The head of Harvard\u2019s fate was sealed when she became the focus of a culture war battle over antisemitism, plagiarism and free speech<\/p>\n
For some, she is the wretched epitome\u00a0of the liberal elite; for others, the victim of a \u201cracist mob\u201d<\/a>. She herself condemns her critics for having \u201crecycled tired racial stereotypes<\/a>\u201d. As an illustration of the way that culture wars warp political judgment and push people into tribal corners, the case of Claudine Gay may be Exhibit 1.<\/p>\n Gay, who became Harvard University\u2019s first black president <\/a>in July, was forced last week to resign<\/a>, the culmination of a bitter controversy at the heart of which are tussles over some of the most polarising issues of the\u00a0day: racism, antisemitism, plagiarism, free speech and diversity.<\/p>\n Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The head of Harvard\u2019s fate was sealed when she became the focus of a culture war battle over antisemitism, plagiarism and free speech For some, she is the wretched epitome\u00a0of the liberal elite; for others, the victim of a \u201cracist mob\u201d. She herself condemns her critics for having \u201crecycled tired racial stereotypes\u201d. As an illustration … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}