There's one thing we can all agree about when it comes to Claudine Gay, Harvard's embattled former president who resigned this week amid an antisemitism and plagiarism scandal: She failed to meet an important moment. The path that led to Dr. Gay's resignation began during a much-publicized congressional hearing, in which Gay and two other university presidents were repeatedly asked by Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik about whether calling for the genocide of the Jews violated university codes of conduct. Dr. Gay should have taken the moment as an opportunity to fully repudiate antisemitism on behalf of the university community she represented. Calls for genocide are abhorrent and a violation of any university's code of conduct. Instead, she chose to give a technical answer. It was a missed opportunity to assuage the fears of college students, faculty, staff, and their loved ones, who view Harvard as a leader in the education industry at a time of heightened concern over the safety of Jewish people.
Yet it's clear that Gay quickly realized her mistake. She issued an unequivocal apology and reaffirmed her commitment to creating a community free from ethnic or religious bigotry.
Unfortunately for her, there are no second chances when it comes to the reactionary anti-woke mob. There is only cancel culture. So despite her contrition, Dr. Gay had to go. It was only a matter of time before they dug up some pretext to get rid of her, which is what the allegations of plagiarism amounted to.
It's ironic to say the least that the side that has made its entire identity about opposing cancel culture has now adopted it wholesale. Indeed, they used to be silent when students were chanting heinous things—like when a white student went on a anti-Black tirade at the University of Wisconsin-Madison last year. The video went viral, and many students wanted the woman to be expelled, yet the university did nothing because according to their statement on the matter, "the university can't limit what students and faculty post to their personal social media accounts and can't take action against posts that are not unlawful."
This response is pretty much what the three university presidents tried to convey before Congress. Ironically, the President of the University of Wisconsin was not called before Congress regarding this incident.
Some may also remember the SAE fraternity's racist song incident at Oklahoma University in 2015. A group of fraternity members were recorded singing a chant that included the lyrics, "there will never be a n****r SAE" and "you can hang them from a tree." The President of OU expelled the two students who led the chant, yet many legal scholars, including UCLA's Eugene Volokh, argued that the expulsion was a violation of the First Amendment rights of the students.
Meanwhile, the same people who demanded that Claudine Gay's presidency be defined by her very worst moment are the ones who constantly made excuses for Donald Trump's repeated and unrepentant words and actions. Trump met with Nick Fuentes, a known Holocaust denier and Hitler admirer, trafficked the "Birther" conspiracy, called American Jews "disloyal," retweeted a video of a man screaming "white power" and claimed immigrants are "poisoning the blood" of the country. And Congressman Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene both attended a conference organized by Fuentes. Apparently none of this was a bridge too far, but giving a technical answer at a congressional hearing was enough to trigger foes to scour Dr. Gay's academic writing in search of incomplete citations.
Claudine Gay's resignation would sit better if it came from the Harvard community that she led. Yet the faculty, staff, and students largely supported her and accepted her apology as genuine. 700 members of the Harvard community signed a letter expressing support for Dr. Gay.
That was not enough to counter constant outside pressure from right wing media and big money donors.
The interesting thing about cancel culture is that it often lacks substance. Jewish students are no safer now than before. The Harvard campus is just as divided if not more so after Dr. Gay's resignation.
Rather than search for solutions to the underlying issue, cancel culture simply looks to punish a symbolic and often contrite target. Redemption is nonexistent. It's a one strike and you're out game.
And always, at the end of the day, the people who decry it the loudest are its biggest purveyors. They are the ones who argued for kneeling NFL players to lose their jobs. They cancel books on race, Disney movies, and even light beer brands.
Dr. Gay is just the latest successful target.
Dr. Jason Nichols is an award winning senior lecturer in the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland College Park and was the longtime editor-in-chief of Words Beats & Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
