National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) President Derrick Johnson has called attacks on Black Harvard president Claudine Gay "…nothing more than political theatrics advancing a White supremacist agenda."
He is a hypocrite!
He and those who defend Gay picked the wrong horse in the wrong race.
Putting aside the growing uproar over the numerous accusations that Gay plagiarized the works of other academics throughout her career, her inability to immediately condemn genocide was reason enough for her to be terminated.
How do you think Johnson — and much of the Black-and-white progressive political and academic establishments — would have reacted if the President of a distinguished conservative educational institution such as Hillsdale College or Liberty University had equivocated on the issue of whether the advocacy of the genocide of Blacks was against their schools’ standards as Gay and her two school colleagues did regarding Jews?
They would have led the protests and demanded their resignations.
The failure of Gay, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT to state their and their schools' opposition to the advocacy genocide of Jews were met with almost universal condemnation — and rightly so.
At least one, Magill of UPenn, had the decency to resign.
The other two should have done the same.
Their failure to do so should send a message to current and potential Jewish donors and students.
Unfortunately, the governing bodies of Harvard and MIT strongly supported Gay and Kornbluth, respectively.
Does anyone believe that Harvard would dare fire Gay, who filled, as did the other two female presidents, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) checkboxes with the bonus of being Black?
These three women are great examples of how the cancer of DEI is devouring and corrupting academia and corporate America, fertilized by easily intimidated corporate and educational governing boards that have no sense of history.
In the months and years leading up to the holocaust and the genocide of millions of Jews in Europe by the Nazis, the equivocating rhetoric of the presidents of three of the nation's most prestigious universities before Congress would have fit right in.
In Germany, several world-famous German scientists were fired or left their positions nationwide at universities and research institutions.
Most notable among them was Albert Einstein.
He had revolutionized modern physics while working in Berlin for 20 years, but he left Germany in 1933 and spent the rest of his career at Princeton University in the United States.
Would Einstein be welcome at Harvard, UPenn, or MIT today, given their presidents' failure to condemn the same kind of antisemitism that led him to flee Germany?
Gay’s performance was particularly embarrassing and disgraceful.
As a Black American at the pinnacle of the nation’s educational establishment, she could have been an absolute star and hit a home run.
She could — and should — have talked about the long tradition of how Blacks and Jews supported each other during the civil rights movement.
All she had to do was condemn the genocide of any racial or ethnic group and recite that history — of which she is apparently ignorant.
For not doing so, she — and the public relations, media, legal, and any other advisors who prepared her for the hearing — should receive an "F."
Jews were among the most loyal supporters of Black’s fight for racial equality. Two of the three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964 working for Black voting rights were Jewish — Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.
Their Ku Klux Klan killers hated them for being Jewish as much or more than they did their Black fellow civil rights worker Michael Chaney, who was also slain.
Did she do that? No.
But for them and others like them, she would not be sitting on her high Harvard throne today.
She mouthed the public relations rhetoric of Harvard's progressive establishment where it is OK to throw Jews over the side of the bus as long as you do not do the same to Black, LGBT, or any other “woke" protected groups.
A recent report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Hillel International found that while a majority of Jewish students felt physically and emotionally safe on campus before Oct. 7, those numbers have dropped to 46% and 33%, respectively.
For any ethnic, racial, or religious group to have to experience those fears and concerns in America in 2023 is intolerable and unacceptable.
Harvard’s Mission Statement states, that its mission, in part, is to:
" . . . educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society . . . where students live with people…who come from different walks of life…intellectual transformation is deepened and conditions for social transformation are created."
To Johnson, Gay and her supporters in the Harvard establishment, that mission apparently does not apply to Jewish students and condemning the advocacy of the genocide of Jewish people.
Clarence V. McKee is president of McKee Communications, Inc., a government, political, and media relations and training consulting firm in Florida. He is the author of "How Obama Failed Black America and How Trump Is Helping It." Read Clarence V. McKee's Reports — More Here.
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