Nikole Hannah-Jones: Attacks on Harvard President Are ‘Racist’

New York Times Magazine staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones said Tuesday on CNN’s “NewsNight” that calls for Harvard President Claudine Gay to be fired after her controversial congressional testimony were “racist.”

Partial transcript as follows:

ABBY PHILLIP: So, Nikole, what do you make of the fact that — this was striking to me, some of the same voices who are your toughest critics are the ones who are Claudine Gay’s toughest critics and the loudest voices are calling for her ouster. Do you think that these two things are related, this idea of pushing back on diversity and inclusion in higher education and getting the president of Harvard ousted from her position?

HANNAH-JONES: Oh absolutely, so they’re using the guise of pretending that this is about concern over anti-Semitism, which is, of course, something that all of us should be concerned about. It’s really just further their propaganda campaign against racial equity.

So, when you think about the fact that Harvard, this nation’s oldest university, had about a 370-year explicit racial quota of only hiring white men to be the president, it’s laughable to think that the first ever Black woman following that unbroken line of white racial quotas is the one who’s unqualified.

I mean, this is kind of the beauty of how racism works. If you are Black and you don’t achieve, if you don’t succeed at the highest echelon, it’s because you’re lazy and you’re not smart enough. If you do achieve and you do succeed and you do rise to the top of your profession, it’s because you didn’t deserve it.

So, as Toni Morrison said, this is all really a distraction. Chris Rufo is not a serious person. He is a person who has been trying to attack what he calls DEI, but really any efforts to address racial inequality. He has explicitly said that he does propaganda work. And the fact that we’re all talking about it means that he’s being successful.

PHILLIP: What do you make of the fact that, you know, there were all these university presidents who were criticized. She wasn’t the only one. But the other presidents weren’t criticized because they were women. They were criticized because of things that they said or did. She is being singled out as someone who is only surviving because of her race. What did you make of that?

HANNAH-JONES: Well, it’s racist. I mean, we have — no one has produced a shred of evidence that shows that the sole qualification that President Gay had was that she is a Black woman. That’s insulting. It defies logic. And the fact that, of those presidents, who all came under intense scrutiny, that only one has been called out as a so-called diversity or affirmative action hire just speaks of a Black woman of this country have gone through historically and continue to go through every day.

She’s clearly qualified and really, I’m perplexed to try to figure out what does race have to do with the criticism that she hasn’t handled the protests on her campus correctly. They just see this as an opening to further soul racial division and to further their campaign of trying to attack any efforts around diversity and anti-racism.

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