Commentator

Claudine Gay, the Fighting 14th, Israel's right, Putin's ceasefire

Dear Friends,

I’m sharing ‘Commentator,’ which is news analysis. The idea is to do this like twice a month, which seems like a decent ration of time to think about politics!

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Sam

CLAUDINE GAY AND THE CRISIS OF LIBERALISM

Well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen The New York Times quite so divided against itself as over Claudine Gay’s resignation. Here were the headlines of the four op-eds I saw side-by-side on my screen this week: 

-The Persecution of Claudine Gay

-Claudine Gay and the Limits of Social Engineering at Harvard 

-Harvard Couldn’t Save Both Claudine Gay and Itself 

-The Word That Undid Claudine Gay

So: four almost completely different theories of a single incident. 

Charles Blow saw the accusations against Gay as “a project of displacement and defilement meant to reverse progress and shame the proponents of progress” and quoted Kimberlé Crensaw in arguing that this was “a single skirmish in a wider, broader battle…to contain the power of Black folks, queer folks, women and pretty much everybody else who doesn’t agree to the agenda of reclaiming this country that the MAGA group claims.”

Bret Stephens claimed that the issue was “why [Gay] was brought on in the first place” and that “the social-justice model of higher education, currently centered on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts — and heavily invested in the administrative side of the university — blew up the excellence model.”

Ross Douthat, as one would expect of him, tried to carve out a reasonable middle ground, contending that there are concerted conservative critics of higher education attempting to bring down people like Gay but that the academic establishment is kidding itself if it can’t take its own standards seriously. 

And A.O. Scott argued that Gay’s ouster had nothing to do with the plagiarism charges but was the result of “a punditic bonanza and a culture-war Rorschach test.” 

The preferred framing on the web is to see the plagiarism charges against Gay in left-right terms — as right-wing critics (Christopher Rufo, Christopher Brunet, The New York Post, The Washington Free Beacon) combing through some very old and very dull academic papers in their attempt to get at a pillar of the academic establishment. But Douthat is more nuanced in seeing the real split as “a fracture within the liberal meritocracy,” with liberals bitterly dividing amongst themselves over the meaning of their beloved institutions. 

It’s possible to deal relatively quickly with a few red herrings in this debate. 

• Stephens overstates the right’s positions when he argues that Gay’s light academic record (eleven journal articles and no books) should from the beginning have disqualified her from consideration for Harvard’s presidency. But Gay is primarily an administrator and university administrators very often have their own path to ascension outside of academic scholarship. 

• It is simply not true that the plagiarism accusations against Gay could only have been motivated by racism. In a mouth-frothy op-ed, The Guardian argued that the conservative critics use of plagiarism “to take Gay down seems a throwback to the days of Reconstruction, when conservative lawmakers leveraged vagrancy laws to funnel free Black people into chain gangs.” But Stanford’s president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a white man, was forced to resign in mid-2023 over charges of academic misconduct that were, if anything, less egregious than Gay’s (an investigating committee found that, in four of five papers reviewed, “there was apparent manipulation of research data done by others”) and no one assumed that Tessier-Lavigne was the victim of orchestrated persecution. (In that case, the charges came to public attention through a report by the student newspaper.) 

• I have to say that I am a bit charmed by the defense of Gay that, in academia, everybody plagiarizes — and that only somebody who rises to the level of a university president would ever possibly be caught for it. But that free-and-easy attitude towards plagiarism is not what is reflected in schools’ policies towards students — with Harvard College expelling around two dozen undergraduates a year for “academic dishonesty,” including plagiarism. 

It is true, on the other hand, that there was a concerted conservative campaign to bring down Gay and that conservative activists see her toppling as a victory in a larger cultural war. 

That is the interpretation that Gay herself more than fully adopted in a pugnacious op-ed for The New York Times. She described the charges against her as part of a broader campaign “to unravel public faith in pillars of American society” and continued: “For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.”

Claudine Gay in happier times

In other words, it’s all a vast right-wing conspiracy. 

