“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.
🧵
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:
Progressives continue to acknowledge the failure of their vision of immigration:
“Parts of the left have ignored a basic truth: The ability to control borders, to decide who does and does not come into a country, is central to a democracy. Without that ability, the citizens of a nation lose control over it.”
“Less affluent voters have questioned the impact of mass migration for years, worried about its impact on housing, public services, wages and communities. The response of urban progressives…has often been to denounce working-class voters as narrow-minded or racist.”
“The left has de-emphasized class in favor of other characteristics and alienated many working-class voters.”
“The starting point for a new progressive future can be the idea of a community that provides security and opportunity, and to which we owe as much as we expect from it.”
🧵I attended a not-for-attribution call yesterday about the situation inside Columbia.
The key takeaway is that a lot of people, probably a majority, are done with the protestors and the corrupt faculty who support them. They want change.
People just want to get back to teaching and researching. They know the cancelled grants are gone for good, but they want to get back on track ASAP so they can apply for new federal grants.
It is not lost on them that the funding cuts have hurt the science and medical divisions when all the humanities (plus social work, etc.).
The Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare pulled Columbia’s funding because it hadn’t provided sufficient evidence that it was not discriminating: