Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In many ways, a business or non profit executive is much more qualified to run a university than an academic professor or researcher.

+1 yes!!

Anonymous wrote:Sums it up well.

But we aren’t assuming, right?

Gay lost her at-will position because of the fallout of her testimony and multiple incidents of documented plagiarism.

She screwed up. She was no longer equipped to lead the university given the media circus and impact on donors and applicants.

She didn’t lose her job because she wasn’t white.

In fact, she very likely had an advantage in landing her job given the school’s interest in having a diverse leader.

It’s weird to bottom line this incident to an assumption that she wasn’t qualified due to race.

And it’s even weirder to make sweeping generalizations along the lines of race when it comes to actual qualifications on the individual level.

Re: his comments about the assumption that white people land sweet gigs purely based on their credentials (or more directly, his assertion that white people got their gigs simply because they are white) - I think everyone realizes there are many factors at play for high profile positions. Credentials coupled with charisma, confidence, and connections are commonsense. And sometimes there’s a concerted effort to hire a woman or person of color. It’s a mixed bag.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sums it up well.

He makes a good argument for the elimination of affirmative action.

How so?

Agreed!

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In many ways, a business or non profit executive is much more qualified to run a university than an academic professor or researcher.

Business or non-profit executives would certainly have conducted at least minimal due diligence on Dr. Gay, and discovered how paltry (just 11 highly-dubious published works) she had completed prior to becoming president, indicating a massive deficit of merit.

In contrast, the only possible conclusion is the Harvard board installed Dr. Gay purely on DEI principles.

Why did New College in FL install their interim president? Was it purely on "merit"?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In many ways, a business or non profit executive is much more qualified to run a university than an academic professor or researcher.

Business or non-profit executives would certainly have conducted at least minimal due diligence on Dr. Gay, and discovered how paltry (just 11 highly-dubious published works) she had completed prior to becoming president, indicating a massive deficit of merit.

In contrast, the only possible conclusion is the Harvard board installed Dr. Gay purely on DEI principles.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sums it up well.

He makes a good argument for the elimination of affirmative action.

How so?

Anonymous wrote:Sums it up well.

He makes a good argument for the elimination of affirmative action.

Sums it up well.

Anonymous wrote:

While we're at it, let's examine the academic credentials and background of the interim president of New College in Florida (DeSantis' attempt to present an alternative to "woke" colleges), shall we? Richard Corcoran was installed as interim president of New College by the new board of the college, after the board fired President Patricia Okker, who had only held the position for 19 months. He was paid a base salary of $699,000, which is $400,000 more than Okker made.

Academic background: Corcoran dropped out of University of Florida. He later attended St. Leo College, graduating in 1989, and Regent University [a private Christian university in Virginia Beach, VA founded by Pat Robertson], where he received his Juris Doctor in 1996. While enrolled in college, he served six years in the United States Naval Reserve (1987–1993).

Career:
*lawyer
*former chief of staff to Marco Rubio
*member of the FL House of Representatives
*head of the Florida Education Commission
*registered lobbyist

You can read more about some of his political views and a few scandals associated with him in the link below, but it's clear that he was chosen for his ability to implement DeSantis's priorities--not because he is an academic of note. So if former-president Gay represents DEI politics, this guy represents the opposite of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Corcoran

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In many ways, a business or non profit executive is much more qualified to run a university than an academic professor or researcher.

This.

Academia is a business. A big, complex business with many moving pieces.

Watch and learn as SEC schools (think: Bama) enlist corporate executives and implement a purely business-like approach to management, marketing, recruitment, etc.

The reality is Gay was neither business-minded nor academically gifted.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

In many ways, a business or non profit executive is much more qualified to run a university than an academic professor or researcher.

sure, as long as you are a white man connected to the Republican party, then you are wonderfully qualified. in reality, experience in higher education is clearly needed because a university, and especially a large one, is not Dishwashers Inc.

Well child you're going to be spending many years yet putting up anxiety ridden posts about white men getting jobs. By the way, you would need to judge his business administration record before claiming he is less qualified than Gay. She only had an academic record to judge and it was very unimpressive.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In many ways, a business or non profit executive is much more qualified to run a university than an academic professor or researcher.

sure, as long as you are a white man connected to the Republican party, then you are wonderfully qualified. in reality, experience in higher education is clearly needed because a university, and especially a large one, is not Dishwashers Inc.

Anonymous wrote:

In many ways, a business or non profit executive is much more qualified to run a university than an academic professor or researcher.

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Anonymous wrote:I suggest Dr. Gay is being held to a “standard” of scholarship that disregards her lived experience and historical trauma. These heteronormative outdated standards based on Judie-Christian dogma, reinforce whiteness, serve to promote capitalism, and strengthen the patriarchy.
What is needed is a inclusive set of standards that better reflect where we should be as a global community.

I agree, and moreover, even if the plagiarism allegations are true, it makes Gay even more of a heroine because she refused to submit to an inherently racist system. The mere idea that plagiarism can even exist strongly suggests that the "marketplace of ideas" is corrupted by capitalism, since all property ownership is theft. Why should this not extend to *intellectual property* as well? Gay was merely redistributing ideas in an equitable fashion to promote a more racially just society.

Excellent point. Capitalism itself is a western construct that relies on outdated concepts of “individualism” whereas other, more organic, more pure societies embrace a communal existence. Property and ideas that serve the good of the community cannot be simply owned but rather are held in trust by the group as a whole.

Exactly. It costs those other scholars *nothing* but their unearned privilege to share their work with Dr Gay. But rather than amplifying and lifting up a BIPOC, her critics are choosing to perpetuate a colonial oppressor mentality by spreading the falsehood of "intellectual property" and accusing Dr Gay of violating it.

So much work to be done. We have so far to go before people really learn that even the concept of "merit" is based on our cultural values, which cannot be trusted since they were incubated in a hellish cauldron of white supremacy.

Forget the concept of merit. It seems that honesty and integrity are values to be questioned.

Who are we to say what her truth is?

Fair point.

What I don't get is, why doesn't she simply launch and run her own My Truth University as run it like say Liberty U? Why try to hijack Harvard instead?

Because in order to achieve a racially just society, we need to tear down the systems and structures that uphold white supremacy and the patriarchy. It's not sufficient to create new institutions. Existing institutions must be taken over, dismantled, and replaced. This is revolutionary 101 stuff, keep up.

OK, now I get it.

But if that's the goal, why bother with Harvard? Why not simply take over the White House, Congress, the military and the border and to dismantle it all?

All must torn down and reimagined in the new DEI theocracy. Sadly it is already creeping into the military. It’s been in the White House and Congress for awhile now.