The 640 professors who signed the letter in support of Claudine Gay are all professors at a University whose motto is “Veritas” — the Truth. “Veritas” is used in the mottos of a number of other educational institutions as well.
Who is Claudine Gay? This article below is eye-opening. If the allegations in it are true, then how far away from the truth were Harvard’s board willing to veer in order to appease political pressures from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights & affiliates pushing “DEI” — “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion”?
The truth is that Harvard would not consider anyone for Claudine Gay’s position who did not tick the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” boxes. A white male, a Jewish white male, would never have been under consideration for the position.
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We could argue that making the decision not to consider anyone who didn’t fit the DEI criteria helped open up the pool to a wider arena of candidates. But Claudine Gay has a history of alleged plagiarism and fabricated data as well.
Plagiarism gets students disciplined at Harvard and elsewhere, but cheating when it comes to candidates for the Presidency of these educational organizations is excused.
Stanford University (Claudine Gay’s career includes a period at Stanford) hired Marc Tessier-Lavigne as President after he had used falsified images for a scientific research paper. Allegedly, the board knew this when they hired him. It was only when a first-year student journalist wrote about it in the Stanford Daily several years after he was hired and the article received national media attention that Stanford did anything. Marc Tessier-Lavigne stepped down.
“Veritas” should require the truth to be the guide on all campus decisions, including whether or not to fire or hire someone. It also must be the guide for those in charge of federal funds directed towards these campuses for research grants or other initiatives.
When the quest for truth in academia is replaced, we have to wonder why other forces become more important than the truth, especially when academic endorsements are relied upon to guide national think tanks and directives.
If those other forces continue to be more important than the truth, where are Harvard and other educational institutions headed? “Veritas” is minimized on the site of Harvard’s mission statement, which doesn’t mention the word “truth” anywhere on the page:
Do our nation’s educational institutions want to produce critical thinkers and leaders or lemmings? Lemmings are useful for political movements but they are useless when it comes to stating and arguing a case from a knowledgeable position. Claudine Gay was trained for her testimony in front of Congress by a law firm. Her answers cannot, therefore, be called “authentic” or even true to what she does or does not believe.
C. Bradley Thompson stated on X (formerly Twitter) that the Harvard Board is stuck between a rock and a hard place because to fire Claudine Gay would be to succumb to the “mob,” and not to fire her would be showing support of someone who has been accused of plagiarism and somebody who expressed herself to Congress in a way which contradicted sentiment in her own written statements to the Harvard community before she was hired. To quote from his post:
“650+ Harvard professors have signed a letter to the Harvard Corporation in support of President Claudine Gay.
@Harvard is now in crisis. The Harvard Board is now stuck between a rock & a hard place: if they fire Gay (also now accused of plagiarism) the faculty will be in revolt; if they keep her, the university will be saddled with a national disgrace. The faculty letter is also proof that the firing of Gay will have no effect on the moral-intellectual culture
@Harvard is gone. It cannot be saved. Harvard has a $50 billion endowment. It should never again receive a penny of taxpayer money. #defundHarvard”
C. Bradley Thompson labels himself: “Living without lies. Author: America’s Revolutionary Mind; The Redneck Intellectual.”
Alan Dershowitz has commented on Claudine Gay’s Double Standard of Freedom of Speech.
That double standard of Freedom of Speech has been in place since April 4th, 2011, when the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights introduced the “Dear Colleague” Title IX letter, which set out to change America forever. It deliberately set out to get rid of due process on campus and enabled a generation of activists who would profile by gender, race, and religion — thus upending not just Title IX, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, but also Title VI, which forbids discrimination on the basis of race & religion.
The question for Harvard and other academic institutions is: Does the truth matter? But it’s also a question for the Department of Education and Department of Justice Office of Violence Against Women who were behind the “Dear Colleague” letter so vehemently harmful to free speech on campus.
If truth, “veritas” doesn’t matter, then what is Harvard, and what purpose does it serve?
