Harvard President Claudine Gay claims that she is being forced to resign because of racism. As Greg Gutfeld aptly observed on Fox, Gay is not a victim of racism -- she was appointed because she is the beneficiary of racist policy. Ms. Gay is a sterling example of how DEI is the antithesis of meritocracy.

While it may seem that Gay is on the chopping block because of plagiarism or her defense of calls for anti-Jewish genocide, the real reason for her downfall is her lack of qualifications for the job. She was appointed not because she was the best or the brightest, but because she fit the diversity profile that Harvard wanted. Gay is the perfect symbol for a university that has become a bastion of left-wing ideology and the enemy of meritocracy.

Does Harvard really want diversity? If you are a conservative professor, try to get hired at Harvard. People who demand diversity, such as the people who run Harvard, are against viewpoint diversity -- also known as free speech. Diversity means “it is great to look different as long as you think the way I do.” Conservatives need not apply.

“How in the world did Harvard University end up accepting, hiring, and promoting so many people who, given the opportunity to speak freely, do so in defense of murder, rape, and terrorism?” asked John H. Cochrane, economist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. The answer is that Harvard is against diversity of thought.

Gay was executing her job perfectly according to the DEI ideology that has taken over at Harvard. “Harvard should fire her because the cause is rotten,” said Cochrane, “not the execution.” Harvard and other elite universities are contributing to the destruction of the critical American value known as meritocracy.

Meritocracy and diversity are opposites. Instead of hiring and promoting people based on competence, advocates for diversity want such decisions to be based on race and gender. The entire basis of American exceptionalism – competence -- is being outlawed. Hence the hiring of Claudine Gay. With the ascendency of identity politics, says Scott Greer in No Campus for White Men, “skin color trumps merit -- as long as that skin isn’t white.”

Evidence of the trend is everywhere. “Medical schools are discarding traditional standards of merit in order to alter the demographic characteristics of their profession,” says Heather Mac Donald, author of When Race Trumps Merit. The majority of top-25 medical schools are supporting equity and critical race theory. In the future, the physician performing your brain surgery could be the product of affirmative action. Going in for surgery may become an act of suicide as medical standards of excellence are discarded in favor of skin color.

United Airlines has announced that 50 percent of all new pilots will be chosen from among minorities and women. At 30,000 feet, who wants an affirmative action pilot sitting in the cockpit? President Biden delivered on his promise that the next Supreme Court justice will be black and a woman. He made it clear that he intended to bribe black voters and women by appointing a black woman. No one else need apply.

Eligibility for an Academy Award will no longer be based on merit. Nominees for “best picture” must contain minority themes and have a quota of minorities and women in both cast and crew. Past Oscar winners such as On the Waterfront, Patton, and Lawrence of Arabia would no longer qualify.

“The rejection of objective standards of accomplishment is nihilistic,” says Heather Mac Donald. “The diversity movement deems color-blind measures of competence to be unjust instruments of racial exclusion.” It would appear that Harvard agrees.

America’s obsession with diversity makes little sense in view of the tremendous progress that the nation has made since the civil rights movement. The bitter allegations of critical race theory and Black Lives Matter cannot be justified. “In Baltimore, where Freddie Gray died,” said Black talk radio host Larry Elder, “the majority of the city council is Black, the top cop is Black, the number two cop is Black, the majority of the command staff is Black, the mayor is Black, the AG is Black, and yet here we are talking about racism. It’s absurd.”

In addition to fomenting racial strife, diversity encourages minorities not to take responsibility for their own lives. This is part of the Democratic Party’s plan to make as many people as possible dependent on government handouts. Entitlements foster a victim mentality that places the blame on whites.

Giving special treatment to any one group is in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment. It is also the worst kind of racism. Blaming current social problems on alleged white oppression heightens racial tensions and keeps the country divided. Sadly, that is the divisive message that Harvard wants to force on young people.

Ed Brodow is a conservative political commentator and author of ten books, including No. 1 Amazon Best Seller THE WAR ON WHITES: How Hating White People Became the New National Sport. His website is www.edbrodowpolitics.com.

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