The System Is Rigged

The Ivy president debacle is a huge victory for populism.

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Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, Pamela Nadell, professor of history and Jewish studies at American University, and Sally Kornbluth, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testify before the House Education and Workforce Committee on December 5, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“We have reached a level of saturation coverage of campus anti-semitism that is slightly hard to fathom,” Jonathan Chait wrote on Tuesday, marveling at how many stories the New York Times has devoted to the subject lately. “It feels like a strange form of cultural reversal in which the reporters who were staking out diners in Trump country have all been reassigned to the Ivy League beat.”

That’s a good line, but it doesn’t feel like a reversal to me. Rather, there’s a clear through-line between grandpas in red hats babbling over burgers about how Trump tells it like it is and the president of Harvard hedging on whether calling for Jewish genocide should warrant official discipline.

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  1. Strephon

    I loved this post! It's one of the best analyses of the fallout from this testimony that I've read so far.

    After finishing it, though, I was a little glum. I REALLY wish Nick Catoggio would write more often about topics other than Trump and the (admittedly awful) state of the Republican Party. I still remember one post he wrote a few months ago about why serial killers seem less common today than in the 1970s and 1980s. The topic was disturbing, but the piece was thoughtful, informative, and perspicacious--just like this one.

    By contrast, my eyes glaze over when Mr. Catoggio starts banging on again about Trump. At this point, I'm well past middle age and have no desire to fill up what brain space I have left thinking about The Donald or his tacky personality cult. For that reason, when I look at the title of each day's Boiling Frogs and I see that it's yet another Trump piece or a horse-race analysis of the Republican primary, well then, I'm outta here.

    So, I beg of you, Mr. Catoggio: please, please give us all more posts covering topics other than Trump. I, for one, will read them.

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    Scarlette Tarte

    So we should silence the Jews who say "from the river to the sea" as well? Because they do it, too.

    In fact, the Likud party manifesto, released in 1977 says "between the sea and the Jordan river, there is only be Israeli soveriegnity." It also argued that letting Palestinians have a homeland would threaten the security of Jews and "endanger the existence of Israel".

    So, it looks like, again, we have, always with this issue, a case of both sides doing it, but only one side being condemned. Gee, it's kinda almost like Americans just want to see ONE side of this conflict, instead of admitting to themselves "hey, both of these parties are at fault".

    Stop trying to rein in the speech of those that are pro Palestinian, unless you also want to rein in the speech of those that are Pro Israeli.

    Because, as I see it calling for "death to Arabs" is just as bad as calling for "death to Jews".

    https://www-timesofisrael-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.timesofisrael.com/at-jerusalem-flag-march-chants-of-death-to-arabs-and-assaults-on-palestinians/amp/?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM#amp_tf=From1s&aoh=17026010787529&referrer=httpswww.google.com&ampshare=httpswww.timesofisrael.comat-jerusalem-flag-march-chants-of-death-to-arabs-and-assaults-on-palestinians

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  3. Pundette

    Remind me again why the American taxpayer provides federal funding to private institutions that promote antisemitism and have billions of dollars in endowment cash. I only went to Hofstra, so I'm probably not smart enough to understand this math.

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    1. Tommaj60

      Right on!

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    Runriverrun

    Can't say that I'm a fan of X or of Laura Ingraham these days. Having said that, I bit when I saw this and it pretty much feeds directly into this piece from Catoggio. https://x.com/IngrahamAngle/status/1734559105904209973
    I am finding it harder and harder to dig into my inner George Will and be a happy conservative warrior.

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  5. Stevenreedcurtis

    Maybe too cynical at the end. I still think it was a brilliant act to put Elise in front of those three.

    If you really want to pour some gasoline on the dumpster fire read "Why I don't check the black box" in the Free Press.

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    Kyle Rose

    Nailed it. The good outcome would be a return to the Chicago principles on freedom of expression and universities as the neutral marketplace of ideas. The bad outcome, and the one it seems we're more likely to get, is another constituency for speech codes.

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      Scarlette Tarte

      The right wants speech codes. They just want speech they hate being restrained, same as the left wants speech they hate being restrained.

      But right here at the Dispatch, you had some writers saying Harvard should use its speech codes. After all these years of David Horowitz and FIRE working to get rid of speech codes. NOW, they want them.

      This is what you get when you don't have speech codes. You get people being able to say all kinds of things, and have that protected, even at private institutions.

      We were better when we had speech codes and civility codes. I say bring
      ALL of that back.

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        Kyle Rose

        Speech codes are what we've had in higher ed for the past two decades, and we see how they are applied: selectively, against conservatives and anyone who doesn't toe the line of the progressive orthodoxy.

        The minority advocating for speech codes is, frankly, madness.

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  7. Gry.Solingen

    “President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.” 😂

    The passive “were omitted” is hilarious, but it’s the “proactively” that really gets me.

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    1. PROMETHEUS

      Why is it hilarious?

