Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation sparked a debate on racism, with CNN’s Bakari Sellers claiming she was targeted due to her race, while commentator Scott Jennings argued that her troubles stemmed from her own actions.
Sellers accused conservatives of attacking diversity and inclusion, dismissing plagiarism charges as a pretext for racial bias.
Jennings emphasized the need for high ethical standards, highlighting Gay’s academic record and the importance of accountability. (Trending: Hollywood A-Listers Revealed In Epstein Court Documents)
“You can’t help but see the racial animus and the racial overtones in this. You can’t help but see the attack on higher education,” Sellers said.
“And this is even more troubling — you can’t help but see the complicity in mainstream media. When you have institutions like Politico yesterday platforming Christopher Rufo and giving him an interview and giving him a Q&A, that’s not journalism,” he said.
“What we’re seeing is that this is someone – this wasn’t an attack from her peers. This wasn’t an attack from other colleagues who had a problem with her utilizing their words without the proper cites because it doesn’t rise to level of plagiarism, it’s improper citations.”
“This is the right-wing, particularly right-wing conservative males attacking another Black woman in authority and people have to call it out as such.”
“Conservatives didn’t invent time travel, go back in time and make up these plagiarism instances and conservatives certainly didn’t cause her to sit in front of the American people and the United States Congress and fail to unequivocally condemn genocide against the Jewish people,” Commentator Scott Jennings said.
“That’s not anybody’s fault but her own. As the leader of one of the most prestigious colleges in the United States, Gay had to be held to a high standard morally and ethically,” Jennings added.
“She had a thin academic record to begin with and when the plagiarism issues popped up, I just don’t see how it was tenable for Harvard to ever say that we won’t hold our president to the same standards that we would hold our students,” he said.
“This is when we have to draw the line. I cannot sit here on national TV and allow individuals to attack the credentials and the academic record and the professionalism of Claudine Gay to get the position,” Sellers said.
“Because that’s what this conversation has delved into. That this Black woman didn’t deserve it in the first place. When we go down this path of saying she had a thin academic record to begin with — she was overly qualified. She was just as qualified as the 30 people who came before her who just all happened to be White,” Sellers said.
“When you have people questioning DEI, when you have people questioning diversity, equity and inclusion and then question the record of this Black woman, we have to draw the line and say, ‘see, that’s the game we’re talking about being played.’”
“She didn’t cause that on that part on herself. We have to root that part out of the conversation,” Sellers said.
Gay herself criticized the racial undertones in the campaign against her, viewing it as part of a broader effort to undermine societal pillars.
“The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society,” Gay wrote.
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