The super-activist Christopher Rufo was quick to claim a starring role in that conspiracy, telling Politico, “It’s really a textbook example of successful conservative activism, and the strategy is quite simple….Once my position — which began on the right — became the dominant position across the center-left, I knew that it was just a matter of time before we were going to be successful.”

But reading Rufo’s villain-in-his-lair interview a little more closely makes it clear that the narrative of a zealous right intent on “unraveling public faith” is a bit too simplistic. Rufo and his fellow activists really do believe in their cause — which isn’t actually to topple the institutions themselves as it is to “eliminate the DEI bureaucracy.” As Rufo argued, “I’m telling the truth — and the truth has an inherent and innate power.” 

It’s unavailing, then, to argue, as so many in academia have done, that the conservatives are the barbarians at the gates and their criticisms (even when apparently substantive) are just a kind of disguised nihilism. Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, put that institutional position in the starkest terms: “If it came from some other quarter, I might be granting it some credence,” he said of the charge against Gay, “but not from these people.” But Douthat, as usual, had a more nuanced understanding, noting that the percentage of conservatives with a “great deal” of confidence in higher education has dropped precipitously (from 56 to 19%) in the last decade — meaning that it’s absurd to believe that the right has had some long-standing animus against higher education. “On the other hand, the sudden Republican alienation from the American university could be seen as an entirely reasonable response to academia’s own internal transformation in the past 10 years or so,” Douthat writes. 

Flipping to the back of the book where Martin Gurri gives us all the answers to our era, the Claudine Gay controversy is best understood as an almost perfect distillation of the struggle between “authority” and the “public” — the “asymmetrical conflict” that characterizes so many of our cultural disputations. For “authority,” the temptation is overwhelming to pull up the drawbridge, to insist, as Fried and Gay have done, that the public is out to get them and that the only possible response is non-engagement. It’s the same mentality that connects “the vast right-wing conspiracy” to “the basket of deplorables.” In a reported piece on the mechanics of Gay’s ouster, The New York Times describes “authority” behaving exactly in the way you would expect it to — the members of the Harvard board in “ski towns and beach resorts for the holidays,” rethinking their support of Gay, with Penny Pritzker “sounding weary” as she called Gay, on vacation in Rome, to make it clear that there was no longer a path forward for her. Authority treating the criticisms of the public as one enormous headache.

Claudine Gay and her defenders decided that the campaign against her was fueled by racism and aimed at destruction. “The past several weeks have laid waste to truth,” Gay was bold enough to declare in The New York Times. But it seems not to occur to any of them that their critics may have a point, that the elite universities are committed to a set of mutually contradictory values, that what Rufo calls the “DEI bureaucracy” is wildly unpopular among Americans and inimical to other principles of liberal education, and that the retreat into snobbish snootiness à la Fried only makes matters worse. 

The basic issue is that the universities are, at the same time, trying to be both meritocratic and representative, and, while both worthy, these are fundamentally different goals. The universities have attempted to harmonize the two, but the SFFA v. Harvard ruling deems their attempted compromise unconstitutional. What the Supreme Court and the Claudine Gay controversy have made clear is that it’s time for the schools to choose. My personal vote would be for the universities to go the UChicago route: be the place where fun goes to die, get rid of the luxury ship accouterments, the sports teams (I was surprised recently to discover that Harvard has more sports teams than any other college in the country), the baroque admissions standards, and to simply commit to a hard-and-fast meritocratic principle for admissions. There would be some combination of tests, grades, and essays, and a rigorous focus on academics for matriculated students, and that would be the end of it — and that would lead, I suspect, to respect and a restoration of public confidence in the universities. I can understand the elite schools not going that route — who would want to be Chicago or MIT? — and there is something to be said for the universities’ current path, of trying to model a better, more representative type of society. But the point is that they do have to choose, with the public watching closely to see what choice they make. And the barbarians at the gates are — they may be surprised to realize — not actually trying to “unravel public faith pillars of American society” but to restore them to foundational values. 

