Be furious AT Claudine Gay, as well as FOR her

Even before I saw a couple of pieces at Mondoweiss, one with exactly this framing, that was my thought.

There was a raft of McCarthyist (the original one and the guy just booted as Speaker, both) type of original cancel culture behind the recent House hearings by Rep. Elise Stefanik, the ones that hung Gay out to dry. Stefanik, herself arguably actually antisemitic, basically gaslighted Gay and two other university presidents at her hearing.

Gay, along with Penn's Liz Magill and MIT's Sally Kornbluth, offered Stefanik plenty of rope for the self-lynching, Mondoweiss notes, by not challenging her absurdity that "from the river to the sea" is genocidal. 

That said, this was nothing new.

For that, we also go to Mondoweiss.

Rather than than tolerating antisemitism, back in November she was trying to censor "from the river to the sea" being used on campus. A month before that, the Harvard Grad Union called on her to get doxxing of Palestinian activists and other anti-Palestinian activities to stop.

Her response? No support for them, but further tilting toward Zionism.

Then, the day after Gay's resignation, a new guest commenter at Mondoweiss, Aaryan Morrison, a South African-American and fellow Black American, noted she was both furious FOR Gay for being the target of racial and/or sexual related bullying and also furious AT Gay for putting up with ongoing blatant anti-Palestinian activities at Harvard and even, arguably enabling them. She notes the doxxing affected the safety of Black students at Harvard, among others.

This:

Let me be clear: President Gay was forced out not because she is antisemitic and/or anti-Zionist but because she is not Zionist enough. The Congressional hearing on December 5 was little more than political theater in which right-wing leaders created and seized an opportunity to undermine core tenets of liberal arts institutions and divert attention from the genocide in Gaza.

What else can you say? Well, you can say, as I did above, that all three presidents gave Stefanik et al the rope to hange them after gaslighting them. And as linked via Mondoweiss, Gay's post-resignation inked NYT op-ed STILL doesn't push back against this.

It's even worse than Michael Arria's one quote at Mondoweiss. Per the linked piece above by Aaryan Morrison, Gay's column is groveling to Harvard. 

This, a different quote than Arria's:

Those who had relentlessly campaigned to oust me since the fall often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument.

Indicates how she doesn't get it. The antisemitic smears were of a piece with and intertwined with the racist ones. Gay simply doesn't get the whole issue of weaponized Zionism.

That said, Gay was stringing out the self-hanging noose long before the Stefanik hearings.

This afternoon, NPR was discussing the Gay resignation, through an interview with the editor of the Harvard Crimson. And, got almost nothing correct, or at least, hid the reality of Gay's last two months.

And, tying the two issues together? At The Nation, Dave Zirin says that DEI's lack of objective metrics and such allows Zionists to claim they're being picked on whenever a Palestinian flag is waved in their direction.