It's a well-known and sad truth that a non-white person in position of seniority, particularly a Black person, is too often treated as being only as good as their first mistake — whether it be real or perceived, serious or trifling. Not for them the luxuries of institutional support, second chances or "failing up." Their perceived utility — of bolstering the image of a white-led institution — can be revoked the moment they're vulnerable.
The fall of Claudine Gay, Harvard's first Black president, whose appointment in July interrupted a long reign of white men and one white woman in that position, is one example of this disposability. Her high-profile takedown carries all the hallmarks of what one U.S. author and attorney calls "Trojan horse racism."
Gay's presidency became the shortest ever at the university after she resigned Tuesday. The lead-up to her exit was marked by controversy over an inadequate response to a congressional committee looking into campus antisemitism and was followed by accusations of past plagiarism by a conservative online journal.
American author Fatimah Gilliam, who is an attorney and Harvard alum, points to several elements of "Trojan horse racism" at play. "The way Claudine Gay was targeted reveals old-school racism that's hidden under claims of plagiarism and antisemitism," she says. "As soon as Gay was in their crosshairs and she survived the dumpster fire disaster on Capitol Hill, they pivoted towards her credentials. They leaned into what's often lurking in the back of some people's minds when encountering smart, accomplished, Black women — that they’re unqualified, dishonest, and thieves."
Accusations of dishonesty and prejudice have been wielded against Gay to obfuscate the real issue at hand, which is that civil rights for all are increasingly under attack on this continent by forces who benefit from entrenched racism and other marginalizations.
The attack on Gay reflects what we've also seen closer to home.
In October, the University of Toronto School of Medicine cancelled a program called Building the Foundations of Anti-Oppressive Healthcare and, according to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, cited vague concerns of antisemitic tweets by the program's social justice educator, Rania El Mugammar. When asked, the university still did not cite specific examples but said in a statement that, "With the shock and distress following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and Israeli military response in Gaza," it could not keep its commitment to "creating and maintaining psychologically safe spaces for learning and open dialogue," and thus cancelled the session.
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From what I saw, Mugammar had tweeted in support of Palestinian lives and in criticism of Israel, including calling it an apartheid state, which echoed independent conclusions by multiple human rights organizations. The tweets appeared in line with her anti-oppression work, not to be confused with corporate DEI, which I consider well-intentioned but ineffectual work, bogged down by corporate machinations.
Anti-oppression operates on frameworks that analyze asymmetries of power in different settings to get to the root of why all lives aren't mattering. It doesn't seek to appease power, rather, it aims to insist on change that can range from valuing marginalized voices at the proverbial table to pushing for practices that end the maiming and killing of people who have been disempowered, whether in hospitals or on the streets or in war.
This is much-needed work.
In war, we've seen how difficult it has been made to speak up for Palestinians facing bombardment.
On the streets, Black people continue to bear the brunt of racist policing. Last month, the Ontario Human Rights Commission released its final report after a six-year inquiry into anti-Black racism in Toronto police and found that racial discrimination, racial profiling and anti-Black racism exists "wherever Black people interact with Toronto police services,” according to its commissioner. Black people continue to be "grossly overrepresented" in police use-of-force cases, and especially fatal shootings. They are more likely to be arrested, charged, injured and killed by Toronto police than white people.
In hospitals, medical racism was starkly represented by the 2020 death of Joyce Echaquan. The Atikamekw woman who went to a Joliette, Que. hospital with pain from a rare heart condition, faced taunts of staff who prejudicially assumed she was an opioid addict even as her life gave out.
And yet, when a working group of experts from a coalition of Canadian medical associations released a draft document in November, soliciting public input on a plan to address systemic racism in training doctors, it was roundly denounced in right-wing media circles.
The document — which was, I repeat, a draft — said: "A new model … would seek to centre values such as anti-oppression, anti-racism and social justice rather than medical expertise." To hear the critics cry, you would think the plan was to replace medical expertise with social justice know-how. That medical students were going to be brainwashed in critical theory (gasp) rather than trained in diagnosing a heart attack.
But selectively quibbling with words all the while rejecting the entire contextual premise is a classic Trojan horse tactic.
In the case of Claudine Gay, a similar pouncing on words initiated a backlash against her from many quarters, including Israel supporters and, vitally, Harvard's billionaire donors.
When Gay and the other two university presidents at the congressional committee were asked if they'd penalize students calling for the genocide of Jews, they each responded in a lawyerly way.
"At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment?" a MAGA-Republican representative asked.
"It can be, depending on the context," Gay responded.
Should she have responded with an unequivocal yes? To me, a person who is not a lawyer, the answer is an easy yes, even if the question raises tricky issues of free speech and academic freedom.
But I'm not the one sitting at the end of five-odd hours of grilling in which the representative had conflated "intifada" or revolution with "calls for genocide" prior to asking that question. Gay apologized, saying she got caught up in the extended combative exchange and that "Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth." It wasn’t enough.
UPenn president Liz Magill resigned soon after the hearing. Gay did not. Her colleagues came to her defence, with some 700 of them signing a petition asking the institution not to bow to pressure. Yet in the wake of the continued pressure and questioning of her academic work by right-wing activists, she is gone. The Republican representative got her gotcha and is reaping the political benefits.
But in the context of rising antisemitism and Islamophobia, I can't see how Gay's exit has impacted campus safety for Jewish students, or anyone else. On the contrary, it does the job it's meant to, which is to put those pushing for racial justice on notice.
It says: If this can happen to the Harvard president, watch out.
