Memorial Hall, Harvard University

Source: Bigstock

If Harvard were renamed Balderdash U, it might be forgiven for what at least two of its spokesmen wrote following the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that Harvard’s affirmative action violates the 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Court said, more or less, what Chief John Roberts said in 2022: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Only time will tell if the people who run Harvard really intend to stop discriminating, but their attitude is not encouraging.

Harvard has been discriminating for years, but woke leftists only call it “discrimination” when blacks are excluded. When Asians are excluded it’s called diversifying. When white conservatives are excluded it’s called security. What Harvard has been doing for years is not exactly “Jim Crow.” It’s more like “James Crow,” or perhaps “Dr. James Crow.”

And Harvard’s discrimination extends even to its writing: Harvard capitalizes “Blacks” but not “whites.”

The people who run Harvard were not amused by the Supreme Court’s decision, a fact that is of no particular significance. What is significant, however, is what they intend to do as a result of the decision—limned, perhaps, by their extraordinary hypocrisy on the subject of diversity.

Here are the first four paragraphs of Harvard’s new president’s comments on the Supreme Court’s decision:

The Supreme Court’s decision on college and university admissions will change how we pursue the educational benefits of diversity—but our commitment to that work [i.e., diversity] remains steadfast. It is essential to who we are and the mission we are here to advance. [Really? The mission of Harvard is to advance diversity, not to educate its students?]

For nearly nine years Harvard vigorously defended our admission process and our belief that we all benefit from learning, living, and working alongside people of different backgrounds and experiences [unless they’re professors].

We will comply with the Court’s decision [was it necessary to say this because many people assumed that Harvard would not comply?]; but it does not change our values. We continue to believe—deeply [deeply, very deeply, perhaps even very, very deeply]—that a thriving diverse intellectual community is essential to academic excellence and critical to shaping the next generation of leaders.

Every day, this is borne out in Harvard classrooms, where our students have the chance to put their ideas into conversation with other points of view, experiences, and perspectives. [Other points of view presented by whom? Not their fellow students, certainly, and not their professors either—see below.]

Diversity. Diversity. What a lot of balderdash! And here are some comments from the outgoing president:

We write today to reaffirm the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences. [Do students go to Harvard to get transformed or educated?] That principle is as true and important today as it was yesterday.

We affirm that: Because the teaching, learning, research, and creativity that bring progress and change require debate and disagreement, diversity and difference are essential to academic excellence.

What utter balderdash! Harvard doesn’t believe in diversity. Harvard believes in racism, pure and simple. Its claim of “diversity” is just a fig leaf. Look at the faculty.

According to The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, in the 2020 presidential election, “among [Harvard] teaching staff, 270 faculty members contributed a total of $317,835 to Biden, while just five faculty members contributed a total of $3,030 to Trump.”

In 2021, The Crimson introduced a piece titled “‘An Endangered Species’: The Scarcity of Harvard’s Conservative Faculty” by commenting: “While the University has made a concerted effort across the past decade to promote gender and racial diversity among its faculty, Harvard has not made any explicit attempts to bolster representation from across the ideological spectrum.”

That from the students! By your pupils you’ll be taught.

The article reported that “out of 236 members of the FAS [Faculty of Arts and Sciences] who responded to a question on political leanings in The Crimson’s 2021 Faculty Survey, just seven—3 percent—identified as “somewhat” or “very conservative,” compared to 183 who identified as “somewhat” or “very liberal.”

The Crimson quoted Robert J. Barro, a professor of economics at Harvard, who said: “There’s no tolerance at all at this point for something that says we should just be hiring on the basis of merit in terms of scholarship, teaching ability, and so on. It’s sort of no question now that, in addition to that, you’re supposed to be heavily weighting various forms of identity.”

So? So case closed. Harvard doesn’t believe in diversity. Harvard believes in discrimination. They have been giving preferential treatment to blacks over Asians. QED.

If the people at Harvard really cared about blacks, they’d go to war against the teachers’ unions, which are the single biggest impediment to blacks’ progress. Nationwide, black children are functionally illiterate and innumerate. You can thank a public school teacher (and her union) for that.

Ah, but those unions are the backbone (financial and otherwise) of the Democrat party and all its wokeness and crazy ideas. And the folks at Harvard believe all of it. So they continue to support the unions and their racist ideas (e.g., eliminating schools for gifted and talented students) while claiming to be good guys.

Don’t be fooled. Harvard doesn’t give a damn about blacks. It’s all just posturing. And balderdash.