Claudine Gay - 1st Black Woman President of Harvard University

[awhyley]

Harvard names Claudine Gay as the first Black president of university​

Gay is the only Black president in the Ivy League and says the ‘ivory tower’ should not be the future of academia

On 15 December, Claudine Gay became the first African American to serve as president of Harvard University. Photograph: Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University/AFP/Getty Images

Maya Yang and agencies
Thu 15 Dec 2022 23.06 GMT


Harvard University announced on Thursday that Claudine Gay will become its 30th president, making her the first Black person and the second woman to lead the Ivy League school.


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Gay, who is currently a dean at the university and a democracy scholar, will become president on 1 July. She replaces Lawrence Bacow, who is stepping down to spend more time with family.

A child of Haitian immigrants, Gay is regarded as a leading voice on the issue of American political participation. In 2006, she joined Harvard as a professor of government and of African and African American studies and has since explored a variety of issues, including how a range of social and economic factors shape political views and voting.

Gay is also is the founding chair of Harvard’s inequality in America initiative, which studies issues like the effects of child poverty and deprivation on educational opportunity and American inequality from a global perspective. “She is a terrific academic leader with a keen mind, great leadership and communication skills, excellent judgment, and a basic decency and kindness that will serve Harvard well,” Bacow said in a statement. “Perhaps most importantly, she commands the respect of all who know her and have worked with her.”




Penny Pritzker, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation and chair of Harvard’s presidential search committee, echoed similar sentiments, saying, “Claudine is a remarkable leader who is profoundly devoted to sustaining and enhancing Harvard’s academic excellence, to championing both the value and the values of higher education and research, to expanding opportunity, and to strengthening Harvard as a fount of ideas and a force for good in the world.”

In her acceptance speech, Gay called for greater collaboration among schools at Harvard and said there was an urgency for the university to be more engaged with the world and to “bring bold, brave and pioneering thinking to our greatest challenges”. “The idea of the ‘ivory tower’ – that is the past, not the future of academia. We don’t exist outside of society, but as part of it,” she said. “That means that Harvard has a duty to lean in, engage and to be of service to the world.”
With Gay’s appointment, women will outnumber men as chiefs of the eight Ivy League schools. Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania appointed women earlier this year, joining Brown and Cornell. Columbia, Princeton and Yale are led by men.

Gay will be the only Black president currently in the Ivy League and the second Black woman ever, following Ruth Simmons, who led Brown University from 2001 to 2012.

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/15/harvard-claudine-gay-first-black-president

 

[futureapl]

What an amazing accomplishment!!!

 

[Everything Zen]

It also signals that the university is going through some challenges. I’m thinking of the Supreme court case on affirmative action and I wonder what else.

The Supreme Court is set to kill affirmative action. Just not for rich white kids.

The dirty secrets of elite college admissions.

www.motherjones.com

 

[larry3344]

It also signals that the university is going through some challenges. I’m thinking of the Supreme court case on affirmative action and I wonder what else.

The Supreme Court is set to kill affirmative action. Just not for rich white kids.

The dirty secrets of elite college admissions.

www.motherjones.com

Without fail…I have been Over the whole first phenomenon.

 

[Everything Zen]

^^^^ Sad but true… SMH

 

[Evolving78]

It also signals that the university is going through some challenges. I’m thinking of the Supreme court case on affirmative action and I wonder what else.

The Supreme Court is set to kill affirmative action. Just not for rich white kids.

The dirty secrets of elite college admissions.

www.motherjones.com

I don’t see her becoming president as a win for black people. She was hired as a prop and will fit right in with the status quo.

 

[Evolving78]

Without fail…I have been Over the whole first phenomenon.

This! I’m done with that. It doesn’t even make sense or add value to anything.

 

[fifi134]

Got an email from the University. She's stepping down.

 

[awhyley]

This so sad. Only one year in (moreso six months), not enough time to enact any real change.

Claudine Gay resigns as Harvard University president​

By Max Matza
BBC News

Harvard University's president has resigned after facing allegations of plagiarism and criticism over her comments about antisemitism on campus.
Claudine Gay had faced mounting pressure to step down in recent weeks.
In a letter announcing her resignation, she said it was in the "best interests" of the university for her to go.
"It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigour," she said.

"This is not a decision I came to easily. Indeed, it has been difficult beyond words," Dr Gay wrote, adding that her resignation would allow Harvard to "focus on the institution rather than any individual".
She said she had been subjected to personal threats and "racial animus".

