She has resigned.

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[T]he important question for Harvard was never whether Gay should step down. It was why she was brought on in the first place, after one of the shortest presidential searches in Harvard’s recent history. How did someone with a scholarly record as thin as hers — she has not written a single book, has published only 11 journal articles in the past 26 years and made no seminal contributions to her field — reach the pinnacle of American academia?

So here’s UD‘s take on that one. Although it sounds unpleasantly snobby and snippy to say things like “has not written a single book,” it’s true that in many fields (not all), books are the currency, and UD too was surprised that one of the world’s preeminent universities chose as president someone with, yes, a “thin” scholarly record.

Yet if Gay hadn’t plagiarized throughout her career, UD would have let the thinness go, mainly because Gay seems to have moved from scholarship to administration pretty early, and if you’re a brilliant administrator (I have no idea whether she was), it’s arguable that you can be expected to ease up on your writing.

And listen — excellent essays can often have greater accessibility and impact than books. Think of ground-breaking essays by S. Huntington, J. Nash, R. Putnam… If one of Gay’s had been – not as staggering as those, but interestingly original, and seriously influential – UD also would have had no problem. A great essay, in any field, can sometimes demonstrate your scholarly quality better than a book. So for me the thinness is not about the lack of a book in particular; it’s about the lack of some form of impactful intellectual work.

Yes.

… to prepare for New Year’s fireworks.

… La Fenice, for a thrilling New Year concert featuring all the beloved Italian operatic standards belted out to a very emotional local audience. Of course we ended with Libiamo. Tonight we dangle our feet over one of the canals and watch fireworks.

… a brilliant view of the Alps.

No university property or funds were used to create the books or videos, Gow said. He created the content on his own personal time and spent more on production costs than the “minimal” money the videos have earned through the websites.

This would be the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, assiduous producer/performer in hardcore porn films.

For his official bio, read this while you can. Unofficially, the handsome rangy runner/vegan has two books about how great it is to film yourself fucking but how it all has to be on the down-low because he holds a high-profile job.

Hélas, someone (I guess a few other people in La Crosse watch porn videos) recognized him and told on him and now he’s been fired but he’s not going quietly but rather has much to say about his free speech rights.

You betcha. There’s something about losing your medical license and spending a long stretch in jail, where you’ll maybe share a cell with one of your abortion-seeking patients, to concentrate the mind, huh?

… to the tranquil music she studied and loved.

One of many lost.

I have heard from a source that is reliable but a step or two removed from the situation that the Harvard Corporation has asked President Gay to resign and she has refused. Gay has apparently said that if she is fired, she will sue. Gay has retained her own counsel. I can’t 100% confirm the above is true, but if it is, I am sure the Board is concerned about what may emerge in legal discovery in the event of litigation.

***********************

Sounds plausible, I guess. In general folks are sniffing far too eagerly around the SOOOOper secret Harvard Corporation…. You remember Bagehot: “Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.” When people leave you alone every day to play to your heart’s content with fifty billion dollars, you’re unlikely to want that situation to get fucked up.

UD‘s holiday thoughts as she passes herons, geese, and wild turkeys on a foggy morning in Cambridge:

1. Everyone struggles. The only real thing to be said about that is: compassion.
2. Why did David and Eve Kosofsky’s older sister abandon the family? UD puzzles over this one routinely, but especially at holiday gatherings. David had his theories; Eve wrote about it. The elder Kosofskys made various efforts at contact but were always rebuffed. Now that all those she abandoned are dead, it’s a different sort of story, sealed in permanence, but still a mystery. The best UD can do after all these years and all this thought is: See #1. Compassion dictates that you stop thinking about the cruelty of it and think rather of the fragility that would need to run that far away to achieve (what she seems to have achieved) a reasonably successful life.

On to the train back to DC.

********************************

All Contact Cut Off Forever

The only one left is the one who left

Removing herself from her family in

A cruel and puzzling theft.

Fifty years on we gather to mark

Her mother’s dearth. 

Her mother’s death.

In everyone’s mind is that theft — dark

Inexcusable, inexplicable.

The denial of yourself, your children,

From all the people who love you.  Unthinkable.

——————————

In spite of her hard pure withdrawal

Her decades-long discipline

I scan the Senior Center Meeting Hall

For a seventyish woman in black.

Hiding again – no one can say why – 

In the seating at the back of the back.

These also should be fun to watch.

Oh wait. UD‘s mixing up stories.

With each passing day it becomes ever more plausible that we should silence the law professoriate for the good of the nation. Yes I will accept my fate along with the rest. — Adrian Vermeule

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My Vermeule posts.

The sun throngs her window (I stole “throngs” from Philip Larkin); her wee nuclear family sits directly to her left on the train. Extended family insists on living in Boston, so the Polish-ish Christmas must happen there.

You know if you read this blog that UD dislikes grubby old Boston, and slogging to that city in the dead of winter seems especially stupid. But.

I listen to Julia Lezhneva for much of the trip, which also features blueberry muffins and, this year, a book about India. After New Year’s in Venice, Les UDs fly to Rajasthan.

John McWhorter calls for Harvard president Claudine Gay to step down.