The Three Stoogettes of the Ivy League

or maybe Sgt Schultz

When the presidents of Harvard, MIT and UPenn testified before Congress that the question of antisemitic protests on campus all depended on the context, were they being dumb or playing dumb?

Or maybe they were just being Sgt. Schultz, just trying to stay out of trouble.

As Bill Ackman reports, in answer to the question:

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment?

They replied, more or less:

It ‘depends on the context’ and ‘whether the speech turns into conduct,’ that is, actually killing Jews.

And I thought that the most important thing in the world was speech that made people feel “unsafe.”

Obviously, these answers were prepared and rehearsed on the advice of lawyers, and the job of lawyers is to keep you out of trouble.

The point is that Claudine Gray, the current President of Harvard University, is not there because she is an amazing scholar or teacher. A look at La Wik shows that she was quick-marched through an academic career so she could be the first black woman president of Harvard.

Is Claudine Gray in the same league as the great Harvard presidents of yesteryear? Does she measure up to Increase Mather back in 1700? Or James B. Conant from 1950, who designed the mega-high schools we enjoy today?

But the list of Harvard Presidents is telling at La Wik. Only four presidents have a comment next to their name, There is the first president, called “schoolmaster.” Then there is the longest serving president. Then the ”First female President at Harvard” and the “Second woman and first African-American to serve as President at Harvard.” So we all know what is important.

Fact is the three Ivy League presidents are all place-men. It really doesn’t matter who is president of Harvard. Harvard is part of the administrative state, and it does what it is supposed to do, which is provide support to the educated ruling class. And the people that get to those top jobs instinctively understand what their job is: to go with the Narrative and support the ruling class.

Let us just rehearse what is going on.

Every ruling class, according to Gaetano Mosca in The Ruling Class, has a “political formula:”

Ruling classes always invent a moral or legal basis for their power. Mosca calls this a political formula. The ruler might be a king that rules as God's Anointed, or he might be a US president that rules by the will of the people. There is always a "political formula."

In our case the political formula is that we, the rulers, are the allies of the Oppressed Peoples in their fight against the White Oppressors.

Now, I do not suppose that our three presidents actually articulate the political formula in those words. But they do understand what they are supposed to do. Years ago Emmett Tyrrell of The American Spectator talked about the “hive.” Worker bees don’t get orders from the Queen Bee; they just know what to do. And right now all the worker bees are fighting like mad to increase diversity, equity and inclusion.

There is no point in being scandalized by this. If the rulers weren’t fighting racism, sexism and homophobia, they would be fighting something else.

It’s always something. For the US, first it was the Brits, then with Andrew Jackson it was fighting bankers after the Panic of 1819; then it was fighting slavery; then it was fighting on the western Frontier; then it was fighting deflation in the Long Depression; then it was fighting “malefactors of great wealth;” then it was fighting WWI, the war to end all wars; then it was fighting “economic royalists” and helping the “forgotten man.” Then it was fighting Nazis; then fighting Commies; then fighting for civil rights; then fighting inflation; then fighting “the worst economy in the last 50 years;” then fighting in the Middle East; then fighting “greedy bankers” after the Crash of 2008. And now we are fighting climate change and systemic racism.

Why is the US government always fighting some enemy? Because of the idea of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt who taught us that the political is the distinction between friend and enemy. And that every regime has a Political Theology.

And all along, the president of Harvard has been right there, going with the program.

The scandal of the Trump administration was that it did not have the approval of Harvard and the ruling class. That’s why all the nice liberal ladies had those #WeBelieve yard-signs out front. They knew, just knew, that Trump was all wrong.