An opinion editor for The New York Times offered a surprising take on the resignation of former Harvard President Claudine Gay in a Thursday newsletter.
Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury called on her audience to read columns in favor of Gay’s resignation in order to learn “what actually happened” in the congressional hearings, which sparked an uproar against Gay and two other university presidents.
“As Opinion editor, I rarely express my own views publicly on guest essays we publish, but here it’s worth saying that, in the current conversation around Harvard, I’ve been more drawn to arguments made by others,” Kingsbury wrote. “Distance from a controversy can often offer a broader view and nuance, one of the reasons I’m circumspect about the personal essay as a genre.”
“So I’d recommend reading Gay’s essay alongside John McWhorter’s call in December that she resign, Michelle Goldberg’s effort to break down what actually happened in those congressional hearings, or Bret Stephens’s column on the impact of social engineering on free thought. I’d also consider Ross Douthat’s thoughts on why Harvard let her go,” she continued.
This is extraordinary: the NYT opinion editor, who almost never discusses her own take, essentially dismisses Claudine Gay’s op-Ed as self-serving and points us to 4 other essays, all critical of Gay. pic.twitter.com/MN6FxcIzth
— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) January 4, 2024
Gay published an op-ed for The New York Times on Wednesday arguing that smears against her were part of a campaign to “unravel public faith in pillars of American society.”
“Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal,” Gay wrote.
The former president said she made mistakes regarding her responses to rising antisemitism on campus but denied accusations that she plagiarized other scholars’ works in her papers and dissertation.
Liberals melted down over Gay’s resignation, immediately claiming that Gay’s conservative critics were motivated by hatred of black women in authority. The New York Times’ Mara Gay called Gay’s resignation an attack on “diversity” during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” while The Associated Press published a headline accusing conservatives of weaponizing accusations of plagiarism. (RELATED: The AP Story On Claudine Gay Illustrates Everything That’s Wrong With Liberal Media)
Gay’s path to resignation began after a Dec. 5 congressional hearing, during which she refused to say clearly whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s code of conduct. She later backtracked, saying in a Dec. 6 statement that any calls for violence against Jewish students “will be held to account.”
Tensions grew when accusations surfaced that she had committed plagiarism on over 40 occasions. The first complaint, published Dec. 19 by the Washington Free Beacon, included plagiarism claims against seven of her works. A second complaint brought forth an eighth work, a 2001 article that allegedly lifts almost half a page from University of Wisconsin political science professor David Cannon.