Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this
Speaker 1: is there Are No Girls.
Speaker 2: On the Internet.
Speaker 1: Happy New Year. So we were meant to air a
Speaker 1: new newscast the first of twenty twenty four, but instead
Speaker 1: we have to talk about this clotting gay thing at Harvard.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of an unplanned emergency episode. We
Speaker 1: weren't even actually going to do it. But then Mike,
Speaker 1: you and I started talking and it was clear that
Speaker 1: I'll just say that, it was clear I had a
Speaker 1: lot to say, and I had a lot of opinions,
Speaker 1: and I had a lot of big feelings. And eventually
Speaker 1: you said, you know, if you feel like getting on
Speaker 1: the mic and yelling at me about it, I'm here.
Speaker 3: I'm here for you, Bridget.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's do it. I generally want to give
Speaker 1: some broad strokes about how we got here and then
Speaker 1: give you all my take on it. But I feel
Speaker 1: like I need to say a few things right off
Speaker 1: the top. First of all, some of these issues that
Speaker 1: were to talk about are think y, right, They just
Speaker 1: they deal with facts and what happened. But some of
Speaker 1: them are feely this issue is really personal for me.
Speaker 1: It felt personal, and it was clear when I was
Speaker 1: putting together my research and my thoughts that I have
Speaker 1: a lot of big emotions about it. When Gay resigned,
Speaker 1: a bunch of the like black women's group chats that
Speaker 1: I'm in, we're all buzzing about what it means and
Speaker 1: how we should all be feeling in this moment. So
Speaker 1: I say all of that to say this, which is
Speaker 1: that it is important to me that I am giving
Speaker 1: y'all very clear facts and also separating my feelings and
Speaker 1: my opinions from those facts so that y'all can make
Speaker 1: sense of what's actually happening and also come up with
Speaker 1: your own take on it. But this story was, I
Speaker 1: have to say, pretty complex for me. It's not a
Speaker 1: terribly complex story, but it has a lot of intersecting
Speaker 1: feelings and thoughts, and a lot of those feelings and
Speaker 1: thoughts were really raw and nuanced, and so at times
Speaker 1: it was like difficult for me to say where my
Speaker 1: own feelings ended and the facts began. So I just
Speaker 1: want to say that right off the top, if this
Speaker 1: seems like a more emotional episode than you're used to
Speaker 1: getting for me, that is why. Because this feels really personal.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the basics of what's going on.
Speaker 1: Doctor Claudine Gay was the first black woman president, first
Speaker 1: black president, and the only the second woman president of
Speaker 1: Harvard in the university's almost four hundred years. On January second,
Speaker 1: she announced that she was resigning from that position, making
Speaker 1: her tenure as Harvard's president the shortest in the university's history,
Speaker 1: lasting only six months. And here's how we got here.
Speaker 1: So after the attack in Israel in October seventh, there
Speaker 1: was a big conversation about anti semitism on college campuses.
Speaker 1: This is my opinion, so I want to state it carefully.
Speaker 1: I think that those conversations were hijacked by people with
Speaker 1: other agendas, and that concern about anti Semitism was being
Speaker 1: used as a smoke screen to mount larger attacks on
Speaker 1: culture war issues on university campuses, and also some just
Speaker 1: personal grievances unrelated to anti Semitism at all. I'll get
Speaker 1: into that in a moment, but first here's a timeline.
Speaker 1: Amid concerns about anti Semitism on campuses, there was a
Speaker 1: congressional hearing with the heads of Harvard, MIT and University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania being questioned before Congress. When Gay was questioned
Speaker 1: by Republican representative A Lease Stephonic on whether calls for
Speaker 1: genocide of Jews violated Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment,
Speaker 1: Gay responded, it can be depending on the context. Gay
Speaker 1: went on to say, anti Semitic speech, when it crosses
Speaker 1: into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, and intimidation, that
Speaker 1: is actionable conduct, and we do take action. Now, this
Speaker 1: moment was a particular moment that became a big flashpoint
Speaker 1: from the hearings. It got a lot of attention on
Speaker 1: social media, mostly negative, but the university stood by Gay. Next,
Speaker 1: in an unexpected ad hominem attack that had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with anti semitism, right wing activist Christopher Rufo surfaced
Speaker 1: plagiarism allegations against Gay, calling her academic in integrity into
Speaker 1: question with allegations of plagiarism. Then a writing newspaper based
Speaker 1: here in DC called The Free Beacon wrote about it.
Speaker 1: From then the New York Times starts writing about it
Speaker 1: a ton multiple times per week, and then it becomes
Speaker 1: a larger thing. Now, Harvard did an investigation that cleared
Speaker 1: Gay of any academic misconduct, and they were standing by her.
Speaker 1: The Harvard Corporation, which is, I guess the university's like
Speaker 1: overall governing body, conducted a review of her published work,
Speaker 1: and they found that she had not violated the university
Speaker 1: standards for quote research misconduct, but they did find quote
Speaker 1: a few instances of inadequate citation and stated that as
Speaker 1: a result, doctor Gay was quote proactively requesting four corrections
Speaker 1: and two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that
Speaker 1: were omitted from the original publications. So here's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a caveat, which is that I am not
Speaker 1: an academic, so I don't even really want to weigh
Speaker 1: in too much here beyond what Harvard's governing body has
Speaker 1: already said. I was. I'm sort of an academic, like
Speaker 1: I dropped out of a PhD program after completing my
Speaker 1: coursework and really struggling, like struggle struggling, struggling to finish
Speaker 1: a dissertation. So technically I'm what you call ABD like
Speaker 1: all but dissertation. But you know, I could not manage
Speaker 1: to adequately put together a dissertation, and I was like, nah,
Speaker 1: I'm out, So what the hell do I know? Mike,
Speaker 1: You do you consider yourself an academic. You kind of
Speaker 1: you have a PhD, But like, what do you consider yourself?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I somehow managed to put together the dissertation get
Speaker 3: it published, and uh, you know, have been publishing academic
Speaker 3: papers ever since. So yeah, I do consider myself an academic.
