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ALPERN AT LARGE - There’s “smart” and there’s wise, and there’s “tolerant” and there’s open-minded.
Harvard, long ago considered one of the smartest and tolerant schools in the nation—if not the world—had no business hiring Claudine Gay as its president. Forget she’s female and black…who cares?
MLK Day is not too far away, and remember that whole “content of character over skin color” thing? Well, Claudine Gay’s “What Just Happened at Harvard is Bigger Than Me” opinion piece at the New York Times might be accurate, but not for the reasons that she wanted to proclaim.
The tired old “they’re racist and out to get me” canards won’t cover up the fact that she was a habitual narcissist and plagiarist (kind of like our nation’s President, who’s old and white and male) who had no reasonable track record to justify her being placed in power.
And if Trump (an old white male) is a lying gaslighter in the eyes of so many in our nation, the current status of our nation’s citizens is rushing towards MLK’s vision of humanity…that “content of character” thing over the content of pigment in one’s skin.
Trump and Biden, Claudine Gay and Clarence Thomas, are being judged for who they are and what they’ve done. Agree or disagree with what you think of these individuals, but that’s a good thing.
Former Harvard president Claudine Gay, former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill, and current MIT president Sally Kornbluth are all under fire because they’re so “smart” they’re dumb, and so “tolerant” they’re bigoted.
All women. Ms. Gay is black. Ms. Magill is Catholic. Ms. Kornbluth is Jewish.
And so…who cares?
That scurrilous trio (and so many other “academics”) allowed history to be inaccurately rewritten, they’ve allowed the laws of war and the mistake of peoples backing modern-day Nazis like Hamas and Iran to not suffer the consequences, and they’ve allowed Jewish students to be in fear for their safety and lives on campus.
And everyone with a triple-digit IQ AND a sense of history and civics is catching on.
These “academics” and the mobs they’re supporting are forgetting that EVERY Palestinian in Gaza would be safe if they turned in the Hamas fighters in their tunnels, hiding in mosques and schools and hospitals, and clutching innocent civilian hostages (including Americans…c’mon, Joe Biden!)…and that many Palestinians did and still support Hamas.
And forgetting that’s what going on in our nation’s universities…is neither truly smart, truly wise, truly liberal, truly humane, truly open-minded, etc.
Therefore, if cozying up to Iran, to Hamas, forgetting what the history of the failed attempts to create a Palestine and which side rejected all those attempts, and allowing brazen violence in our streets and universities is “smart”, then “smart” has clearly become stupid.
Ditto for “tolerance” being non-bigoted.
So whether it’s our universities (notice how MIT and Harvard are in Massachusetts, where Boston’s mayor just had a non-white electeds holiday party?) or federal government (Iran, Mr. Biden…really?), our nation is really focusing on what’s right versus what’s wrong, and what’s educated versus what’s ignorant, and what’s decent versus what’s intolerable.
In a way, MLK would be horrified to know what our nation has become.
But in another way, MLK might be pleased to know his words really meant something to those who studied history, civics, and legitimate education.
(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D, is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, and is a proud husband and father. He was active for 20 years on the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) as a Board Member focused on Planning and Transportation, and helped lead the grassroots efforts of the Expo Line as well as connecting LAX to MetroRail. His latest project is his fictional online book entitled The Unforgotten Tales of Middle-Earth, and can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)
