According to a Boston Globe op-ed, too many of the top admins at Harvard are white and Jewish.

The op-ed is racist, antisemitic, and poorly reasoned -- but other than that ...

A few days ago, the Boston Globe published an op-ed by Globe columnist Shirley Leung that argued that too many of the current top Harvard admins are white, and more particularly, white and Jewish. Len Gutkin has published an excellent commentary on the op-ed in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. My only quibble with his review is that I think it fails to convey how truly dreadful the op-ed is and how poorly it reflects on Ms. Leung and on the newspaper itself that chose to publish it.

And so – my own comments on the op-ed are below, with quotes from the op-ed in italics. And to be fully fair to Ms. Leung, I’ll copy the entire op-ed (including the headline), rather than cherry-picking the worst parts.

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‘Where DEI went to die’: With Claudine Gay gone, Harvard leadership is so white

Six of the seven major appointments at the university since its first Black president resigned in January have gone to white people. ‘It feels like a step backwards,’ said one professor.

The above is the op-ed’s headline. And yes, I know – someone other than Ms. Leung probably wrote the headline. But whoever wrote the headline works for the Boston Globe, and the headline is so bad that it’s cringeworthy. “So white”. Who uses “so” as a descriptor in this kind of context? Certainly not anyone with any decent writing skills. When “so” is used in that kind of construction, it needs to be followed by a phrase beginning “that …” to be at all informative. To provide another example: “The writer of the headline is SO poor at writing THAT they should never have been hired.”

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As students and faculty return to campus this fall, they are bound to ask: Why is Harvard leadership so white?

They will ask that only if they, like Ms. Leung, think that, contrary to the dictates of the constitution, the color of one’s skin should be one of the major factors to be considered when hiring someone for an admin position at Harvard.

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The change from a year ago is as remarkable as it is striking. It’s not just that Claudine Gay, the first Black woman to serve as Harvard’s president is no longer at the helm, but six of the seven major leadership appointments at the university since January have gone to white people.

In addition to former provost Alan Garber assuming the presidency through June 2027, white leaders are serving as provost (John Manning) and heads of the Kennedy School (Jeremy Weinstein) and T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Dr. Andrea Baccarelli). They’ve also been named interim deans of the law school (John Goldberg) and graduate school of education (Nonie Lesaux).

Marla Frederick, a Black woman who is the dean of the Divinity School, is the only new person of color to take the reins of a major academic division at Harvard this year.

In three instances, white people replaced Black people. Michelle Williams headed the Chan school for seven years, and Bridget Terry Long ran the school of education for six years. And like Gay, Williams and Long each broke barriers as the first Black women to lead those schools.

Four of these new appointments are Jewish. In recent months, Harvard has taken steps to address concerns about growing campus antisemitism in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.

Aha! So there we have it. Not only is it problematic that the new admins are white, but what makes the appointments particularly unpalatable to Ms. Leung is that they are Jewish – and the reference to the Hamas-on-Israel war makes clear that Ms. Leung thinks these two facts – the hiring of four Jews and the university’s concerns about being called out for its antisemitism – are related. There is only one way to interpret this short paragraph; Leung believes the Jewish admins were appointed to their positions in part BECAUSE they are Jewish, as a means of assuaging the concerns of wealthy Jewish alums. In some circles (all those with 360 degrees), that kind of claim, referencing a classic antisemitic trope, would be considered — antisemitic. Because it is.

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All of this matters because Harvard’s faculty and leadership don’t come close to reflecting the diversity of its student body. Out of 25,000 graduate and undergraduate students, only about one-third are white. Yet nearly three-quarters of tenured and tenure-track faculty are white, and now top university leadership is whiter than it was just a year ago.

This is where the op-ed first moves fully into the realm of incoherence. Leung first argues that the racial make-up of the Harvard leadership and faculty should “come close” to matching the racial composition of the student body. But why? Leung doesn’t say. But she DOES note that almost 3/4 of the faculty are white. She raises that figure as a criticism – because she thinks the percentage of faculty who are white should match the percentage of students who are white. But at the same time, she has provided a good explanation for why most members of the Harvard leadership are likely to be white. The leadership emerges from the faculty, so if almost 3/4 of the faculty are white, then one would expect most top admins to be white as well.

But even that analysis ignores the fact that the racial make-up of the student body, and of the faculty, changes over time. The new admins are all faculty with decades of experience, and at the time THEY were students and when they first entered academia, the percentage of students at elite universities and the percentage of new faculty who are white was undoubtedly significantly higher than it is today. If the faculty hiring process, and the assignment of faculty to top admin positions, were completely color-blind, one would anticipate that the percentage of faculty who are white would be greater today than the percentage of students who are white today, for the simple reason that the percentage of non-white students has increased over time. And the percentage of top admins who are white would be expected to be higher still (reflective of the percentage of new faculty who were white fifteen to thirty years ago).