Speaker 3: I've got several manuscripts that I'm working on with right
Speaker 3: now with co authors. And you know, plagiarism is a
Speaker 3: super serious allegation, and it sounds like she you didn't
Speaker 3: do it right, Like, there is an investigation by the
Speaker 3: governing body. They had independent experts who looked into it
Speaker 3: and determined that, nah, there wasn't plagiarism there.
Speaker 1: So here's my thing. I don't even necessarily want to
Speaker 1: get into a thing of like, well did she plagiarize
Speaker 1: or did she not plagiarize one, because, as I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not an academic, and I think part of the
Speaker 1: issue is that we are in this situation where people
Speaker 1: who are also not academics like myself and have never
Speaker 1: done academic writing like myself, are now the ones who
Speaker 1: are attempting to set the standards for what is or
Speaker 1: is not plagiarism and what is it is not acceptable
Speaker 1: in academic writing and it's like, well, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not the expert. I don't know why these people who
Speaker 1: don't have any expertise in it why they have become
Speaker 1: the expert. But whatever. Like, these charges are not coming
Speaker 1: from her academic colleagues or her peers, or like other academics.
Speaker 1: They're coming from people who have exuplicitly already said they
Speaker 1: have a grievance against her. If they wanted to do
Speaker 1: a survey where we looked at the academic publishing records
Speaker 1: of every college president in the United States, totally fine,
Speaker 1: let's do that. But that is not what they're saying
Speaker 1: or doing. They are saying, we need to zero in
Speaker 1: on just her for some reason, and that reason is race. Like,
Speaker 1: that's not me saying that. That is what Chris Rufo,
Speaker 1: the person who initially surfaced these allegations against her, has said.
Speaker 1: He explicitly has said that his disdain for DEI or diversity,
Speaker 1: equity and inclusion is the point of why he is
Speaker 1: doing this, why he is mounting these allegations. So the
Speaker 1: focus on if she plagiarized or not totally allows what
Speaker 1: are exuplicitly bad faith actors to set the agenda and
Speaker 1: the terms of the conversation, so they say she plagiarized,
Speaker 1: and rather than responding with like, well, what kind of
Speaker 1: standard are you setting with regards to plagiarism accusations, mainstream
Speaker 1: media outlets like The New York Times are just scrambling
Speaker 1: to cover and answer the like well did she plagiarize
Speaker 1: question in dozens of front page stories without doing any
Speaker 1: of the examination of the larger question of why they
Speaker 1: are presenting this as a question that needs to be answered,
Speaker 1: And that is what I object to. All of this
Speaker 1: is at the exuplicit urging of right wing education activist
Speaker 1: Christopher Rufo. If that name sounds familiar to you, it
Speaker 1: might because he is the person who brought us the
Speaker 1: disingenuous moral panic on critical race theory that dominated our
Speaker 1: national discourse and led to a flurry of state laws
Speaker 1: against teaching critical race theory or really anything related to
Speaker 1: like black people. Really, this is not me saying this.
Speaker 1: This is from Christopher Rufo's own words and public tweets.
Speaker 1: In March twenty twenty one, he tweeted, we have successfully
Speaker 1: frozen their brand critical race theory into the public conversation
Speaker 1: and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually
Speaker 1: turn it toxic as we put all the various cultural
Speaker 1: insanities under that brand category. So as he says, it
Speaker 1: is not about critical race theory, is it's about anything
Speaker 1: that he thinks is a quote cultural insanity, putting it
Speaker 1: under the umbrella of critical race theory, and then being like,
Speaker 1: critical race theory. There it is, let's get it, let's
Speaker 1: make a law against it. He goes on to say,
Speaker 1: the goal is to have the public read something crazy
Speaker 1: in the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory. We
Speaker 1: have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex
Speaker 1: the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.
Speaker 1: So any So, by his own admission, anything that he
Speaker 1: don't like is critical race theory, and that's going to
Speaker 1: be what he's trying to make toxic. And I gotta
Speaker 1: give it to him because he did it mission accomplished.
Speaker 1: Like people passed laws. There are laws on the books
Speaker 1: fanning critical race theory from being taught. Even though he's saying,
Speaker 1: I'm not even operating from the actual definition of whatever
Speaker 1: it is. I'm just saying anything that I don't like,
Speaker 1: anything I've agreevanced against. I'm I'm gonna get people to
Speaker 1: fold that in with critical race theory and be against it.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I just recently found this out
Speaker 1: thanks to journalist Kayleie Holloway, Ruffo, who has positioned himself
Speaker 1: as the person who should be reshaping our academic institutions,
Speaker 1: has been saying that he himself holds a quote Masters
Speaker 1: from Harvard, when in reality, dude went to Harvard's extension School,
Speaker 1: not at real Harvard. That is a different thing. I
Speaker 1: know this might sound like a little bit petty, but
Speaker 1: it is just too ridiculous to ignore. The Harvard Extension
Speaker 1: School is not Harvard. Like when I say Harvard, you're
Speaker 1: thinking of Harvard the university. The Harvard Extension School is
Speaker 1: a different entity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, Like one as the question, what does that
Speaker 3: word extension mean? Who is it being extended to? It
Speaker 3: is being extended to the public, and is being extended
Speaker 3: beyond Harvard to general members of the public.
Speaker 1: Right, This is how Bestcolleges dot Com describes it. Quote
Speaker 1: Harvard College, the undergraduate school at Harvard University can be
Speaker 1: difficult to get into, to say the least, for the
Speaker 1: class of twenty twenty seven, Harvard received almost fifty seven
Speaker 1: thousand applications and accepted three point five percent admissions to
Speaker 1: the undergrad extension program is dot dot dot. Let's string it.
