Americans owe a debt to Harvard University’s leadership – not for its obvious decision to oust the school’s president, Claudine Gay, this week – but for hiring her in the first place.
Harvard’s presidential search committee named Gay to her position in December of 2022 after five months of interviews and deliberation – the shortest selection period for a leader of the school in 70 years.
In doing so, the committee’s 15 members chose Gay from a pool of 600 candidates, and its chair, Penny Pritzker, praised Gay as “a remarkable leader…devoted…to expanding opportunity” and who, in her previous leadership roles at the school, “brought…a rare blend of incisiveness and inclusiveness.”
Pritzker emphasized that Gay “has a bedrock commitment to free inquiry and expression, as well as a deep appreciation for the diverse voices and views that are the lifeblood of a university community.”
Liberal alumni groups such as The Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, which counts as its mission “to fight for diversity, equity and inclusion” at the school, gushed at the “historic appointment” of Gay as the university’s first Black woman president.
“We believe that a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion [(DEI)] and racial justice must be at the fore of Harvard’s goals, and this appointment is an important strategic and symbolic step,” the group raved.
Against this backdrop, Gay’s resignation this week after testifying before Congress that calls by Harvard students for the genocide of Jews do not constitute bullying and harassment. Revelations of nearly 50 allegations of plagiarism in her meager academic writings have done more than any event in recent memory to expose the DEI cancer metastasizing in so many prominent societal institutions today.
Had Harvard’s leaders taken their normal time to select a president with unassailable academic credentials rather than focusing on breaking demographic barriers, the same weak Congressional testimony and surrender to anti-Semitism by its chief executive would have done nothing to spotlight the bankruptcy of non-meritocratic identity hiring that forms a central pillar of the DEI grift.
Harvard’s decision to spin the identity roulette wheel with Claudine Gay has cost the school dearly. Investor Bill Ackman, a prominent alum, told Harvard’s leadership last month that her “failures have led to billions of dollars of canceled, paused, and withdrawn donations to the university.”
In addition to Gay’s testimony, Ackman called out Harvard’s DEI racket specifically for its decline, arguing that the university’s diversity office, formed in 2019 under Gay’s leadership, has “led to preferences and favoritism for certain racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ groups at the expense of other groups, and made some members of the Harvard community feel included at the expense of others that are excluded.”
Harvard’s swift financial and reputational freefall under Claudine Gay’s leadership is just the latest confirmation of how the American public sours on once-mighty brands that prioritize woke virtue signaling rather than staying in their lane of excellence.
Bud Light, Target, and the NBA have cratered in public opinion and lost tens of billions in revenue through identity-politics grandstanding. They represent only a few of the more prominent poles holding up the DEI circus tent following the 'Defund the Police' riots in 2020.
Indeed, under President Biden, the federal government has become one of the DEI movement’s biggest cheerleaders.
In addition to rolling out Claudine Gay-esque marquee identity hires in his Cabinet and White House, Biden bragged early in his term, “On my first day in office, I signed [an Executive Order that] charged the Federal Government with advancing equity for all, including communities that have long been underserved, and addressing systemic racism in our Nation’s policies and programs.”
Among other actions, Biden established “the federal government’s first-ever Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council…as a coordinated effort to embed Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility principles across the federal government,” reminiscent of political commissars in the Soviet and Chinese militaries.
The result of Biden’s DEI push across the federal government mirrors that of Harvard and Bud Light in their respective spheres, whether in a historic drop-off in military recruitment or the rewriting of President Lincoln’s words at the Department of Veterans Affairs to conform to woke speech codes.
The good news is that Claudine Gay’s public and spectacular dive this week has unmasked the universal damage that DEI has wrought across American society in a few short years, and an opportunity remains to reverse course.
Gay said it best three short months ago in her inaugural address after becoming Harvard’s president: “Rebuilding trust in the mission and institutions of higher education won’t be easy…It lies partly in our courage to face our imperfections and mistakes, and to turn outward with a fresh and open spirit…”
No doubt about it – the DEI-driven sabbatical from our standards is over, and for that, we can thank Harvard’s leaders and their shoddy presidential selection process.
Mr. Ullyot is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and a Harvard College Class of 1991 graduate. He is a former chief spokesman for the National Security Council.