Right-wingers on Twitter are high-fiving over the forced resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay on Tuesday after conservative news outlets dug up several more plagiarism incidents — the first three examples apparently weren’t enough — but trust me: Gay will be just fine. Her ousting will likely end up being the best thing to happen to her in every way.
That’s because Gay has the ultimate privilege in modern America: She loudly and unashamedly claims to be an irreparable victim of her country, and she has the dominant institutions on her side to reinforce the message.
True, Gay is a member of the wealthiest and utmost elite, serving as the president of an Ivy League university. But that’s neither here nor there.
She’s black. She’s a woman. She’s a lesbian.
The only way she could possibly be more powerful is if she used a wheelchair. (Not that I want to give her any ideas.) This is an America created by a left that has seized every cultural center — the entertainment industry, the news media, and, most importantly, academia. If you can claim to be oppressed, you’re owed something. A lot of it. (See my book Privileged Victims.)
That entitlement was perfectly reflected in Gay’s very resignation letter, which hopefully no one bothers to run through TurnItIn. “[I]t has been distressing,” she wrote to the campus at large, “to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who
