War of the (Media)Worlds Over Claudine Gay

Harvard’s now-former president resigned under scandal this week and media outlets left and right are having feelings.

Photo by Tom Podmore on Unsplash.

“Claudine Gay Betrayed the American Values of My Black Elders to Exploit White Guilt,” raged filmmaker Eli Steele in an opinion piece for Newsweek on January 3.

“We’ve made diversity our most prized virtue, believing that if we lift it high enough, we can hide the stink of America’s racist past,” Steele seethed. “We wanted that first black female president of Harvard because we believed that a spectacle of race, rather than a monumental achievement of merit, would show the goodness of our country.”

“How desperate were we for racial innocence?” Steele jeered.

Before she stepped down as Harvard President, Dr. Claudine Gay had plenty of defenders and detractors in the press. After her departure on Tuesday, opinions on Gay’s historically short tenure are running more rampant than ever.

In the wake of Gay’s ignominious resignation, opinions on Diversity Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs are running the gambit as well.

Hot takes from “Claudine Gay’s firing is proof organizations need to double down on DEI initiatives nationwide,” to “Claudine Gay’s resignation is proof DEI is a complete failure” are saturating the airwaves.