Speaker 1: Anyone can sign up for a course at any time.
Speaker 1: So the fact that anyone can sign up for a
Speaker 1: course at any time of the Harvard Extension School should
Speaker 1: probably be a giveaway that it is not real Harvard,
Speaker 1: where famously not everyone can just decide to go and
Speaker 1: then go at any time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to be clear, extensions are great. Lots of
Speaker 3: universities have them. That's not what this is about, and
Speaker 3: we won't get into it, but just to be clear,
Speaker 3: we're not dunking on extension schools. What we're pointing out
Speaker 3: is that he is claiming that he has a degree
Speaker 3: from Harvard when he does not.
Speaker 1: So side note, do you know who else did this
Speaker 1: the very same thing also at Harvard.
Speaker 3: One of your favorites, Yes, tire of Banks.
Speaker 1: She went to the Harvard Extension Business School, which is like,
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell us, like a week
Speaker 1: a week program or something. She did notably have to
Speaker 1: stay on campus for like a couple of weeks, and
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. She's been dining out on
Speaker 1: being a Harvard Business School graduate ever since. And it's funny,
Speaker 1: I actually was joking about this before I even knew
Speaker 1: about Rufo not having actually gone to Harvard. I was
Speaker 1: actually joking a few weeks ago that I think, in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, I want to go to an Ivy
Speaker 1: League extension program and then start telling people I graduated
Speaker 1: from Harvard, because I don't think that people really check.
Speaker 1: And by the time anyone like actually looks into it,
Speaker 1: you've already said You've gone to Harvard so many times
Speaker 1: that like everybody's accepted it. Think I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: is like really checking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember you joking about that, like weeks ago.
Speaker 3: This was gonna be your big plan for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: So when your next podcast is coming to you from
Speaker 1: Columbia University Master's degree, hold bridget Todd, y'all will know
Speaker 1: what's up. Don't blow up my spot like you heard,
Speaker 1: you heard the plan. But like let's just see, well,
Speaker 1: actually question if I actually did an Ivy League extension
Speaker 1: program and then started publicly but often like obnoxiously and
Speaker 1: smugly claiming that I went that I was like a
Speaker 1: graduate of Harvard University or whatever. How long do you
Speaker 1: think it would be until somebody called me out publicly?
Speaker 1: It was like, you didn't actually go to Harvard, you
Speaker 1: didn't actually go to MIT, it.
Speaker 3: Would probably happen. I mean, you're here online, a bunch
Speaker 3: a lot of people looking looking into what you say. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know you're a black woman, so might be a
Speaker 3: little harder to get away with it.
Speaker 1: Maybe this will be my pet project in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: How long it takes? I feel like if you did it, well,
Speaker 1: you already have a PhD, so like what like, what
Speaker 1: are you? What are you trying to prove at this point?
Speaker 1: But I feel like it would be I would be
Speaker 1: curious to know how long it would take each of
Speaker 1: us to be called out publicly.
Speaker 3: I feel like you should make a performance art piece
Speaker 3: out of your own c and just like see how
Speaker 3: many of these you can rack up, Like bridget Todd
Speaker 3: holds degrees from Columbia, Harvard, Yale, you see SD Stamford,
Speaker 3: you know, just throw in a couple to keep them guessing.
Speaker 3: Why not finish at Maryland?
Speaker 1: I that's where That's where I actually dropped out of
Speaker 1: my PhD program. University of Maryland College Park my parents.
Speaker 1: Almost every time we talked, it comes up like are
Speaker 1: you gonna go back? And I'm always like, oh, maybe, no,
Speaker 1: I'm never going back. Guy was a terrible student.
Speaker 3: You could just go back for a weekend and say
Speaker 3: you got the whole degree. They take money.
Speaker 1: It was a crazy summer. What did I do? I
Speaker 1: got a I got a PhD. Crazy summer pass fail.
Speaker 2: Let's say a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: So the reason why I'm curious, like how long it
Speaker 1: would take for people to call me out, is because
Speaker 1: I do think that once you say it enough times,
Speaker 1: people just start keep repeating it, like, oh, they went
Speaker 1: to Harvard, they went to Harvard. Because even after all this,
Speaker 1: Rufo is still claiming that he went to Harvard. Harvard. Rufo,
Speaker 1: in an email to The New Republic, disagreed that there
Speaker 1: was any difference between the Harvard Extension School and any
Speaker 1: other school. He said that he was unaware of any
Speaker 1: debate over whether Harvard Extension School should be referred to
Speaker 1: differently than any other graduate degree from Harvard. So we
Speaker 1: are meant to believe that Rufo is uniquely qualified to
Speaker 1: be determining how higher education functions in the United states
Speaker 1: how it should be run on all of that, And also,
Speaker 1: if we take him at his word, he is also
Speaker 1: too unfamiliar with higher education to know and understand the
Speaker 1: difference between the Harvard Extension School and act Harvard, and
Speaker 1: that he doesn't understand that he did not actually graduate
Speaker 1: from the real Harvard University after having gone to an
Speaker 1: institution that he didn't even really have to like apply
Speaker 1: to attend. Either he's lying, he's stupid, or both a
Speaker 1: complete mess. So Rufo was behind this pressure campaign to
Speaker 1: else gay bad actor number one, the guy who literally
Speaker 1: surfaced the plagiarism allegations. And this is what I mean
Speaker 1: when I say that bad actors with agendas have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the stated goal of eradicating an anti
Speaker 1: Semitism on college campuses or concern about plagiarism. They are
Speaker 1: the ones who are setting the agenda. And again this
Speaker 1: is not I don't know this because I'm super smart
Speaker 1: or have done some like super sleuth thing. The reason
Speaker 1: why I know this is because he says it explicitly
Speaker 1: in his own words. In an interview with Politico. He
Speaker 1: says this in very clear terms. We will link to
Speaker 1: the piece in the show notes, but here is a bit.