Nonetheless, Leung implies that the percentage of faculty who are white reflects some kind of racist preference for hiring whites, and she even more strongly implies that the recent “so white” admin hires were hired in part because they are white – and Jewish. That argument is racist, it is antisemitic, and it ignores the rather simple and obvious demographic-change-over-time explanation for why the percentage of current students who are non-white is higher than the percentage of non-white faculty and administrators.

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“It feels like a step backwards, but it also is a familiar trajectory in terms of how people of color often enter into leadership roles and tend not to necessarily be followed by more people of color,” observed Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race, and public policy at the Kennedy School. “You can see this across institutional settings in the private sector with various Black firsts who emerge in corporate America. You can see it in government when Black mayors are elected of various cities.”

“tend not to NECESSARILY be followed by more people of color”. Wow. What a quote! So according to Dr. Muhammad, once a leadership position, in government or in the corporate world or in academia, has been fill by a “person of color”, that position should then “necessarily” be filled by another person of color in perpetuity. Who is this guy – and how can someone who thinks as poorly as this have achieved a position as a professor at the Kennedy School? Note that if he had meant to argue that there is a systematic tendency for people of color in leadership roles to be succeeded by whites at a rate greater than one would expect if the hiring process were color-blind – then he should have said THAT. But that’s not what he said, and presumably Leung quoted him because she agrees with his views.

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“We are letting outsiders define what excellence looks like on this campus,” added Muhammad. “To me that is the failure of leadership in this moment.”

Another reference to the influence of outsiders and race (“what excellence LOOKS like”). And when Muhammad refers to “outsiders”, and when Leung references outsiders, they are clearly referring to JEWS. Nice. Both racist AND antisemitic.

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The prevalence of new white leaders comes at a time when Harvard is under intense pressure — first by the conservative right for having used affirmative action in its admissions and appointing Gay as its first Black president, and then by Jewish students, alumni, and donors who have been upset about the university response to campus antisemitism during the Israel-Hamas war.

To Leung, anyone who does not support race-based affirmative action must be, by definition, a member of the “conservative right”. She really needs to interact with people outside of her progressive bubble from time to time – because there are a lot of people who do not consider themselves members of the “conservative right” who do not support race-based affirmative action. In fact — a clear majority of voters in deep blue California oppose race-based affirmative action. And again, to Leung, it is not just coincidence that four of the new hires are Jewish at a time when Jewish students, alums, and donors have been upset about campus antisemitism (although it is refreshing that she does indirectly acknowledge here that there has been a concerning amount of antisemitism on the campus since Oct. 7).

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Gay was forced to resign in January over her handling of campus antisemitism and allegations of plagiarism in her own scholarship. And in filling vacancies with white leaders, Harvard seems to be sending a message that they are the only ones qualified for those jobs.

OK. That’s ... ridiculous. When Gay was HIRED, did it send the message that the only people qualified to be Harvard’s president are black women? Of course not. The most obvious person to fill Gay’s position following her resignation happened to be a white Jewish man. Does Leung really think that elevating Gay’s second-in-command to the interim president position “sent the message” that only white Jewish males are qualified to be president of Harvard? The idea that Harvard is sending a racist message with these hires is a confection of Leung’s own fevered mind, not an idea grounded in reality.

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A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on why Harvard’s leadership ranks have grown increasingly white since Garber took the reins. Beyond Garber’s selection by Harvard’s governing board, four of the major appointments that took effect this year occurred on Garber’s watch, while two (Baccarelli and Frederick) were under Gay.

I have some thoughts, a lot of them.

To some, the wave of white leaders clearly represents a flight to safety, indicating that Garber and the governing board, the Harvard Corporation, are prioritizing safe choices and campus calm over diversity.

“To some”. Sounds like prioritizing campus calm over making assignments based on skin pigmentation could be a good plan, especially given than prioritizing “diversity” (by which, Leung obviously means skin color) is illegal.

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Moreover, some faculty have suggested that the elevation of Jewish leaders is a way to appease vocal donors and alumni — many who have been upset and stopped writing checks over what they consider the administration’s tepid response to campus antisemitism.

“some faculty”. Nice use of the classic “some people say” rhetorical device that Trump is so fond of. Leung is trying to have her cake and eat it too here – as she’s about to claim that SHE doesn’t necessarily agree with the above argument, but many others do! What is weird about this is that up until this point in the op-ed, Leung has been STRONGLY implying (and basically, by any reasonable interpretation of the meaning of her words, actually stating) that there was a deliberate effort to assign more Jews to top leadership positions.

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That might have been a significant factor, but Jewish leadership is not uncommon at Harvard’s highest levels. The school’s top three administrators (president, provost, executive vice president) are currently Jewish — a similar structure when Larry Bacow, who preceded Gay, was president.

Reading this paragraph is like experiencing rhetorical whiplash, and I’m not really sure what she is arguing here. All of a sudden, Leung is saying that it only “might” be the case that Harvard’s assignment of four Jews to recent top admin positions was because the school was bowing to pressure from Jewish alums and donors – and she then seems to discount that possibility even further by noting the history of Jewish admins at the school. Whatever Leung meant to say here, it makes one wonder if Leung had forgotten everything that she had written before when she wrote this.