THE 14TH AMENDMENT AND ANOTHER CRISIS OF LIBERALISM

The other really polarizing controversy at the moment — and, again, it involves a crisis of conscience amongst liberals — is deciding to what extent to press the argument that the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump from holding office. 

And, once again, this seems to be a case of needing to save liberals from themselves. In The New York Times, Jamelle Bouie engages in a startling argument, urging “proponents and supporters of the 14th Amendment option to effectively destroy the village in order to save it.” 

His contention is that “Trump is not an ordinary political figure” and that, therefore, the establishment needs to invoke, as it were, emergency powers to subvert the normal political process. To shirk that attempt to press the 14th Amendment, Bouie argues, is a kind of squeamishness. “The real issue with disqualifying Trump is less constitutional than political,” he writes. “Disqualification, goes the argument, would bring American democracy to the breaking point.”

Well, yes. That’s exactly the issue. The attempt to disqualify a presidential frontrunner by supra-electoral means is exactly the sort of thing that could lead to a constitutional crisis and end democracy as we know it. As Matt Taibbi writes of the recent ruling by Maine’s Secretary of State to remove Trump from the ballot: 

I doubt the 14th Amendment was designed to empower unelected state officials to unilaterally strike major party frontrunners from the presidential ballot. If it was, that’s a shock. I must have missed that in AP Insane Legal Loopholes class. Is there any way this ends well? It feels harder and harder to imagine.

And Trump weighed in with his usual class, reminding the Supreme Court Justices that it was time for them to scratch his back and saying, in so many words, that this is a nice country and it would be a shame if anything happened to it. “I fought really hard to get three very, very good people in [the Supreme Court] and I just hope they’re going to be fair,” he said at a rally. “Because if we don’t [get fair treatment], our country’s in big, big trouble. Does everybody understand what I’m saying?”

The real point is that liberals shouldn’t even be considering approaches like criminal charges or disqualification; the Democratic Party should just be able to win an election in a fair fight. But, unfortunately, it’s looking more and more like that would have required Biden to drop out in time and allow a more exciting Democratic candidate to emerge from the primaries. Or, as The Intercept puts it, “this is a problem created by Biden’s overweening self-confidence.” He just wouldn’t withdraw, and no one had the nerve to challenge him, and that means that the Democratic Party is sleepwalking to a likely defeat at the worst possible moment in the nation’s history. 

In a beautiful piece in November, David Brooks tried to argue that Biden’s dire poll numbers weren’t as bad as they seemed — that voters now treat polls as more of a place to air their grievances — and that Biden could eke out a victory by being as “boring” as possible, by hewing to the “center of the electorate.” It’s beyond-tempting to believe that that’s true, but I just don’t quite buy it. If in modern elections polls aren’t what they once were, the same may be true of “the median voter rule.” Modern presidential elections are a form of theater. Trump understands that and continues to excel at it. Biden does not. And, as a result, the Democrats probably are looking at defeat without the employment of supra-electoral means. 

As a legal argument, the application of the 14th Amendment to disqualify Trump isn’t a bad try. January 6th was a kind of “insurrection” and I can understand at least wanting to hear a resolution of the case. My suspicion, though, is that the Supreme Court will just reject the argument — and not solely because of its conservative majority. A one-day mob attack may not meet the criteria of an “insurrection”; January 6th would not necessarily be construed as a rebellion against “the Constitution of the United States”; and the wording of the 14th Amendment does actually make it seem like some sort of executive privilege applies — that the President specifically is in a different category and cannot be understood as engaging in insurrection against his own state. 

So, in the end, everything may play out the way it should. The Supreme Court hears the argument and rules on it early enough that it doesn’t particularly affect the outcome of the election.

The problem-at-hand, though, is an argument like Bouie’s and what it says about the state of mind of the Democratic Party. I don’t think a destroyed village is a saved village, and the idea that the election can be skipped over and Trump removed by legalistic means is a dangerous fantasy — “authority” once again trying to pull up the drawbridge and ignore democracy itself. 

