal dysfunction created the need for a scapegoat."
Claudine Gay debacle highlights the perils of DEI - " the elevation of critical race theory and intersectionality from dubious extremist theories to the position of unchallenged orthodoxy was a victory for antisemites. The woke mindset divides the world into two immutable groups locked in perpetual conflict: white racist oppressors and victimized people of colour. And it falsely labels Jews, especially Israel, as white oppressors of Palestinians even though Jews are not “white” and the conflict in the Middle East isn’t about race. Misrepresenting the Palestinian war to destroy the only Jewish state on the planet as morally equivalent to the struggle for civil rights in the United States has consequences. DEI dogma makes Jews the one minority group against which discrimination, intimidation and even violence is not only permitted but actually encouraged. That is exactly what we saw happen at Harvard and at other college campuses, and on the streets of American cities after Oct. 7... But defending DEI was also synonymous with Gay’s survival in her office. She was raised to the pinnacle of academia despite having the sort of flimsy scholarly record that would not otherwise have merited her consideration for such a high position. That was largely because as a Black woman, she punched the diversity ticket in a way that made her particularly attractive despite her lean and (as it turned out) largely dubious credentials. To even note this fact is enough for leftists, who were willing to go to any lengths to defend her after her congressional testimony, to charge her critics with racism. Indeed, Gay raised the charge herself in a pathetic attempt to attack her critics even as she resigned. But it is impossible to imagine such a marginal scholar compromised by ethical misdeeds being chosen as president of Harvard under any other circumstances... The reign of DEI, which substitutes race for merit and enshrines a leftist dogma targeting Jews as an unchallengeable faith, makes appointments like hers inevitable. The problem is not just that Claudine Gay was the president of Harvard. Rather, it is that as long as DEI is in place and enforced by woke commissars who fill the ranks of the DEI offices that govern admissions, discipline and even curricula at many schools, debased standards and out-of-control antisemitism are going to be the result. While she will be falsely portrayed as a martyr to racial intolerance, the truth is that her tenure at Harvard — in which conservatives continued to be discriminated against, but the “free speech” of Jew-haters was defended and an unqualified plagiarist was held up as a role model — epitomized what happens when DEI rules. The only way to save Harvard and the rest of the educational system is to throw out such an ideology that not only threatens Jews but dooms America to a future of perpetual racial conflict."
Claire Lehmann on X - "What happens if the plagiarism probe finds that rates of “duplicative language” are not equally distributed among student/faculty groups? 🤔"
"Structures and systems of oppression might explain this sort of thing."
""how can work be stolen when u live on stolen land" and other such jaden smith level ideas will emerge"
Jonatan Pallesen on X - "In her 2001 paper, Claudine Gay makes a causal inference that quite obviously cannot be made. I will attempt to make a simple and understandable description of why this is the case: If ice cream sales correlate with people wearing shorts, that doesn't mean that we can conclude that ice cream sales cause people to wear shorts. It could instead be a common factor (summer) that influence both. In her paper, she observes that Black representatives correlate with White voter turnout. She concludes from this correlation that Black representatives cause the White voter turnout to be lower. This is the point of the paper. But the alternative possibility of a common factor that influences both is quite obvious, and not addressed. White voter turnout is not directly measured; instead, it is estimated from various variables, including socio-economic status (SES) and Black population density. We can see that SES + Black pop density is an obvious candidate for a common factor that influences both White turnout and Black representatives. • It influences the White voter turnout (by design). • It most likely also influences the chance of electing Black representatives (common sense). Since there is such a likely common factor, and that there is no attempt at disqualifying it, the conclusion of the paper is invalid."
Opinion: The Liberal World comes up against the DEI World at Harvard - The Globe and Mail - "After she resigned last week as president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay published an op-ed in The New York Times. I found it to be highly persuasive – just not for Ms. Gay’s side of the argument. But one part of her op-ed absolutely nails it: the headline. “What Just Happened At Harvard Is Bigger Than Me.”... As he put it last week in a tweet to Mark Cuban: “DEI is not about diversity, equity or inclusion. Trust me. I fell for the same trap you did.” If you’re older than 40 or 45 and don’t work at a university or a union head office, none of this may make much sense to you. Your mind resides in a place I call Liberal World. In Liberal World, you believe that we should strive for a society where every person is treated as if they are endowed with equal rights and dignity, regardless of race. You may think of race as merely skin colour, a thin mask covering our shared humanity. You can recall Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech, about a “dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character,” and think, yes, that’s it: That’s the opposite of racism. Liberal World holds to classical liberal values that, when they were lived up to, fought slavery in the 19th century and segregation in the 20th. But expressing such ideas today risks getting you laughed off campus, or chased off. The new dominant ideology, the one professors and students know they must to some degree pay lip service to, whether they agree or not, is DEI World. DEI World has a very different conception of race. It does not want to transcend race; it finds the notion absurd, even racist. Instead, it wants to see everything through the lens of race. Its judgments about reward and punishment, merit and demerit, justice and injustice, and even whose speech is protected and to what degree, are filtered through a particular, and particularly American, conception of race. Race is its Rosetta Stone for divining many things, including who is oppressor and who is oppressed. Why did a fight over universities’ response to antisemitism quickly evolve into an argument over DEI? Because Jews don’t fit into the racial hierarchy of DEI World... Ms. Gay’s most prominent critics, such as Mr. Ackman, may not be right about everything to do with DEI or the academy. But they are not gunning for a future in which universities celebrate mediocrity, elevate closed-mindedness, reward scholarly inaptitude and spread falsehood. Here in Liberal World, we can at least see that."
