On Tuesday, Jan. 2, Harvard’s President Claudine Gay resigned, following weeks of controversy surrounding instances of plagiarism in her scholarship, as well as outrage stemming from her comments during a Dec. 5 congressional hearing, at which Gay and other university presidents failed to clearly address whether it is violation of their respective universities’ policies to call for the genocide of Jews.
As disturbing as it is that a leader of one of the foremost intellectual institutions is unable to confirm that advocating genocide is unacceptable, this situation is not ultimately about universities’ responses to Oct. 7. As Claudine Gay herself wrote in the New York Times, what happened at Harvard is bigger than her. It is about the state of our nation’s most prestigious institutions and the values they claim to uphold. It is about the fact that Claudine Gay should very likely never have been selected president in the first place. And it is about the danger that Yale’s own presidential search is already falling into the same traps that led to this debacle.
In her piece for the Times, Gay correctly identifies the issues at the heart of this matter. She writes of a “campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.” She continues, “This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society.”
What Gay doesn’t understand is that it was not the backlash she faced nor her ultimate resignation but rather her appointment as president that represented our institutions’ unraveling. How Gay can claim to stand for values like “excellence” and “truth” when she has been accused of using duplicated language without proper citation in about half of her scholarship —including her dissertation—is beyond comprehension. As New York Times columnist John McWhorter points out, Gay appears to be held to an entirely different standard from her predecessors, who have often produced robust academic records. Even her Harvard students face a strict policy on plagiarism.
This manipulation of standards clearly undermines the values of excellence that an institution like Harvard stands for. Even more dangerously, it assumes that it is acceptable and even necessary to hold some people to different standards, prop them up, under the assumption that they may not be successful on their own merit.
Unfortunately, this problem is not isolated to Harvard. Students and faculty alike have already called for Yale University to “prioritize diversity in its search for Peter Salovey’s successor.” A piece in the Yale Daily News quotes Executive Director of Yale’s Education Studies Program, Mira Debs, who praised Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard and Penn for appointing female presidents, remarking that, “We’re definitely seeing universities make concerted efforts to hire more diverse candidates than in the past.” Since this quote was published, two of said female presidents have resigned.
One’s identity in fact has no bearing on one’s ability to make clear statements at a congressional hearing, set an example for an institution, or generally do a good job as a university president. That would depend on one’s integrity, intelligence and basic common sense, all of which are compatible with every gender and race but are not a given for any particular one.
It would seem that the qualities that determine a successful university scholar or administrator have little to do with gender, race, or identity. We should be concerned, then, when the News’ former Editorial Board urges the university to follow the principles of “diversity, truth and service” in the presidential search — for the Penn and Harvard controversies have starkly revealed that diversity and truth, diversity and capability, diversity and excellence may come into conflict, particularly if we hold diversity supreme.
What happened at Harvard truly is bigger than Claudine Gay, and it should serve as a warning for universities like Yale that the primacy of diversity not only erodes university standards, but harms the perception and success of people of color themselves. As Yale moves forward with its own presidential search, it is crucial that we do not seek a woman, a person of color or any particular type of person at the expense of merit and capability. Our new university president should be expected to avoid plagiarism, to produce exceptional scholarship and, yes, to be able to clearly denounce calls for genocide.
A robust process must drive the outcome of this search, rather than a preconceived outcome guaranteeing a neutered process, effectively excluding many accomplished candidates before they have even been considered. We should seek the person most capable to lead Yale — the best of the best. If they happen to contribute to our institution’s diversity, we should celebrate. If they do not, we should not undermine our university’s other values in favor of diversity, especially if it means fueling the insidious implication that the standards are malleable for those who may need them to be.
ARIANE DE GENNARO is a junior in Branford College. Her column “For Country, For Yale” provides “pragmatic and sometimes provocative perspectives on relevant issues in Yale and American life.” Contact her at ariane.degennaro@yale.edu.