Shades of Gay
The one where the DEI complex ran into the Jewish-Zionist-Israeli complex...
Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Baltimore, Maryland...
Up until 2 months ago, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion complex seemed to have a near-monopoly on righteous outrage, at least at the best universities. Barrons:
In the past year, the Ivy League hit a milestone that corporate America hasn’t even come close to reaching: Six of eight prestigious institutions were run by women. Three were on their second round of women presidents, with two of them people of color.
In a Forbes list of the top 20 colleges, more than half had women and or people of color at the helm.
Of course, DEI was always a racket, a quack medicine for a bogus disease. We’ve met people who don’t like Jews, or Blacks, or Whites, or Democrats, or Baptists, or tall, bearded blues singers. But we’ve never met anyone, in 75 years, who actually wanted a separate system of laws for any of them. Like white supremacists and anti-semites, real racists are as rare as lepers.
Still, the bogeymen are useful. Bill Ackman explained how DEI programs work on college campuses:
Being called a racist got people canceled, so those concerned about DEI and its societal and legal implications had no choice but to keep quiet in this new climate of fear.
The techniques that DEI has used to squelch the opposition are found in the Red Scares and McCarthyism of decades past. If you challenge DEI, “justice” will be swift, and you may find yourself unemployed, shunned by colleagues, canceled, and/or you will otherwise put your career and acceptance in society at risk. The DEI movement has also taken control of speech.
Certain speech is no longer permitted. So-called “microaggressions” are treated like hate speech. “Trigger warnings” are required to protect students. “Safe spaces” are necessary to protect students from the trauma inflicted by words that are challenging to the students’ newly-acquired world views. Campus speakers and faculty with unapproved views are shouted down, shunned, and canceled.
Racism vs. Antisemitism
But in October of last year, the DEI complex ran into a brick wall – the Jewish-Zionist-Israeli complex. The mismatch between the two victim lobbies was immediately apparent. The former had the blessing of the woke intelligencia…fat consulting contracts…and rich sinecures in business, academia and government for its activists. What it lacked was what the Jewish-Zionist-Israeli complex has in spades – organizational depth…control of Congress…and, most important, money. Lots of money. The billionaires, such as Leslie Wexner and Bill Ackman himself, knew which side they were on. Wexner had given hundreds of millions to that scalawag (probably an Israeli ‘intelligence asset’) Jeffrey Epstein. He gave millions more to Harvard and other elite causes…to make sure they stayed ‘on message.’
On December 6th the two special interests, racism vs. antisemitism, butted heads. On national TV, three elite university heads – not a white patriarch among them – were called on the carpet by the arbiters of good taste and moral judgment in the US Congress. The New York Times:
“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment?” she [Rep. Elise Stefanik] demanded of Claudine Gay, the new president of Harvard University.
“It can be, depending on the context,” Dr. Gay responded.
The three women hemmed. They hawed. Context mattered, they insisted. The inquisitors wanted right vs. wrong, light vs. darkness. All that got was shades of Gay. If they had been thinking more clearly, they might have also wondered how a failure to condemn ‘anti-semitism’ would go down with their rich donors. And if they had been smart, they would have gone along with the theater, played their parts, and privately explained later that they really didn’t mean it.
Unvarnished, Unblemished… Untrue
In any case, it didn’t go down well. The billionaires who give a lot of money to endow universities didn’t like it. All very well to talk DEI, to hire a black woman as president of the university – and why not; she may be just as qualified as the white guys. But when the subject of Israel comes up…the diversity hires had to get their story straight: Hamas = unvarnished evil. Israel = unblemished good.
Then, the donors dug up evidence that Harvard president Claudine Gay had plagiarized some of her academic work. Never before were they motivated to find such shortcomings. But now that she was off-message, they easily found a reason to get rid of her.
And so she went. The Boston Globe:
Harvard University president Claudine Gay, the first Black leader of the nation’s most prestigious university, announced her resignation Tuesday afternoon in a message to the Harvard community.
She stepped down after months of contending with interlocking crises over the Israel-Hamas war, campus antisemitism, and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly works.
Naturally, the racism industry rallied to her support. Boston University professor and prominent critical race theory advocate Ibram X. Kendi Ibram:
"Racist mobs won’t stop until they topple all Black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism. What these racist mobs are doing should be obvious to any reporter who cares about truth or justice as opposed to conflicts and clicks,” he wrote in an X post that was slapped with a Community Note pointing to a New York Times article on Gay's plagiarism.
Of course, Gay and the other 2 university heads (two of whom have left their posts) were right. The conflict in Gaza is hardly a simple matter. Anyone with an internet connection can see that both sides are awful.
Regards,
Bill Bonner