Tea at Trianon: Is the Harvard Brand Imperiled?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Is the Harvard Brand Imperiled?

From The National Review:

Professor William Jacobson contemplates here the harm that has been done to the “Harvard brand.” He notes that Claudine Gay is a non-scholar whose academic publications wouldn’t get her tenure at a low-level college. Ah, but Harvard no longer cares about scholarship — it is clearly concerned only about having a leader who will push the “diversity” agenda full throttle. In that regard, she was in on the nasty attack on Professor Roland Fryer because he (a scholar of repute) wrote a paper that undermined the leftist narrative about race. He also writes that she plagiarized the work of (among others) Professor Carol Swain.
Jacobson writes, “Gay is a child of privilege who learned how to play the game among other elites — she stole from Swain and shut down Fryer on her path to the presidency.” Bullseye! That’s what DEI is all about — a game that elites from “underrepresented” groups can play to get ahead. You don’t have to be good; you just have to say the right things, which won’t be challenged by anyone else who’s playing the game. Harvard’s choice of Claudine Gay as president is cut from the same cloth as the thousands of academic decisions these days where having the right ancestry and pledging fealty to the idea that America is irredeemably racist and must be completely transformed puts you at the top of the ladder. (Read more.)