Speaker 1: Gay's resignation was the result of a coordinated and highly
Speaker 1: organized conservative campaign. It shows a successful strategy for the
Speaker 1: political right. He told Politico how we have to work
Speaker 1: the media, how we have to exert pressure, and how
Speaker 1: we have to sequence our campaign in order to be successful.
Speaker 1: So basically, he describes it as a three pronged attack
Speaker 1: political led by representatives Stefanett, the member of Congress who
Speaker 1: grilled Gay about anti Semitism during the congressional hearing, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a graduate of real Harvard, not
Speaker 1: the extension school, but who was later removed from a
Speaker 1: senior advisory committee at Harvard's School of Government after she
Speaker 1: declined to resign voluntarily. Can you guess what happened with
Speaker 1: her that she was basically forced out of this position.
Speaker 3: It could be anything with her.
Speaker 1: Well, it's because she was one of one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty seven congressional Republicans who opposed certifying President Biden after
Speaker 1: he won the election fairly and continued to lie about
Speaker 1: non existent election and regularities that just like did not
Speaker 1: exist and were made up. There was a pressure campaign
Speaker 1: for Harvard to cut ties with her, and it worked.
Speaker 1: So she has unrelated beef with Harvard. Here's what she
Speaker 1: said after she was pushed out. The decision by Harvard's
Speaker 1: administration to cower and cave to the woke left will
Speaker 1: continue to erode diversity of thought, public discourse, and ultimately
Speaker 1: the student experience. So again, not exactly somebody who has
Speaker 1: no agenda in all this and is purely worried about
Speaker 1: rooting out the rot of anti Semitism in our institutions.
Speaker 1: And because like, come on, she supports former President Trump
Speaker 1: and has said nothing when he had dinner with Nick Flintes,
Speaker 1: but a literal Nazi. She also found herself in hot
Speaker 1: water last year when she ran a campaign ad that
Speaker 1: warrened immigrants could overthrow our current electorate, which is pretty
Speaker 1: much a not so subtle nod to the great replacement
Speaker 1: theory touted by white supremacists like the Buffalo Gunmen and
Speaker 1: other trolls and bad actors. And so I just do
Speaker 1: not believe that this is somebody who is purely motivated
Speaker 1: by sniffing out the rod of anti semitism in our universities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's super partisan insurrectionists. Supported Trump on January sixth,
Speaker 3: supports him today. It's just hard to take it seriously exactly.
Speaker 1: So we have Gay, a woman being pushed out of
Speaker 1: her job at a private university with the help of
Speaker 1: an elected official. Again, this is not me saying this.
Speaker 1: This is Rufo, who publicly owns this as a win.
Speaker 1: He says that Representative Staffanik used her position as an
Speaker 1: agent of the state, and that is what helped pushed
Speaker 1: Gay out of her job. So let's talk about how
Speaker 1: he used the media to help push Gay out of
Speaker 1: her job. On December nineteen, Ruffo tweeted that it was
Speaker 1: his plan to quote smuggle the plagiarism story into the
Speaker 1: media apparatus from the left, which legitimizes the narrative to
Speaker 1: center left actors who have the power to topple Gay.
Speaker 1: So this is what really pisces me off in a
Speaker 1: story where there is a lot to be pissed off about.
Speaker 1: Here's what Rufo told Politico about the strategy of getting
Speaker 1: folks on the left and in legacy media at the
Speaker 1: New York Times to comment on and thus legitimize the story.
Speaker 1: He said, it's really a textbook example of successful conservative activism,
Speaker 1: and the strategy is quite simple. Christopher Brunette and I
Speaker 1: broke the story of Claudine's plagiarism on December tenth. It
Speaker 1: drove more than one hundred million impressions on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: then it was the top story for a number of
Speaker 1: weeks in conservative media and right wing media. But I
Speaker 1: knew that in order to achieve my objective, we had
Speaker 1: to get the narrative into left wing media. But the
Speaker 1: left wing media uniformly ignored the story for ten days
Speaker 1: and tried to bury it. So I engaged in a
Speaker 1: kind of a thoughtful and substantive campaign of shaming and
Speaker 1: bullying my colleagues on the left to take seriously the
Speaker 1: story of the most significant academic corruption scandal in Harvard's history.
Speaker 1: Side note, there's just no way that can be true,
Speaker 1: right Like, in twenty nineteen, Harvard released a report talking
Speaker 1: about how many of the faculty and staff owned enslaved
Speaker 1: people during slavery, and taught racial eugenics. Oh no, but
Speaker 1: this president might have misattributed some citations. That is the
Speaker 1: biggest scandal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And again there was an investigation, and independent investigators
Speaker 3: determined that there was no academic misconduct, right Like, you
Speaker 3: can't have corruption. It can't be a corruption scandal if
Speaker 3: there's not misconduct happening.
Speaker 1: So Ruffo goes on to say, finally the narrative broke through.
Speaker 1: Within twenty four hours of my announcement about smuggling the
Speaker 1: narrative into the left wing media, you see this domino effects.
Speaker 1: See it end. BBC, the New York Times, the Washington
Speaker 1: Post and other publications started to do the actual work
Speaker 1: of exposing gays plagiarism. And then you see this beautiful
Speaker 1: kind of flowering of op eds from all those publications
Speaker 1: calling on Gay to resign. Once my position, which began
Speaker 1: on the right, became the dominant position across the center left,
Speaker 1: I knew it was just a matter of time before
Speaker 1: we were going to be successful. He goes on to
Speaker 1: say that this strategy gives permission for center left political
Speaker 1: figures and intellectual figures to comment on the story and
Speaker 1: then editorialize on it. Once we crossed that threshold, we
Speaker 1: saw this cascade of publications calling on her to resign.