      What is involved here is not "plagiarism", as rightwing trolls have been yelling. Academic publications are very much involved with correct elements of style; they have to be expressed "just so", and that is what is involved here

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        Jmacdonster

        That is absolutely not the case. The sections she apparently plagiarized were meant to describe and interpret her results. You cannot cite other people's work when interpreting your own, because their work is, you know, not yours.

        All the sections that appear to be plagiarized have to do with statistical interpretations of her results. Her apparent need to crib from other people's work to interpret the statistics indicates that she doesn't understand the results well enough to do her own work.

        As a working statistician, I have authorship on (currently) 86 papers, and my contribution to all those papers was analysis of the data, writing the section that describes the analysis, and helping the lead author interpret the results. It's not a sin to be unable to interpret statistics, or I would be out of a job, but it is a sin to pretend that you can by cribbing the verbiage from others to cover your own shortfall.

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        1. PROMETHEUS

          Your comments do not seem make any sense.
          She "plagiarized comments on her own work"? Why can't you cite other people's work when interpreting your own? When you are "citing" other people that means you are not plagiarizing; you are noting that this is THEIR work.

          Please show in what way she plagiarized these other commentators.

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            Jmacdonster

            OK, so let's try again. Your fake quote of what I said is inaccurate. I didn't say she plagiarized comments on her own work - that's not a thing. What I said was she plagiarized other people's work when interpreting her own.

            This is a specific thing, and it seems to be a theme with her work. Here is a concrete example. Her colleague was studying voter turnout as a function of racial segregation in Louisiana, and had a linear regression of % voter turnout as a function of the proportion of black voters in each district. The slope of the line was negative, indicating that as the proportion of blacks in a district increased, the voter turnout decreased. He says the following:

            "the average turnout rate seems to decrease linearly as African Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct's racial mix, which is one description of bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot (resulting only when changes in one race's turnout rate somehow compensated for changes in the other's across the graph)"

            That paragraph is meant to describe the results from this individual's study.

            Later on, Claudine Gay did a study using data from Pennsylvania, and as part of the analysis did a linear regression of the % turnout as a function of the proportion of blacks in a given district. In her study, the slope of the line is positive, indicating that voter turnout increases as the proportion of black voters increases. Claudine Gay then interprets these results thusly:

            "The average turnout rate seems to increase linearly as African-Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. (If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct’s racial mix, which is one way to think about bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot. A linear form would only result if the changes in one race’s turnout were compensated by changes in the turnout of the other race across the graph."

            These were two different studies, using data from two different states, but exploring the same relationship between voter turnout and proportions of black voters. Since Claudine Gay essentially did the same study that her classmate had already done (but with different data), she could cut'n'paste what they wrote, changing 'decreased' to 'increased', and have it accurately describe her results.

            But there is no way to cite other people's work when you are interpreting your own results! She needs to clearly state that there is an apparent relationship between turnout and race, and explain that the relationship isn't due to any obvious bias. But instead of putting it in her own words, she just copied her classmate's paper and changed a couple of words to make it look a bit different.

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      2. Leave Me Be

        She's clearly an antisemite, so who really cares how much she plagiarized?

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        1. PROMETHEUS

          Well, if you are going to get rid of all antisemites, you will completely destroy the Republican Party, and a good part of the Democrats too.

          You would also have to get rid of Stefanik.

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          1. Tommaj60

            Let’s not get rid of antisemites. Let’s get rid of college administrators and their administrative teams. The institutions they run have failed the country, but as reeducation camps they’re giving China a run for its money.

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    Bel

    Stefanik and Harvard are not enemies. She disagrees with woke campus culture. They disagree with her (world class boot licking) support of Trump. Maybe other parts of her politics too, but her voting record is moderate so maybe not. In a different timeline she could be a normie. Otherwise I can’t argue with the this boiling frogs.

    It’s still wild that Ivy League grads are accepted as avatars for populism. There is no way that Trump or Stefanik, or even Jd Vance really want to be part of the culture of working class in Youngstown. It may not always be a money grift but it is at least a grift for power.

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  9. Incognito

    I'm shocked more people don't recognize it's Congress that's accountable to us, not the Presidents of these universities. These hearings are stage shows designed to benefit those running them, no one else. That's been the case for at least a decade, likely much longer. They are factories for viral videos and campaign ad material.

    Given that, we are left wondering why individuals like Stefanik use these to harass Americans instead of actually investigating the facts and creating policy to address the problems. Stefanik knew the vast majority of these "protests" are protected by free speech at public universities and ideally so at private ones. I wouldn't personally use the river to the sea dialogue but an honest assessment would admit most use it differently than a direct incitement for genocide (which would be an actionable offense most places).

    The most glaring missed opportunity was exposing the inconsistency of policy application. It's not Stefanik's job to define their policy but putting a spotlight on the inconsistencies pressures the universities to correct course. We benefit when universities protect viewpoint diversity.

    Instead Stefanik set a trap and inflamed the national dialogue with the "genocide" framing. But it's becoming obvious that expecting Congress to behave in good faith just sets citizens up for disappointment. Their job is now largely showboating.

    Congress helped build America in the past. Now it just celebrated tearing things down and lighting fires.

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    Chollowell3

    Harvard Delenda Est

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