Black Excellence Couldn’t Save Claudine Gay From Being On MAGA’s Hit List

Throughout the two-week firestorm following her remarks at a congressional hearing about antisemitism, a firestorm that culminated in her resignation on Tuesday, Harvard University President Claudine Gay had that look. Composed but stricken, barely concealed anguish about what was happening and why. The head of the prestigious university had been reduced to a Black person who had committed some transgression and was now being swiftly tried in the court of public opinion.

The crime that began with her insufficient response to a setup question about Jewish genocide expanded into allegations of plagiarism in her academic work. The crimes were unrelated, but the plagiarism charge corroded her character more, calling her competence and legitimacy and her very worth into question. It didn’t matter that Harvard defended her; Gay had given the wrong answer to white folks and had to pay for it.

There was nothing she could do but watch. Hence the look.

I know that look. In 1985, when I was a graduate student at UCLA, a professor accused me of plagiarizing a term paper. The accusation was total: None of the work, he said, was mine. This wasn’t about a passage here, a footnote there. I was dumbfounded. I had indeed written the paper and, as an English undergrad, was very used to doing so. That didn’t matter to the prof, who had zero proof. He only knew that I didn’t “speak well” and that people like me didn’t write like this, period. I fought back, and after submitting to an oral quiz about my work, which I easily passed, he gave me an A. I won the battle.

But I lost the war. That professor did not change his mind about me or about the competence of Black people. Learned as he was, he was following an ancient narrative about