Speaker 1: And this is why I am really looking at legacy
Speaker 1: media publications at the New York Times about this, like
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it shouldn't be written about, but
Speaker 1: it can't be news worthy enough to be written about
Speaker 1: that amount, as Adam Johnson that the citations needed podcasts
Speaker 1: put it. Articles about Clauding Gay and her various quote
Speaker 1: scandals were top five featured stories on the New York
Speaker 1: Times homepage December seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteen, seventeen,
Speaker 1: twenty second, twenty fifth, and her firing is now their
Speaker 1: top story. There is simply no way this is proportionate, sober,
Speaker 1: or reasonable coverage. And I agree, I'm not saying it
Speaker 1: shouldn't have been written about, but that is not a
Speaker 1: reasonable amount of coverage. And especially when Christopher Rufo is
Speaker 1: out here saying explicitly saying, oh, we're playing the New
Speaker 1: York Times. We're getting them to legitimize this issue. We're
Speaker 1: getting them to make this into an issue and write
Speaker 1: about it and write about it and write about it
Speaker 1: until it becomes true, just like me not going to Harvard.
Speaker 1: If I say it enough times, eventually, who's gonna really
Speaker 1: check whether or not I went. Who's gonna really check?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Are these actually plagiarism allegations? Or is it like the
Speaker 1: few case of slopy citations, which the governing body says
Speaker 1: is not plagiarism and I think when grifter's like RUFO,
Speaker 1: who are explicit and clear about their intentions to use
Speaker 1: these institutions to launder these disingenuous attacks, you are just
Speaker 1: letting them set the agenda. And I don't understand why
Speaker 1: when he flat out says I plan to make this
Speaker 1: plagiarism thing a smoke screen to get this woman fired
Speaker 1: as a larger attack on DEI, why pretend that that's
Speaker 1: not what he's saying. Why act as if these are
Speaker 1: conversations legitimately about just anti semitism, or legitimately about plagiarism,
Speaker 1: when plain as day in English, he is saying that
Speaker 1: they are not. Because again, here is what he says
Speaker 1: in his own words, when asked by Politico, what is
Speaker 1: your broader objective here beyond forcing the president of Harvard
Speaker 1: to resign, he said, my primary objective is to eliminate
Speaker 1: the DEI bureaucracy in every institution in America and to
Speaker 1: restore truth rather than racialist ideology as the guiding principle
Speaker 1: of America. There it is so in all of these
Speaker 1: articles where you are saying he was the person to
Speaker 1: surface these plagiarism allegations, why don't you say why don't
Speaker 1: you follow the thought that he gives you dot dot
Speaker 1: dot because I hate THEI. So I don't understand why
Speaker 1: legacy media continues to allow themselves to be used in
Speaker 1: this way over and over again by this one grifter
Speaker 1: who is so clear about what he is doing, so
Speaker 1: as revealing as I think his interview with Politico is.
Speaker 1: Here's where they kind of lose me because after the
Speaker 1: question where he says, oh, the entire thing is about
Speaker 1: how much I don't like DEI, the next question that interviewer,
Speaker 1: if I had been interviewing him, I would have asked,
Speaker 1: is what does Claudine get have to do with DEI?
Speaker 1: Because that's the threat I see here?
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I have said this before on the show, but I
Speaker 1: really want to underline it. DEI is the new critical
Speaker 1: race theory. It's already happening. And the same way that
Speaker 1: when rufo's attacks on critical race theory were happening, they
Speaker 1: weren't really about attacking critical race theory because that would
Speaker 1: be absurd because, as we know, critical race theory wasn't
Speaker 1: actually being taught to like grade schoolers or preschoolers, and
Speaker 1: it was barely even a thing that your average person
Speaker 1: was encountering in their day to day life. It was
Speaker 1: about labeling anything having to do with race or wokeness
Speaker 1: as critical race theory and then making that label a
Speaker 1: toxic brand. In her resignation letter, Gay kind of attludes
Speaker 1: to that. She says, it is not lost on me
Speaker 1: that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety
Speaker 1: about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses.
Speaker 1: A black woman selected to lead a storied institution, someone
Speaker 1: who've used diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism.
Speaker 1: Someone who has advocated a modern curriculum that spans from
Speaker 1: the frontier of quantum science to the long neglected history
Speaker 1: of Asian Americans. Someone who believes that a daughter of
Speaker 1: Haitian immigrants has something to offer to the nation's oldest university.
Speaker 1: Gay is the daughter of Haitian immigrants. Also, fun fact,
Speaker 1: she is the cousin of the writer of Roxanne Gey.
Speaker 1: So I think what Chris Rufo and people like him
Speaker 1: are actually saying is that they are looking at this
Speaker 1: institution that is Harvard, right, this big shining school, and saying,
Speaker 1: if there is a black woman who is at the
Speaker 1: helm of that institution. It could not possibly be because
Speaker 1: she is qualified. It is because she is black. She
Speaker 1: has been given this job as a diversity higher and
Speaker 1: that is representative of all that is wrong that needs
Speaker 1: to be righted in a society that has gotten two
Speaker 1: woke and too obsessed with identity politics. And that she
Speaker 1: is a black woman at the helm of the oldest
Speaker 1: and most prestigious university in the country is representative of that,
Speaker 1: representative of all that is wrong with our current society,
Speaker 1: our current woke agenda. Blah blah blah. So Ruffo said
Speaker 1: that Bill Ackman represented the financial plank of getting Gay
Speaker 1: pushed out of Harvard. So who is he, Well, he
Speaker 1: is a billionaire hedge fund manager and a donor to Harvard.