• Harvard's Claudine Gay a casualty of campus culture war

The 53-year-old served as president for six months and was the first black person, and the second woman, to be appointed to lead the Ivy League university. Her tenure was the shortest in its 388-year history. Harvard is one of several universities in the US accused of failing to protect its Jewish students following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October. Jewish groups have reported an alarming rise in antisemitic incidents in the US since the conflict began.

During a tense congressional hearing last month, Dr Gay said calls for the killing of Jews were abhorrent. She added, however, that it would depend on the context whether such comments would constitute a violation of Harvard's code of conduct regarding bullying and harassment.
That comment prompted a widespread backlash and she later apologised in an interview with the university's student newspaper. "When words amplify distress and pain, I don't know how you could feel anything but regret," Dr Gay said.

Dozens of politicians and some high-profile alumni called for her to step down over the comments. But nearly 700 staff members rallied behind her in a letter and the university said she would keep her job despite the controversy. But since then US media outlets have unearthed several instances of alleged plagiarism in her academic record. Harvard's board investigated the allegations last month, and found two published papers that required additional citation.

The board, however, said that she did not violate standards for research misconduct. More claims that Dr Gay had failed to properly cite academic sources emerged just hours before she resigned on Tuesday and were published anonymously in the conservative Washington Free Beacon newspaper.

The university's 11-member governing body, the Harvard Corporation, said in a statement that Dr Gay would resume her faculty position after resigning. "While President Gay has acknowledged missteps and has taken responsibility for them, it is also true that she has shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks," it said.

"While some of this has played out in the public domain, much of it has taken the form of repugnant and in some cases racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls," the corporation added. "We condemn such attacks in the strongest possible terms."

University provost and chief academic officer, Alan Garber, will step in as interim president until a new one can be appointed, the Harvard Corporation said. Dr Gay is the second university official to resign following the 5 December congressional hearing.
Former University of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill resigned just days later after an angry backlash. A donor also withdrew $100m (£80m) in protest over her comments.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) President Sally Kornbluth also testified at the hearing, and critics are now redoubling their calls for her to stand aside also. Dr Gay's resignation, and the controversy surrounding her in recent weeks, has proved to be a highly charged issue and there was immediate political reaction on Tuesday.
Congressman Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, posted on X, formerly Twitter, "two down, one to go" in a reference to the three college presidents who testified on Capitol Hill.
"Her answers were absolutely pathetic and devoid of the moral leadership and academic integrity required of the president of Harvard," Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik said.

The Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance welcomed her resignation, saying that as president, Dr Gay "tacitly encouraged those who sought to spread hate at Harvard, where many Jews no longer feel safe to study, identify and fully participate in the Harvard community".

Civil rights leader Al Sharpton, meanwhile, condemned the resignation and called it "an assault on the health, strength, and future of diversity, equity, and inclusion". He announced plans to hold a protest on Thursday outside the New York office of Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager and Harvard graduate who has led calls for Dr Gay to resign.

The Republican-led congressional committee that launched the probe into Harvard and other universities said its investigation would continue.
"There has been a hostile takeover of postsecondary education by political activists, woke faculty and partisan administrators," said North Carolina congresswoman Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the committee.

"The problems at Harvard are much larger than one leader, and the committee's oversight will continue."


Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67868280

 

[Black Ambrosia]

 

[yamilee21]

Harvard uses and discards black people with abandon; I don’t know how she thought things would be any different for her.

 

[Black Ambrosia]

Harvard uses and discards black people with abandon; I don’t know how she thought things would be any different for her.

Serious question: Is there another option? If we wait for places to treat us fairly, there are opportunities we’ll never have.

 

[Evolving78]

I wanna know what type of change did people think she was going to make?

 

[yamilee21]

Serious question: Is there another option? If we wait for places to treat us fairly, there are opportunities we’ll never have.

From the minute the right-wing took on their fake concern over anti-semitism on “liberal” college campuses, she was doomed… what better scapegoat than a black woman, an automatically “unqualified” “diversity hire,” according to them. On her part though, she should have known that she would be subjected to a ridiculous level of scrutiny… we’ve always had to be twice as good, and any mistakes we might have inadvertently made are always unforgivable (unless we’re named Clarence Thomas). It’s the glee with which the mainstream media is joining in to basically drag her through the mud that saddens me. She’s relatively young, with 15-20 working years left… there is no coming back from this for her, in U.S. academia.

 

[Black Ambrosia]

 

[Black Ambrosia]

 

[Belle Du Jour]

Can't remember who said this but when you win the game, playing by their rules, they change the game. Typical WPS.