If you pay attention to only headline news coverage of Claudine Gay‘s resignation as president of Harvard University, you could be excused for believing that she left due to plagiarism in her academic work. This, Ali Velshi points out, is not what happened at all.
A concerted campaign that had to do with politics, race and gender — not academic ethics — caused the removed of the first Black head of one of America’s most prestigious academic institutions. In fact, a Harvard investigation into allegations of plagiarism found that Gay’s errors in attribution didn’t even come close.
Nonetheless, that’s what we all believe, thanks largely to two men. The first is Christopher Rufo, who leads a conservative movement to eliminate critical race theory from academia. (Rufo confuses with DEI — rooting his effortsin racism and the politics of white supremacy. )
In an interview with Politico, Rufo strikingly laid out the clear campaign to ouster Gay to further his movement’s overarching goals: to explicitly protect White people from diversity. He claims that uplifting and protecting the rights of Black people and women is to blame for everything from anti-semitism to Boeing quality control problems.
The other man behind Gay’s ouster is Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager who, like Rufo, has amplified and espoused misinformation about the former Harvard President, especially in the wake of her testimony before Congress. Speaking of which, the third member of this trifecta is U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY), who has launched an all-out campaign to restructure her alma mater in the wake of her removal from a university advisory board after she, like Donald Trump, claimed the 2020 election was stolen.
LISTEN: ALI VELSHI ON CLAUDINE GAY’S OUSTER
WATCH: VELSHI LAYS OUT THE TRUTH BEHIND GAY’S RESIGNATION
MORE FROM MSNBC’S ALI VELSHI