Speaker 1: He has given tens of millions of dollars to over
Speaker 1: the years to Harvard, but that money actually does not
Speaker 1: rank him even close to the top donors, not even
Speaker 1: a little bit. He has not given near enough money
Speaker 1: to rank as a top donor to the school. He
Speaker 1: said that he was really upset about the way that
Speaker 1: Gay handled charges of anti semitism on campus, and like
Speaker 1: that is what he has said is his issue with her.
Speaker 1: But according to a piece in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: Even before the October seventh attack, the relationship between Acman
Speaker 1: as a donor and Harvard had already begun to deteriorate.
Speaker 1: Mister Ackman has privately steamed at Harvard over at least
Speaker 1: the past three years, Several people who have discussed the
Speaker 1: subject with him say, in part, after the university's administration
Speaker 1: brushed off his suggestions for how to set up a
Speaker 1: testing lab to get totudents and staff back to campus
Speaker 1: during the pandemic two years ago, in an incident not
Speaker 1: previously reported, mister Ackman told members of Harvard's fundraising team
Speaker 1: he might not give another dime because they hadn't heeded
Speaker 1: his advice on how to invest an earlier donation, said
Speaker 1: two people with knowledge of the exchanges. Mister Ackman sent
Speaker 1: off a series of fiery letters to Harvard administrators, questioning
Speaker 1: their financial acumen. He wound up donating more money anyway.
Speaker 1: So it is possible that Acman was concerned about anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not saying that that's a lie or made up,
Speaker 1: but it's also clear that this is somebody who felt
Speaker 1: that because they were giving some money again, though not
Speaker 1: even close to a top donation that Harvard receives. And
Speaker 1: I guess because he's like got business acumen, he's a
Speaker 1: billionaire or something that like he should be having more
Speaker 1: say in how things are run at Harvard and honestly
Speaker 1: like to really keep it one hundred, to extrapolate a
Speaker 1: little bit from what I've been in the New York Times. Again,
Speaker 1: this is my opinion. I think he probably felt like
Speaker 1: when Gay got into that position of president at Harvard
Speaker 1: and then didn't immediately like look to him with the
Speaker 1: reverence he felt he deserved. I bet that he was like,
Speaker 1: who does this black bitch think she is not capitulating
Speaker 1: to me? I'll show her like. I think that that's
Speaker 1: probably how he felt. It sounds like even before Gay
Speaker 1: was ever at the Helm, that relationship was deteriorating, and
Speaker 1: now having a black woman at the Helm not listening
Speaker 1: to his brilliant financial advice, I think that probably chapped
Speaker 1: is s like I have dealt with my fair share
Speaker 1: of this kind of dynamic, and that's what it reads
Speaker 1: like to me. More after a quick break, let's get
Speaker 1: right back into it. So y'all might recall that after
Speaker 1: the October seventh attack in Israel. The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine
Speaker 1: Solidarity Committee published an open letter in which they said
Speaker 1: that they hold quote the Israeli regime entirely responsible for
Speaker 1: all unfolding violence, declaring that millions of Palestinians and Gaza
Speaker 1: have been forced to live in an open air prison,
Speaker 1: and called on Harvard to take action to stop the
Speaker 1: ongoing annihilation of Palestinians. After they published this letter, Ackman
Speaker 1: called for the publication of the names of all the
Speaker 1: students involved in signing the letter so that he could
Speaker 1: ensure that his company and others do not inadvertently hire
Speaker 1: any of the people who sign the letter. Acman posted,
Speaker 1: one should not be able to hide behind a corporate
Speaker 1: shield with issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists, and
Speaker 1: the name should be made public so that their views
Speaker 1: are publicly known. Keep in mind, we are talking about
Speaker 1: undergraduate students here. Now this is my thing. Whether or
Speaker 1: not you think that these undergrads should written this letter
Speaker 1: or not, I'm not saying that's what I think, but
Speaker 1: let's say, for the sake of argument, that's what somebody thought.
Speaker 1: I can tell you, having an aggrieved sixty year old
Speaker 1: billionaire donor to the school who has his own unrelated
Speaker 1: gripe against the university. Litigating what should happen to a
Speaker 1: bunch of undergrads is not good. Like issues of campus
Speaker 1: protest and speech are you know, I guess they're important
Speaker 1: in a kind of sense, like this is a whole
Speaker 1: other episode. But and this is my opinion, even if
Speaker 1: you think that these undergrads should not have written this letter,
Speaker 1: they are in college. They are undergraduates. Like, where else
Speaker 1: are you meant to be working out your political and
Speaker 1: social opinions as a young person if not in college?
Speaker 1: Like I don't even want to get into some of
Speaker 1: the stuff I believed and publicly said when I was
Speaker 1: an undergrad. I was walking around identifying as a libertarian,
Speaker 1: thinking that that sounded cool and smart, But in reality,
Speaker 1: I was nineteen and I was just like stoned all
Speaker 1: the time, and I didn't know what I was saying
Speaker 1: because I was young. So I just don't think a
Speaker 1: dynamic or a billionaire who thinks everybody should be cow
Speaker 1: chowing to him injecting himself into what is happening on
Speaker 1: a college campus with undergrads is gonna be good for anybody.