ISRAEL AND ETHNIC CLEANSING?

You may have forgotten this amidst all the focus on Claudine Gay, but there is a war on in Gaza, and, actually, the war may have taken a categorical turn in the period when it has slipped out of media consciousness. 

I have been very skeptical of the left’s claims that Israel’s offensive amounts to “genocide,” when the more prosaic word “war” fits the bill. Hamas is actively resisting Israel; Hamas’ use of human shields and immersion in an urban population necessitates some collateral damage against civilians if Israel is actually to destroy Hamas’ military infrastructure; and the scale of “genocide” is very different than anything in the conflict so far. 

However, there is rhetoric from the Israeli side that indicates that “ethnic cleansing” may be emerging as a goal of Netanyahu’s administration. In a chilling op-ed for The Jerusalem Post, Gila Gamliel, Israel’s intelligence minister, without ever quite spelling out what she had in mind, wrote, “We must try something new, and we call on the international community to help make it a reality. It could be a win-win solution: a win for those civilians of Gaza who seek a better life and a win for Israel after this devastating tragedy.”

What she had in mind of course was what Netanyahu has referred to (maybe or maybe not in this context) as “a surrender and deportation scenario” — a Stalinesque deportation of virtually the entire population of Gaza abroad. 

By way of justification, Gamliel wrote: “We will still have around two million people in Gaza, many of whom voted for Hamas and celebrated the massacre of innocent men, women, and children….It is a place devoid of hope, stolen by the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups.” And, apparently, Israel has taken this idea seriously enough to engage in talks with several African countries with the idea of resettlement. 

But, paradoxically, that brutal vision of the war’s end may be what forces Israel to dial down its offensive. The suggestion of ethnic cleansing, even if it’s a fantasy among hard-right members of the administration, is already triggering a backlash in the U.S. — and seems to represent the limit of the U.S.’ willingness to support Israel. 

In December, Haaretz reported that Biden had “been shown pessimistic assessments that [Netanyahu] is interested in endlessly prolonging the war to delay the political crisis in Israel that is expected when the fighting is over.” Israeli officials told Haaretz that they believed Biden would give Israel only “a few weeks to end the war” — a response to mounting concern over the motives of Netanyahu and his allies. 

One implication here is that the commenting class really took its eye off the ball in the aftermath of 10/7 in blithely assuming that Netanyahu would soon be eased out of power. The better understanding is that Netanyahu is tenaciously holding on, is looking to continue the Gaza War indefinitely, to escalate the conflict against Hezbollah, and to consider the “ethnic cleansing” route — all, as Amir Tibon writes for Haaretz, for the sake of his “personal survival.” Haaretz speculates further that Netanyahu has been overly influenced by theories of “unconditional surrender,” believing that conflicts are settled, in the end, only by the application of overwhelming violence.

Just some light reading material! - Netanyahu reading Nothing Less Than Victory, a polemic on ‘decisive wars,’ in the Knesset in 2016.

There seems to be a split within Israel’s leadership for what “the day after” the war would look like. According to Israel Hayom, senior government officials including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant view the encouragement of mass Gazan emigration as “something between an unrealistic fantasy and a despicable and immoral plan,” with Gallant proposing a far more sober plan involving Palestinian administration of Gaza.

Still, it’s becoming steadily clearer to Americans that their values are incommensurate with those of Netanyahu and the Israeli hard-right. Daniel Levy, head of the U.S. / Middle East Project, told The New York Times that there has been “a willful refusal to take seriously just how extreme this government is — whether before Oct. 7 or subsequently,” but revelations of Netanyahu’s apparent determination to prolong the war and the discussions of ethnic cleansing (even if they are a right-wing fantasy) seem to be the bridge that the Biden administration is unwilling to cross, with the State Department issuing a rare public rebuke to Israel and holding Netanyahu accountable for the emigration rhetoric. What that means is that the United States has likely had it with Netanyahu, that “the fight with him” is coming, and that Israel finds itself with a choice — either stick with Netanyahu and indulge in his fantasies of “forever war” and ethnic cleansing or else force him out, declare victory, and, as Haaretz writes, “contend with a formal or informal ceasefire, as it has done in all previous wars since 1948.” 