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Another likely factor is something far more troubling. What star Black scholar would want to hold a position of power at Harvard right now? They would have targets on their backs, vilified and publicly gutted by conservative activists much as Gay and other Black women professors at Harvard were this past year.

And if they were to come under attack, would the university defend and protect them?

OK. So – having discounted the “Jewish money pressure” explanation, Leung is now saying that a more likely factor is that Black academics would simply not want the jobs! In the context of this op-ed, this argument as an explanation for why 6 out of 7 recent top admins are white is just plain weird. Does Leung really believe that Harvard WOULD have filled more of the positions with black academics if only they had made themselves available – or perhaps, had not turned down offers that were made to them? Note that this is a REALLY different argument than the “bowing to the wishes of rich Jews” explanation. Has Leung talked with any Black faculty at Harvard who might have been obvious candidates for any of these positions? Does she have any evidence that any of them would, in the wake of Gay’s resignation, not want an admin position at Harvard? Wouldn’t talking to them have been a good use of twenty minutes of Leung’s time – doing the kind of thing a journalist should do BEFORE writing something like this?

In addition – surely Leung knows that Claudine Gay was not “targeted” because of her race per se. Her testimony before the antisemitism congressional committee was disastrous not because of her race but because it was undeniable that she was applying a double standard when defending the “free speech rights” of antisemites while herself taking action against others (including Black faculty Roland Fryer and Ronald Sullivan) whose opinions she did not agree with. And charges of plagiarism were brought against Gay not because of her race but because of her full-throated activism in support of DEI and for the simple reason that – she engaged in flagrant plagiarism. If she had engaged in the same behaviors and voiced the same opinions but been white – the pressure on her to resign would have been the same, as it was at Penn where Elizabeth Magill (who is white) was forced to resign following her own failures to address antisemitism on her campus.

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Even before Gay’s unceremonious departure, Harvard has had to contend with the fallout from a US Supreme Court case that struck down the use of race in admissions at Harvard and elsewhere, which has led to the decline of Black students enrolled at elite schools. Harvard recently reported that Black students account for 14 percent of first-year students this fall, down from 18 percent last year.

Sure, Garber has provided stability after a tumultuous year that rocked the university to its very core. But at what cost to diversity, equity, and inclusion?

As one professor, who wanted to remain anonymous given the sensitive topic, told me: “Harvard is where DEI went to die.”

But Garber had nothing to do with the fact that Black students account for 14% instead of 18% of Harvard’s first year class this year (when Blacks comprise right around 14% of the U.S. population). That decline is simply the direct result of Harvard now following the constitution’s legal proscription against racial discrimination.

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I don’t think Garber has anything against people of color. He served for about 12 years as provost before being thrust into the top job in January, and as second-in-command, he was part of three administrations that championed DEI and promoted Black women to deanships, including Frederick, Williams, Long, and Gay.

Perhaps I’m being too generous in thinking the predominantly white complexion of Garber’s administration is a function of unusual circumstances. But I won’t be so generous if a year from now Harvard leadership remains so white.

That’s because Garber has an opportunity to show the world that Harvard has not turned its back on DEI. The current leaders of the law and education schools are both interims; he has the chance to install permanent leaders who might look more like Harvard’s widely diverse student body. The university will also need to conduct a search for a new dean of Harvard College; Rakesh Khurana recently announced he will retire next June.

Let’s hope Garber and Harvard get back on the right side of history. We’ll all be watching.

A couple of points here because, given all that came before it, this final section of the op-ed borders on the bizarre.

For Leung to characterize her own views about the reasons why Harvard’s top administration is now “so white” as being perhaps “too generous” makes one wonder what she would have written if she were not in such a generous mood and if she were not so willing to give Garber and others the benefit of the doubt – where giving the benefit of doubt here involves claiming that Garber deliberately took race into account when making new administrative appointments and did so by preferring to appoint administrators who are white and Jewish. The mind reels imagining what Leung might have claimed if she were not in such a generous state of mind.

Of course, and I think ironically, it is, in fact, Leung who is arguing that Garber SHOULD take race into account when making future appointments – which would be racist AND illegal.

Finally, who exactly is the “we” that Leung is referring to when making her barely veiled threat in her final “we’ll all be watching” sentence? Is it simply the royal we – referring solely to Leung herself? Or has she anointed herself to speak on behalf of the entire Boston Globe? Does the “we” here refer to all readers of the Boston Globe, or “all” who share Ms. Leung’s progressive political views? Whomever Leung might be referring to here with her use of the word “we”, one thing is clear; she sure has a high opinion of herself and full confidence in the rightness of her views, which she knows reflect the “right side of history”. So I guess Garber better do what Leung wants, or else ... Ms.Leung might write another racist, antisemitic, and poorly reasoned op-ed.