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6 | JANUARY 18 • 2024 
J
N

opinion

Personal responsibility and moral courage: 
Claudine Gay’s failings as a leader
C

ourage is what it 
takes to stand up and 
speak; courage is also 
what it takes to sit down and 
listen.”
When Winston Churchill 
spoke these words, little did 
he imagine 
that a future, 
ousted president 
of Harvard 
University 
hypocritically 
would stake a 
claim to courage 
in her parting 
blow in the New 
York Times. 
The irony being that she 
failed as a leader because of a 
complete dearth of moral and 
professional courage.

Wednesday, the New York 
Times published an essay by 
former Harvard president 
Claudine Gay entitled, “What 
Just Happened at Harvard 
is Bigger Than Me.” (Being 
Ellen, I must begin by 
correcting her grammar. The 
title ought to be “Bigger Than 
I.” #sorrynotsorry.)
Substantively, it is a 
wonder of a piece, vacillating 
between the whine of a 
generation lacking personal 
accountability to accusatory, 
hypocritical claims that 
extremist ideologues are 
attacking and undermining 
higher education and “trusted 
institutions” for their own 
nefarious purposes. She 
swings from claiming courage 

and belief in her work and 
her theories to complaining 
that her ouster occurred 
because “I make an ideal 
canvas for projecting every 
anxiety about the generational 
and demographic changes 
unfolding on American 
campuses: a Black woman 
selected to lead a storied 
institution.”
She acknowledges that she 
“made mistakes” in her initial 
statement after Oct. 7, in her 
congressional testimony, in 
citations to her scholarly body 
of work. Despite recognizing 
those mistakes, she cannot see 
how or why they justify her 
ouster. She seems to believe 
she deserves the space to make 
grave, public, institutionally 

humiliating mistakes without 
consequence. Bravo, Liz 
Magill, for going quietly into 
the night and sparing us such 
sanctimonious bitterness.
Boy, has Gay missed the 
point. This manic essay serves 
as definitive evidence that she 
needed to go. She really still 
does not get it.
People do not trust these 
institutions anymore because 
they demonstrate daily a 
terrifying lack of moral 
compass. When students 
chant, “From the River to the 
Sea,” promoting genocide and 
the wiping from the map of 
a UN member state, while 
simultaneously being unable 
to identify the river or the 
sea in question, trust in the 

PURELY COMMENTARY

Ellen
Ginsberg 
Simon
The Times 
of Israel

