errors and plagiarism. they have a range of things that happened. harvard did investigate. harvard is an important institution. harvard said, that s not what you said. she did not take anyone s ideas as her own. the main person said he did not think that was plagiarism. bill ackman as a different problem on his hands. his wife is alleged to have done the same thing. he offered great grace to his wife. she makes mistakes. she s only human. claudine gay was not entitled to that. right. whatever bill hackman may say, we can pass judgment. i think it s really important for us to understand that when scholars are engaged in a research, particularly at the level of writing a book or books, we are dealing with 200, 300, sometimes 400 sources. jelani can tell you this. you make mistakes. it s part of what it means to be a human being in this regard. particularly, those of us who
christopher ruffo does not do it alone. he acknowledges the highly coordinated campaign to force claudine gay to resign from harvard was a three pronged attack. that s what he told politico s ian ward last week. quote, this was a team effort which involved three primary points of leverage. first, was the narrative leverage. it was done primarily by me, christopher burnett, and erin saberi and. secondly is the financial leverage, led by bill ackman and other harvard owners. finally, there was the political leverage, led by congresswoman elise stefanik s masterful performance with claudine gay at her hearings. when you put those three elements together, narrative, financial, and political pressure, and you squeeze hard enough, you see the results that we got today, the resignation of america s most powerful academic leader, and quote. there it is, clear as day, christopher ruffo s own words. this crew of strange bedfellows help to bring down the president of harvard not because of who sh
colonial society engaged in oppression of palestinians because the students have been indoctrinated by left-wing professors who believe in wokeism. i want to suggest to you that that is simply a translation of an old argument. we have been dealing with this kind of characterization of universities and colleges since the 80s. even since the vietnam war, right? they are just changing the names, giving us a new vocabulary. this is much bigger than just claudine gay s presidency. this is much bigger than cornell. it s about a hole attack on colleges and universities across the country. jelani, what s your take? not only do you deal with this as by the way, columbia is a hotbed of this discussion about israel palestine and illiberalism. you are actually a journalism team. you have to think about not just what it is but how we actually portray it and tell the story. sure. i think there are a few things
are questioned. it doesn t matter how distinguished you are. it doesn t matter what you have achieved or what your laurels may be. the presumption is that you don t belong in this arena. we are operating in an arena where the primary criteria is your intellectual ability. we are members of a community that has been a denigrated, allegedly, stereotypically for the lack thereof. that is the problem. that s what we saw happen with claudine gay. it s the same thing that we saw happen with barack obama when they demanded his birth certificate. that s effectively what we saw happen with claudine gay over the course of these last months. eddie, let s talk about that. i had a great conversation with nicole jones the other night. one of the things which happens in long dissertations, mistakes happen, citation mistakes happen. universities are specific about the difference between citation
mentioned, those hearings were not what they were advertised to be. there is an important conversation to discuss how universities keep people physically safe and intellectually not so safe, right? that s where we should be. there s a valid discussion to be had. as i heard any say some weeks ago on tv, we have, some people have deliberately confuse that discussion. they have confused the discussion of diversity and see our team, which most people who talk about don t know what it is, with freedom of expression and ideas. how do we on model this? well, i think that andy s point about good faith and bad faith is important here. for the people who rufo mentioned, their agenda was to remove claudine gay. there s no on modeling that until there s one other thing that i think is important to include which i have seen a few people,