Speaker 1: Like I listened to a lot of the podcast You're
Speaker 1: Wrong About and Michael Hubbs, friend of the show, talks
Speaker 1: about this a lot when he covers issues about like
Speaker 1: campus culture wars, where he says, like, when stuff happens
Speaker 1: on a college campus outside forces with an axe to grind,
Speaker 1: swooping in and pouring gasoline on the fire is not
Speaker 1: making things any better, especially at a time and you
Speaker 1: had trucks displaying the names and faces of undergraduates who
Speaker 1: were supportive of Palestine on campus, Like, this is not
Speaker 1: a safe or reasonable college campus climate for anyone. So
Speaker 1: the day after Gay resigned, Actmen published a four thousand
Speaker 1: words screed against Dei on Twitter where he says that
Speaker 1: Dei is quote the root cause of anti Semitism at Harvard, which, like,
Speaker 1: think about that, right, because Harvard is almost four hundred
Speaker 1: years old. Dei wasn't even a thing until like around
Speaker 1: the sixties, So he is saying that, Say, back in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two, when Harvard is then president A. Lawrence
Speaker 1: Lowell was doing all kinds of stuff like proposing a
Speaker 1: quota on the number of Jewish students that Harvard should allow. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that was actually because of Dei. A
Speaker 1: school of thought that would not even exist for another
Speaker 1: forty years, and it's such a rewriting of history. Like
Speaker 1: I do think an honest assessment of anti semitism in
Speaker 1: institutions is a worthwhile practice, but pointing to DEI as
Speaker 1: your starting point is ridiculous when history exists. But you
Speaker 1: know why, look at the rots in our institutions. Where
Speaker 1: do you can just blame black people and blame wokeness
Speaker 1: and call it a day, Ackman writes. Under DEI, one
Speaker 1: degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides
Speaker 1: on a so called intersectional pere men of oppression, where
Speaker 1: white Jews and Asians are deemed depressors and a subset
Speaker 1: of of people of color, LGBTQ people and or women
Speaker 1: are deemed to be oppressed. DEI is racist because reverse
Speaker 1: racism is racism, even if it is against white people.
Speaker 1: And it is remarkable that I even need to point
Speaker 1: this out. This country has seen burgeoning resentment and anger
Speaker 1: grow materially over the last few years, and the DEI
Speaker 1: movement is an important contributor to our growing divisiveness. Resentment
Speaker 1: is one of the most important drivers of racism, and
Speaker 1: it is the lack of equity I e fairness and
Speaker 1: how DEI operates that contributes to this resentment. He continued,
Speaker 1: So what he is actually saying, in my opinion, is
Speaker 1: that it is not about anti semitism and it's not
Speaker 1: about plagiarism. And they are saying that out loud and
Speaker 1: in print. It is this attitude that says that black
Speaker 1: people and people of color have like gotten too much
Speaker 1: handed to us because we are black, or because we
Speaker 1: are women, or because we are black women. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I agree with them that it is about resentment, white
Speaker 1: resentment and white breathance and white anxiety that people like
Speaker 1: him are stoking. And this anti DEI campaign is about
Speaker 1: stoking those white grievances and resentment and saying, hey, look,
Speaker 1: those freeloaders get everything and it's gotten out of hand.
Speaker 1: Let's put a stop to it. To put a point
Speaker 1: on the argument that I think he's making, Akman and
Speaker 1: Rufo see a black woman at the helm of an
Speaker 1: elite institution like Harvard and say she could have only
Speaker 1: gotten there because she's an affirmative action hire and she
Speaker 1: took that job from a more qualified white person, and
Speaker 1: that needs to end. Vivek Ramaswami current Republican presidential candidate
Speaker 1: tweeted after Gay's resignation, here's a rat apply idea for
Speaker 1: the future select leadership based on merit. Who By the way,
Speaker 1: for as much as he is handwringing about people who
Speaker 1: might have gotten any support based on their identities, Ramaswami
Speaker 1: himself got a fellowship from the Soros family intended to
Speaker 1: support the educational pursuits of students who were raised by immigrants.
Speaker 1: And to me, that is really what it comes down to.
Speaker 1: It's different when he does it. When he is successful,
Speaker 1: it is because of merit, even if he objectively got
Speaker 1: a fellowship because of his identity. When Gay is successful,
Speaker 1: it's because she's a diversity hire who just didn't work
Speaker 1: hard and deserve it like he did. Like of course
Speaker 1: he deserved it, not like her who gets things because
Speaker 1: of her identity. He doesn't do that. That fellowship was
Speaker 1: something else. He worked hard and it's merit for him.
Speaker 1: And that is why you see this infuriating double standard
Speaker 1: that only Gay is being held to. Like do people
Speaker 1: think that Gay is the first and only university president
Speaker 1: to have omitted a handful of citations over her academic career?
Speaker 1: Why are we not digging into all of their publishing records.
Speaker 1: If this is such a big deal for university presidents now,
Speaker 1: like if you are affiliated with the university, is the
Speaker 1: standard that we're going to go through every piece that
Speaker 1: that you've ever published and every citation that you've ever
Speaker 1: published to make sure that it checks out. If so, fine,
Speaker 1: But if that's not happening, why are we only talking
Speaker 1: about it with regards to Gay? And this is what
Speaker 1: really pisces me off and where I kind of get
Speaker 1: into my feelings about the whole thing, because when this
Speaker 1: happens to qualify black women, what they are really saying
Speaker 1: is that none of us deserve to be anywhere or
Speaker 1: have power over anything. If you're Vice President Harris, you
Speaker 1: got power because you slept your way to the top.
Speaker 1: Or if you're Supreme Court Justice Katanchi Brown Jackson, it's
Speaker 1: because of affirmative action. Like it doesn't matter if you
Speaker 1: have a PhD from Harvard, which Gay has. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if you've gone to the best schools and ben
Speaker 1: at the top of your class forever as Gay has.
Speaker 1: Black excellence will not protect you, Because what the fuck
Speaker 1: makes these people think that this is a woman who
Speaker 1: didn't get where she did on merit. It is only
Speaker 1: because she is a black woman, by virtue of just
Speaker 1: being a black woman. In these spaces, these people automatically
Speaker 1: think that we were just handed a position or a
Speaker 1: fellowship or a job or support. It is automatic to them.
