“Claudine Gay was in Rome on a family vacation on Dec. 27 when Penny Pritzker, the leader of Harvard University’s governing board, called to ask: Did she think there was a path forward with her as the school’s president?”
Informative account of Gay’s resignation in the NYT.
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Dr. Gay was planning a “spring reset,” but some board members thought the plan “showed that she didn't understand the urgency of the expanding crisis.”
The first member of the Corporation to turn was Timothy R. Barakett, the treasurer.
(Others joined him, as we know, after having dinner with members of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.)
Board members received a fresh round of input from friends, family, and acquaintances over Christmas vacation:
NEW: The American Economic Association is encouraging economists to leave X for BS.
A new report cites the decline of hashtag EconTwitter, harassment (especially of women, people of color, and LGBTQ scholars), and policy changes under Elon as reasons to switch.
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The report lists pros and cons of social media use.
Note that one positive impact is in the past tense: “#EconTwitter was once a center of positive interaction but has declined.”
The report blames policy changes under Elon, including changes to the block function and the algorithm, for the decline.
It notes that many economists have already moved to BS and that institutions could assist with the process.
Why don’t more professors object to race-based discrimination in faculty hiring?
Consider the story of 79-year-old UC Riverside Professor Emeritus Perry Link.
He objected to “boosting” a candidate based on race and was subjected to a nearly two-year inquisition.
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In response to the attempt to boost the candidate, he wrote,
“[Candidate X] is lively and charming—and yes, Black, which is great—but I can’t say that I found his sophistication and experience up to the level of our top candidates.”
He also expressed concern that his “colleagues would…make the applicant’s race their ‘overriding criterion.’”
Someone complained, and he was asked to meet with administrators. They said he “upset people” but wouldn’t tell him how or why.
He was asked to resign from the search committee.
He refused, but Dean Daryle Williams removed him anyway — and then filed a complaint against him.
NEW: Students at Sarah Lawrence College have published a strategy guide in which they say they were ANSWERING THE CALL OF HAMAS when they recently occupied a building and set up an encampment on campus.
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They call themselves “fighters in the Student Intifada” and declare that “the third stage of the Student Intifada at SLC has just begun.”
They say “to escalate requires education” and report that encampment participants were educated “on the Palestinian resistance, the Student Intifada here at home, and the tactics used by other militant student movements.”