DEI is the main cause of anti-Semitism on campus today. It divides students along racial and religious lines and creates a zero-sum game. If you are in favor of one group, you’re against another group. It is a real problem, it is anti-intellectual. It is dishonest in many ways.
It uses the word diversity, but it means only racial diversity. Less than 3% of the faculty at Harvard identify as conservative.
They say equity, which suggests equality. They get the exact opposite. Indeed, under equity, if you dare to quote Martin Luther King’s “Dream” of a world where children are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, you’ve committed a microaggression.
And in conclusion, Larry Summers (Harvard President emeritus) has made it clear that [at least at Harvard and other Ivy elite schools ] inclusion has excluded Jews over the years.
And so, it is a fraudulent concept, a dangerous concept, but 700 of my colleagues at Harvard, professors, have come out pandering to President Gay and calling for her to remain on. They don’t want people like you and me, who are now outsiders, to have any influence on Harvard. But they refuse to answer the legitimate points made by Bill Ackman, they just dismiss him out of hand because he is a rich alumnus. But schools, colleges and universities are not only the current faculty or the current students, but alumni and future students.
They are great institutions and DEI is destroying these institutions and President Gay is a product of DEI, she championed it. That’s how she became president, she is the symbol of DEI, and the symbol is failed and she must also recognize her role in that failure.
That’s the bigger problem with DEI. These departments have tenured professors who can’t be fired. The departments, however, can be abolished. And we should abolish Black Studies, Gay Studies, South Asian Studies, and Jewish Studies.
You go to a university to study, to learn how to think, not to be part of a club, not to become part of a cheering section. And these departments, some of them are quite good academically, but many of them, for example, Critical Race Theory, there’s no such thing. If you’re critical of race, you’re not allowed in, it’s uncritical race theory, and it’s uncritical study and it’s rooting sessions for these identity politics groups and it’s destroying education. Look, Harvard ranked last, last on free speech.
And suddenly, Gay discovered free speech on October 7 and these other presidents discovered free speech. They discovered it when it was used against Jews. They didn’t know about free speech when it was claimed by people who had been accused of microaggressions. Free speech was a patriarchal thing of the past, but now, suddenly, they’re all hanging on to free speech in order to justify their failure to do anything and say anything about people on campus who are calling for the death of Jews.
LARRY KUDLOW: –
Of course, the president of Penn is gone. Do you think the head of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, will she survive or is she going to be gone too?
DERSHOWITZ:-
I think she will survive because she has so many people pandering to her, members of the faculty, members of the alumni, members of black alumni associations. She has put together, people on her behalf have put together this incredible effort to try to keep her on but she will not succeed. I don’t think her presidency will be successful. I hope she resigns. I think that would be the best thing to happen to Harvard. I thought she will and I suspect one of the reasons a lot of professors signed on to the letter was because they know she is going to stay on and they don’t want to be in her bad graces.
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