We’ve Been Gay(ed) Part 1

By Patrick Hall

“It is frightening to see our most prestigious medical schools and universities openly advocate for admitting students based on something other than merit.” Greg Lukianoff

It shouldn’t have been a rude awakening for most Americans with the horrific performance of Harvard’s President, Doctor Claudine Gay.  She and her two colleagues, who also head the top positions at MIT and UPenn, were asked a simple question on whether antisemitism and calls for genocide/murder of Jews fell under the category of protective or free speech at their institutions. With an assured, unencumbered, detached from reality response, they affirmed that it depends upon the “context.”

 The only thing that surprised me about their answer was that they didn’t reply with the “I’m so much smarter than thou answer” that racial hate, murderous antisemitism, or venom toward a group because of some immutable characteristics are just “SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS!”  If you haven’t spent the last five decades at our University campuses, such intellectual dribble passes as a skillful, pithy, concise, smart-as-hell, plus a “really cool response” by the intellectual betters that populate institutions of higher learning.  

However, despite Gay and her colleague's botching of the question, calls by Harvard students for the genocide of Jews do not (necessarily) constitute bullying, harassment, or hate speech. A much larger issue considering Claudine Gay came into focus.  Notwithstanding Doctor Gay's subsequent, if not overdue, resignation after facing intense scrutiny from members of Congress plus the withdrawal of millions of dollars from Harvard’s various endowments, accompanied with charges of plagiarism, one is left to ask how in the world did she obtain her position at one of the most prestigious institutes of higher learning.  Gay, in particular, had a skinny record of academic accomplishments. Her overall body of work did not come close to the other 600 applicants who sought the Harvard position in 2022.

 Of course, we all know the answer.  Gay like Vice President Kamala Harris or Supreme Court Justice Ketanji (What is a woman) Brown Jackson were shoehorned into their position because they checked off all the right identity and Affirmation action boxes. She was the right color and a woman!  Case closed!  

This is not to say that there weren’t other qualified women and “so-called” minorities in Harvard’s applicant pool. Gay had the advantage because she represented an individual who hailed from a “preferred minority pool.” A host of Asian Americans of Japanese, Indian, and Chinese descent, with hundreds of published peer-reviewed articles, who also authored dozens of books, along with a staggering amount of ongoing STEM research, were skipped over in favor of Doctor Gay.

 However, Gay’s particular race and gender made it easy for left-of-center, culturally Progressive Liberal Institutions like Harvard to forgo, if not ignore, any real merit and academic accomplishments.   She was the “right color (i.e., Black) and gender.” Doctor Gay was a classic “twofer” in the woke world of quota-based Affirmative action and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion preference cartel.  As an added benefit, Doctor Gay was more than likely sympathetic to the cultural left’s socio-political fiefdom, which has slowly poisoned institutions of higher learning.  Diversity of thought and authentic ideological heterogeneity died decades ago at many colleges and universities.

 It has been a spreading toxin in the corporate media, secondary and primary schools, local, state, and federal government, and even our military. Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair, General Mark Miley, and his recent replacement, General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., have knowingly supported and injected DEI, as well as the temporal heresy of Critical Race Theory (CRT), into the administrative psyche of our officer corps at places like Annapolis, West Point, and Air Force Academy. All the military academies and the Pentagon have drunk deeply from the wells of DEI and CRT.  You can view their web pages to get a snapshot of the infestation.

As a former Secretary of Defense during the Trump administration opined, our military academy fascination with DEI and CRT is a bigger waste of time than requiring military officers to meticulously study such pseudo-sciences as phrenology, transmutation Alchemy, or even discredited Lysenkoism.

As I wrote in American Libraries Magazine back in 1991, in an article on Affirmative action entitled, Against Our Best Interests, preference policies and race-based quotes will only serve to fracture us as a nation.  Affirmative action like the push for “equity” is mired in the critical difference between the “politics of identity versus the politics of performance.” Equity and preference policies based on race are shamelessly exploiting the fears and biases of the weakest members of society to maintain control over them. It tells blacks and other groups that they are far too dumb and mentally less capable than others. It fosters and deliberately nurtures a thinking pattern among many blacks that they cannot make it on their own without the DEI industry and organizations and people who have long ago worn out their usefulness. DEI and CRT continue to nurture a “ward of the state” mentality, particularly in a large segment of the Black community.

I am calling out organizations like NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, and assorted politicians like Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and former President Obama. Equity is just another manifestation of what President George W Bush once identified as the soft bigotry of low expectations. Another unspoken reality of “unfettered” affirmative action or preference quotas is that it places an “asterisk” next to minority achievements.  Doctor Gay’s pathetic performance in front of Congress was only the tip of the iceberg that has been floating through all of our institutions in post-Civil Rights America.  Race and gender base Affirmative action, quotas, and the temporal apostasy of “equity” do little to strengthen us as a nation. They are precursors to our fall.