Caroline Downey
National Review, Jan. 31, 2024
“The previous selection process was conducted in record time,” Pollak said of Gay’s selection. “It appears, though, the important questions were not asked. This time around, we will be asking all the uncomfortable questions. Is this the most qualified candidate? Is this candidate’s publication record high quality enough?”
Growing up in South Africa, Julia Pollak, a 2009 Harvard graduate, was warned against attending college in her home country. Frequent violent protests would force the local university to close for weeks at a time. The school plummeted in international rankings. Appointments to the administration were based on two criteria: “race and connection to the ruling party,” Pollak told National Review.
“That university had forgotten its academic mission,” she said. “Those politics and complete obsession with rapid racial transformation of the faculty as its guiding star. As a result, it allowed merit and the ordinary function of the university to get destroyed.”
Pollak’s mother, who sat on the boards of two South African universities, urged her to find a college abroad that valued intellectual freedom. In 2005, that’s what Harvard was. “When I got there, there was still tremendous viewpoint diversity among the faculty,” Pollak said. “You could hear Cornel West calling for socialist revolution in one class and Harvey Mansfield calling for a return to classical values in another.” Now, Pollak is concerned that Harvard is heading down the same path as those hollowed out universities she left behind in her home country.
Since the recent resignation of former Harvard president Claudine Gay, following scandals of campus antisemitism and plagiarism in her past scholarship, prominent alumni have demanded reform.
Harvard University’s chief DEI officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, was also recently accused of plagiarizing 40 times in her academic work, such as her dissertation and a journal article, using other scholars’ writing without proper attribution, according to a Monday complaint obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The “Renew Harvard” four want Harvard to revive the commitment to academic excellence that made it famous the world over. … [To read the full article, click here]