Claudine Gay’s ‘My Truth’ and the Truth - "Having spent three decades teaching and conducting research at large universities, I can say that Ms. Gay’s record as a scholar, administrator and fundraiser was comparatively thin. This raises the question of how the distinguished 12-member Harvard Corp. came to select her. I find it difficult to believe that she was the strongest candidate among the hundreds of applications the corporation received. She may well have been the most popular among Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, of which she served as dean for five years before her elevation to the presidency. And she was probably the candidate best positioned to move forward the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion policy, which she championed during her deanship. The issue, then, is why the Harvard Corp. decided that these attributes were compelling enough to counterbalance Ms. Gay’s otherwise modest record. I don’t know whether the absence of diverse views among the members of the corporation contributed to this result, though an investigation by the Harvard Crimson revealed that 99% of their political contributions had gone to Democrats in 2021 and 2022. But the facts are consistent with the hypothesis that the corporation had subordinated the principal purpose of higher education—the discovery and transmission of knowledge to students and society—to other considerations. In the apology Ms. Gay offered after her disastrous congressional testimony, she said that she had failed to convey “my truth.” As several commentators have observed, this phrase is the tip of an epistemological iceberg. It stands for the proposition that the truth doesn’t exist and that the quest for it is futile. Instead, there are multiple “perspectives,” each rooted in the position, experiences and sentiments of individuals or of groups in similar positions. If so, Harvard’s motto, “Veritas,” expresses an antique metaphysics that should no longer guide the academy’s aspirations. No one in the sciences or engineering can take this argument seriously. If “my truth” is that water isn’t composed of hydrogen and oxygen or that a roof doesn’t require structural support, I would be laughed out of the laboratory and classroom. I certainly wouldn’t be allowed to teach students. The situation is different in the humanities and social sciences, although not fundamentally. John Stuart Mill famously said, “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” In testing the strength of an argument, the presence—and clash—of multiple views is essential. This kind of diversity is central to the purpose of the university, which is why the dominance of a single point of view in the faculty and student body is so damaging to the academic mission. If people with unpopular views are cowed into silence, everyone loses and the search for truth is impeded. Diversity of background and experience has its place in the university because it increases the pool of factual knowledge available to all members of the community and generates new questions that previous generations had overlooked... These arguments for diversity don’t treat it as an end in itself or set aside the quest for truth. Diversity must serve this quest."
Bill Ackman on X - "A fun fact: Our lawyers used the Wayback Machine to check @MIT 's plagiarism policy back when Neri wrote her thesis in 2009. It turns out that MIT's academic integrity handbook did not require citation or even mention Wikipedia until 2013, four years after Neri wrote her dissertation and used Wikipedia for the definitions of 15 words and/or terms. Bear in mind that 2009 was still pretty early days for Wikipedia. Interestingly, Business Insider also used the Wayback Machine to research MIT's plagiarism policy, but only when they cited it to manufacture plagiarism claims against Neri: "MIT’s academic integrity handbook notes that authors must either “use quotation marks around the words and cite the source,” or “paraphrase or summarize acceptably and cite the source.” Identical language appeared in MIT’s handbook at least as far back as 2007." [From Business Insider's initial email to Pershing Square of Jan. 3, 2014, 1030pm] What are the chances that Business Insider examined the MIT handbook "as far back as 2007" and didn't notice that there was no requirement to cite Wikipedia nor was it even mentioned until April 4, 2013 when the following language was added: "Wikipedia is Not a Reliable Academic Source Many of us use Wikipedia as a source of information when we want a quick explanation of something. However, Wikipedia or other wikis, collaborative information sites contributed to by a variety of people, are not considered reliable sources for academic citation, and you should not use them as sources in an academic paper. The bibliography published at the end of the Wikipedia entry may point you to potential sources. However do not assume that these sources are reliable – use the same criteria to judge them as you would any other source. Do not consider the Wikipedia bibliography as a replacement for your own research." To be clear, Neri did not use Wikipedia as a source, but only for the definitions of 15 words and/or terms for her dissertation. While there was no way for us to do this research in the 91 minutes we were given before Business Insider published its story, our lawyers found it in about 24 hours. This finding wipes away 15, or more than half of the plagiarism claims made by Business Insider at 5:19pm last Friday night. According to the Cornell Law Legal Information Institute: In order to prove "prima facie defamation," "a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement." This leads me to a few question for the @X legal community. If you look at all of the evidence that has emerged over the last few days, do you think Neri has been defamed under the four factor test above? What exposure does Axel Springer have to claims at Business Insider in light of the fact that it has been on personal notice from me at a board and CEO level about Business Insider's wrongdoing for more than 54 hours and it has yet to issue a corrected statement about its investigation nor de-published the articles. Axel Springer has not updated its statement that: “While the facts of the reports have not been disputed, over the past few days questions have been raised about the motivation and the process leading up to the reporting — questions that we take very seriously" Do you think the facts have been sufficiently disputed? I have two questions for the private equity and finance communities: What is the net worth of Business Insider? What is the net worth of Axel Springer?"
Scientist cited in push to oust Harvard’s Claudine Gay has links to eugenicists | The far right | The Guardian
Diana S. Fleischman on X - "Why would the Guardian think that saying someone is a eugenicist calls their criticism of Claudine Gay's statistical analysis into question? Eugenicists invented statistics."
