While Claudine Gay’s tenure as Harvard University’s president didn’t come to the immediate and spectacular conclusion it should have after her disastrous Congressional testimony – thanks purely to defensively circling the Ivy League wagons around their Diversity, Empowerment, and Inclusion icon and extreme umbrage at the nerve of conservatives – it did turn out to be a blessing in disguise for advocates of transparency and meritocracy in education at all stages.
The longer Harvard made mewling noises, dug in their heels, and slumped passive-aggressively in non-violent protest against the forces of reason attempting to drag the truth out of them, the more of “the truth” was exposed in the interim. Without those additional weeks of Gay and her school stewing in their own broth, pretentiously swatting off calls for her ouster as well as explanations concerning her thin gruel of apparently not independently executed body of scholarly works, we’d have no idea of the extent of her perfidy or intellectual sloth.
Harvard and Claudine Gay were the ones who fleshed out the picture of a marginally talented, nominally productive, vindictive, ambitious under-achiever who rode a gaslighting wave of victimhood worship and empowerment to a pretty sweet gig.
She already was the DEI poster girl. With the ever-emerging plethora of evidence what Gay became was the confirmed face on the wanted poster for the fraud we all knew it to be.
The entire DEI movement has been eroding in dribs and drabs over this past year, even as desperate practitioners and beneficiaries scoop sand back onto the sliding walls.
For one example, famous “anti-racist” racist Ibram X. Kendi’s “institute” at Boston University has fallen apart, for lack of effort on his part, and funding going ‘poof’ thanks to that. Kendi’s “race hustle, ” as one writer called it, “deserves to fail.”
All in all, one shouldn’t be surprised at the revelations, reported by the Boston Globe, about allegations relating to mismanagement of funds and a dysfunctional work environment at Ibram X. Kendi’s antiracist research centre. At Boston University, Kendi’s institute has been lavished with tens of millions of dollars from philanthropic billionaires, corporations and numerous other small donors so that it can “solve these intractable racial problem of our times” using “exhaustive racial research, research-based policy innovation, data-driven education and advocacy campaigns”.
Despite these exorbitant funds, since 2020 the centre has produced no original research or scholarship, adding nothing of substance to the argument over racial inequality and the precarious socio-economic status of black Americans. Kendi’s centre isn’t the only self-proclaimed antiracist non-profit to fall on hard times. The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation revenues plummeted by 88% in the last year, while it has also been mired in a corruption scandal.
It is worth asking how, with vast funds at these non-profits’ disposal, they have provided little clarity in explaining the precise contours of racial inequality and its roots, and laying out a programme to tackle it as they promised they would. Adolph Reed once quipped that identity politics isn’t an alternative to class politics: it is a form of class politics. Kendi’s brand of antiracism is a great example of this.
Other virtue signaling, DEI bludgeoning tools were also falling by the way through the year, as #Bidenomics worked its gruesome reality on corporate and household budgets. Even tech companies, the very first to jump on the social justice band wagon and often most brutal employing the terms and conditions therein, took scimitars to their DEI budgets.
Investment firms specializing in ESG governance saw significant withdrawals by the end of this year. Activists who previously only had to throw a single tantrum at a yearly board meeting to induce radical change to their liking were weeping bitter tears, and left empty-handed.
…The meteoric rise of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investing in recent years has been accompanied by a surge in demand for sustainable investment products. However, this trend has been met with skepticism from some investors who demonstrate that ESG criteria often come at the expense of financial performance. The ESG investment momentum has slowed in recent months, with investors withdrawing billions from ESG funds and some firms rebranding or even closing their ESG-focused offerings.
According to data from Morningstar, investors withdrew $2.7 billion from ESG funds in Q3 2023, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of outflows from these investments. The Wall Street Journal reports that in 2023 investors have pulled out more than $14B from sustainable funds.
The recent decline in ESG investing highlights the importance for businesses to prioritize strong performance and financial returns. While ESG considerations can be valuable, they should not overshadow the fundamental aspects of running a successful business.
The pool of gullible fools is slowly – but surely – emptying.
So it would stand to reason that the remaining beneficiaries band together to protect the gains they’ve made, particularly in the face of this latest incontrovertible unmasking of a venerated symbol of the success of their shell-game. Concerted forces are pulling out every gas-lighting slur, every trope, every appeal to authority you’ve ever heard, ad nauseum, from every race-baiting grifter you’ve ever heard it from, ad nauseum, with a few surprises thrown in for good measure.
In some of the first salvos, awkwardly enough, the naval-gazing, self-absorbed simpletons do not even realize that what they’re pugnaciously challenging us with is…*checks notes*…what it was all about to begin with. Yes, Mr. Boykin – you are absolutely correct. Let’s do exactly that – fine by us.
If we’re going to start scrutinizing every detail of college presidents’ past writings for technical attribution issues, then let’s do it. Let’s go look at everyone’s past writings, not just Claudine Gay at Harvard. Let’s put them all under a microscope and see how they hold up. pic.twitter.com/1T8OWVHbLV
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) January 2, 2024
See how simple that was?
The comments under his tweet were similarly all in the affirmative. I’m sure he’s thrilled.
The meltdowns among the ideology’s most ardent practitioners and luminaries are EPIC as every approved DEI and SJW virtue signaling term gets thrown into the mix defending the indefensible…but protecting the grift.
Former Harvard president Claudine Gay has been accused of over 50 instances of plagiarism throughout her career, some of which have been confirmed by left-leaning sources. She is responsible for the choices she made to commit academic fraud.
Despite this, progressives have… pic.twitter.com/5Pokho7boW
— Christina Buttons (@buttonslives) January 3, 2024
Chris Rufo, Chris Brunet, Aaron Sibarium, and others who exposed Gay – and Harvard – did “journalisms.” Those are simple acts of investigation with clear-cut results reported, “reported” being the operative word. I personally think they did all of us a huge favor, and the future of some of the youth of the country as well, because they’re either not going to go to Harvard now, or they are going, but to a University that no longer has that woman in charge, and will be forced to think long and hard about replacing her with a similar “pick.”
A school might be forced to do its homework.
As for those who actually wear the mantle of “journalist,” whoa dawg. They have covered themselves in a mantle of partisan schmutz unlike anything we’ve seen in quite a while.
We are specifically dogging the Associated Press today. Take a gander at this, you right-wing nut jobs, as sort of a warm-up for my finale:
PLAGIARISM IS A RIGHT-WING WEAPON
Gracious. You all are outdoing yourselves.
Please continue. These screenshots are EPIC.
— tree hugging s*ster 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) January 3, 2024
“Journalists.” They were community-noted into next week on that one. They doubled down on it in the story itself.
Harvard president’s resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism
The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education.
Their argument amounts to, well, YEAH, plagiarism is, like, “bad.” But it’s ONLY BAD and supposed to be found by someone at the school, not nosy outsiders digging around where they don’t belong and RACISTS!!!!
Just so we’re clear.
And now, ladies and germs – for the journalisming you’ve all been waiting for. The one that will make you feel even more guilty than you already did about Ms. Gay cheating her way through most anything she ever claimed she wrote, and losing her job but keeping that scheet, schweet $900K yr paycheck…
“White people used scalping to keep the red man down because RACISTS and that’s what they did to Claudine Gay, come see the violence inherent in the RACISTS”
~ Associated Press, “journalists.”
I didn’t make that up. It’s right here.
CLEAN UP – AISLE FOUR
Probably college grads, the lot of them. Scholarly frauds, the lot of them.
Anyone surprised?
DEI can’t DIE a minute too soon.