PUTIN’S PEACE PROPOSAL?

And, by the way, there is also a war on in Ukraine. The New York Times had an optimistic headline in late December contending that “Putin Quietly Signals That He Is Open to a Cease-Fire in Ukraine,” which, one would think, means that the war will soon reach the unsatisfying conclusion that everybody expects it to: a glorified stalemate, with Ukraine ceding Russia the territory it has already taken. 

But it may not be as simple as that. Putin has apparently been extending similar peace-feelers since the fall of 2022, even as he ratchets up his militaristic rhetoric in public and puts Russia on ever more of a war footing. In the same article, The New York Times finds itself conceding that Putin is “exhibiting contradictions that have become hallmarks of his rule” and that “opportunism and improvisation have defined his approach to the war behind closed doors.” In other words, it is almost impossible to tell whether Putin, quiet signals or not, is sincere in wishing to implement or could be trusted to keep a ceasefire arrangement. 

Foreign Affairs rejects the whole premise of the war dwindling away, claiming that “the perception of stalemate is deeply flawed: both Moscow and Kyiv are in a race to rebuild offensive combat power” and that Russia’s goals extend well beyond Ukrainian territory. “Putin has repeatedly stated that he wants to change the logic of the international system,” Foreign Affairs concludes.

Meanwhile, the U.S/Ukraine side is far from decided on whether it wishes to end the war on anything like Putin’s terms. “There is no evidence that Ukraine’s leaders, who have pledged to retake all their territory, will accept such a deal,” writes The New York Times. And the summer’s NATO summit in Vilnius demonstrated the contradictions in the West’s position. Behind an apparent unity — “NATO leaders in Vilnius made clear that ‘Ukraine’s future is in NATO,’” wrote former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder in a summary of the conference — the West was actually hedging its bets. “We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and certain conditions are met,” the summit comminiqué somewhat ominously read. And Biden, in a press conference, indicated what those conditions might be: “One inch of NATO territory means we’re all — we’re all in a war together against whomever is violating that space, and we’re going to defend every inch of it,” he said. 

As Adam Garfinkle cannily analyzes it for Quillette, Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO “until its borders are clarified, to the inch” — an event that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Meanwhile, as The New York Times notes, “Among the many likely sticking points [of the potential ceasefire] is Mr. Putin’s determination to keep Ukraine out of NATO.”

So the Western allies find themselves in a position of less-than-good-faith towards Ukraine. NATO has indicated that Ukraine’s membership is not a question of “whether but when.” However, that promise by itself may well sabotage any peace deal with Russia, and the impossibility of fixing borders means that NATO is likely to drag out Ukraine’s admittance for as long as possible. The logic of the conflict appears to be that the West keep Ukraine as a buffer state — not part of NATO but absorbing all of Russia’s aggression (the sort of sacrificial role that Ukraine, with its unfortunate geography, has all too often had to play in great-power politics over the centuries). 

The sense is Russia and the West really are headed in irrevocably different directions and that the Ukraine War codifies the central issue: the West’s insistence on a nation-state model backed by American force protection, as opposed to Russia’s belief in something closer to the older model of ‘sovereignty’ and imperial dominion. As Timothy Snyder puts it in a plea on his Substack, Ukraine continues to act as the embodiment of all of the values of the West. “It maintains the international legal order. It fulfills the NATO mission…making war elsewhere in Europe very unlikely,” he writes. But, more than anything else, Ukraine is the victim of its own geography. Russia has a way of treating Ukraine as an extension of itself. However much the West may find a confluence of values with Ukraine, the overwhelming need is to not get too close to Russia — which may mean a stall of NATO membership and, paradoxically, even a stall in working out a viable ceasefire. Whatever happens here, it’s unlikely to have a happy ending.