Harvard elects 1st black female president amid debate over racial quotas

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Harvard University has announced that its new president will be Claudine Gay, dean of the institution’s College of Arts and Sciences. She will be Harvard’s first black female leader and only the second woman to hold the position, succeeding Lawrence Bacow.

Gay will take office in July, just as the university faces a crucial Supreme Court decision that could force it to review its admissions processes. Harvard has been criticized for taking into account factors that favor white and high-income candidates while the entity uses affirmative action to attract black and Hispanic students – which, students of Asian origin claim, would make it difficult for them to enter the university.

Should the court agree with the plaintiffs’ arguments, the decision could have a ripple effect, with affirmative action being overturned at other US institutions of higher education.

Gay supporters claim that she is the ideal person to lead the institution at this time. After all, she proposed an increase in diversity in hiring, in addition to being an expert on minority representation and political participation in government.

“Claudine is an exceptional leader, deeply dedicated to preserving and enhancing Harvard’s academic excellence,” said Penny Pritzker, chair of the Dean’s Selection Committee.

Harvard made “academic history” with the announcement of Gay’s selection, says Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the university’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, via email. “This is a victory for diversity and excellence.”

“Claudine has proven to be a world-class academic leader as well as a rigorous scholar,” he adds. “Under her leadership, Harvard will continue to be an example in maintaining the highest standards of academic excellence, advancing the frontiers of knowledge while promoting inclusion strategies.”

Gay, who is 52 years old, has been a professor of political science and African and African American studies at Harvard since 2006. According to the university, her studies have explored how the election of members of minorities to public office affects the perception that citizens have government, cooperation among minority groups, and how housing mobility programs affect the political participation of the poor.

Greeted on Thursday afternoon (15) with a standing ovation, Gay reintroduced herself to the community of Harvard, the place where she began her career as a graduate student three decades ago, taking her futon and a frying pan to the Haskins Hall residence hall. iron for frying plantains.

“That Claudine could never have imagined that her path would lead her here”, said the academic.

Gay said that, in a time of profound social, political and technological transformations, Harvard will have to strive to become more connected with the world. This includes strategies such as offering scholarships, establishing partnerships and getting more involved with the population.

“The ivory tower idea is the academy’s past, not its future,” she said. “We don’t exist outside of society, but as part of it. That means Harvard has a duty to participate in the world, to engage with it and to be at its service.”

Before joining the university’s faculty in 2006, Gay was an assistant and adjunct professor of political science at Stanford University, where she earned a BA in economics. She did her PhD at Harvard in 1998.

Her work as director of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences was not without controversy. This year, following the decision to impose disciplinary measures on Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology John L. Comaroff, a few dozen Harvard professors, including some of the most eminent names on the faculty, signed an open letter to Gay. Comaroff was placed on academic leave following allegations of sexual misconduct.

A university investigation concluded that Comaroff engaged in verbal conduct that violated university policy, but did not confirm allegations of unwanted sexual contact. Three women who claimed to be victims of the professor filed a lawsuit against the university. Later, most professors withdrew their names from the open letter.

Gay has also been at the center of a controversy surrounding the decision taken in 2019 to deny Lorgia García Peña, professor of New Latin Languages ​​and Literature, a vacancy on the permanent staff. The decision led more than one hundred professors to write letters of protest, citing the fear that non-white professors –García Peña is black and Latino— are targets of discrimination in cases involving positions of this type.

In October 2021, a decision review commissioned by Gay confirmed the decision. García Peña has just been appointed professor at Princeton University.

Gay’s selection was the result of a large-scale search process that generated more than 600 nominations and included more than 20 selection committee meetings, according to Pritzker. The selection committee was made up of members of the university’s governing boards, Harvard Corp. and the Board of Supervisors.

The Supreme Court is expected to announce, likely in June, a decision on a lawsuit filed against Harvard in 2014 by the student organization Students for Fair Admissions, which is against affirmative action.

The suit disputes Harvard’s use of incentives to increase the racial diversity of its students.

While many legal experts predict that the Court, with its conservative majority, will overturn decades of precedent to rule against the use of affirmative action, Gay recently told The Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, that the institution will remain firm in its ” commitment to building and nurturing a diverse and dynamic university community”.

Exactly how the university will do this is unclear, but it would require a complete overhaul of its student admissions process so as to eliminate not only favoritism that benefits the university’s alumni children, but also donor favoritism. and athletes who compete in sports such as golf, water polo, and squash.

Gay will face other major challenges when he takes the reins at the university. These range from local opposition to campus expansion into a part of the Allston-Brighton neighborhood, to faculty complaints about increased workloads, and criticism of the Legacy of Slavery initiative, a $100 million fund set aside to compensate for abuse of people enslaved by the university in the past.

Critics of the plan say they don’t understand exactly how the money will be used.

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