Speaker 1: The people tweeting about gay just to and don't even
Speaker 1: give it a second thought. And that wouldn't be so
Speaker 1: infuriating if it did not also coincide with this reality
Speaker 1: that they do not give us a fucking thing. Like
Speaker 1: if black women had been handed cushy positions at Harvard
Speaker 1: all this time, why did it take almost four hundred
Speaker 1: years for one of us to collect If there is
Speaker 1: a black woman working in a space where you do
Speaker 1: not usually see black women, trust and believe she is
Speaker 1: there because she earned it. They do not give us
Speaker 1: a thing. It takes so much work. You have to
Speaker 1: claw for it, fight for it, put up with shit
Speaker 1: that people could not even imagine, to stay there day
Speaker 1: after day. It truly reminds me of that episode of
Speaker 1: Scandal where Carrie Washington's dad is yelling at her and
Speaker 1: he's like, we have to be twice as good to
Speaker 1: get half of what they have. Like that really is
Speaker 1: the truth of what it is like, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: just like seeing this unfold, seeing how quickly all of
Speaker 1: these people so quickly turned to her not being qualified
Speaker 1: as an automatic given, it just really hurt. And I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the reasons like why this was
Speaker 1: so hard for me and why it's so personal for me.
Speaker 1: After Gay resigned, Jason kalakanis who is one of the
Speaker 1: hosts of the All In Tech podcast, who I feel
Speaker 1: like I talk about that show a lot on this podcast,
Speaker 1: and it's probably because, like it is generally like the
Speaker 1: number one or number two tech podcast in the world,
Speaker 1: and so I think, like what they say, they have
Speaker 1: a huge platform when it comes to shaping opinions and technology,
Speaker 1: So what they say, I think really matters. He tweeted.
Speaker 1: We are returning to a colorblind, performance based society where
Speaker 1: we judge people by their character, effort, and achievements. Identity
Speaker 1: politics is a road to nowhere, and it focuses a
Speaker 1: society on what divides us as opposed to what binds us.
Speaker 1: As we've been back, however, we must acknowledge that the
Speaker 1: world isn't there and everyone has a different starting line
Speaker 1: in life. It is virtuous to support everyone who starts
Speaker 1: behind us to catch up. But we should do this
Speaker 1: at the source education, internships and skills training. So this
Speaker 1: tweet is what really got me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember you reading it to me and it
Speaker 3: was you had a big reaction to this tweet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did. I don't exactly know why. I think
Speaker 1: part of it is because we're both tech podcasters and
Speaker 1: so ostensibly we're kind of colleagues, and I think it
Speaker 1: really cut deeply because this is how they really feel
Speaker 1: about me. This is what they really think about me.
Speaker 1: If I don't know Jason as far as I know,
Speaker 1: we've never been in the same room together, but if
Speaker 1: we were at a tech conference or a podcast meetup
Speaker 1: or something and he saw me there, this is what
Speaker 1: he would really think about me. That I didn't get
Speaker 1: there on my merit, that I couldn't be qualified, And
Speaker 1: it just really hurts. Like if somebody listening knows Jason
Speaker 1: or listens to his show or has a connection to him,
Speaker 1: I honestly hope he hears this and like, I don't
Speaker 1: mean that in like a badass bitch way I wish
Speaker 1: I did. I don't I don't mean that in a
Speaker 1: like tell Circey. I want her to know it was
Speaker 1: me kind of way.
Speaker 2: With that reference.
Speaker 1: I thank you. I never watched the Game of Throw,
Speaker 1: so I was kind of like, ooh, this is the
Speaker 1: right reference. Yeah. I hope that he hears this somehow.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's not a listener of the show, but
Speaker 1: I mean it in the way that like, I really
Speaker 1: want him to hear this, and I would be happy
Speaker 1: to talk to him about this. Like, if he does
Speaker 1: hear this and he wants to talk to me off
Speaker 1: the record or on the record, I want to have
Speaker 1: a conversation about this. If you were to scroll the
Speaker 1: Apple tech podcasts where Jason and I both sometimes show
Speaker 1: up him all the time, me if I'm lucky the
Speaker 1: top Apple Tech podcasts, and you were to tell me
Speaker 1: how many of those shows were hosted black black women,
Speaker 1: or even how many of them had black women behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. How many of those shows even had black
Speaker 1: women as guests, let's say they have white hosts, how
Speaker 1: many of them regularly spotlight black women's voices even just
Speaker 1: as guests as commentary. Take a look at those numbers,
Speaker 1: and then tell me, Jason with a straight face, that
Speaker 1: we have always that we are in a performance based
Speaker 1: colorblind society here in the tech space that we're both in.
Speaker 1: Look how few of us there are in this space
Speaker 1: and tell me with a straight face that you think
Speaker 1: that I got here because they are handing out positions
Speaker 1: and jobs and funding and podcasts and support to black
Speaker 1: women because of our identities. I am not saying that
Speaker 1: I am the only one of us out here. Thank God,
Speaker 1: I am not the only one of us out here.
Speaker 1: I would not want to be in this space if
Speaker 1: I was the only Black women out here doing this. However,
Speaker 1: if what Jason is saying is true, and we're all
Speaker 1: just getting whatever be thrown at us because we're black women,
Speaker 1: then where are the rest of us? Why is this
Speaker 1: space so white and male? Why does this space feel
Speaker 1: so lonely sometimes when I look at your pod, the
Speaker 1: all in podcast? Why does your podcast have no Black women?
Speaker 1: Why do y'all almost never spotlight black women, our research,
Speaker 1: our commentary, our analysis? Where is it if? If we
Speaker 1: are just been being forced into these spaces not because
Speaker 1: we deserve it, not because of merit, but because they're
Speaker 1: just giving them away because of because we're black women
Speaker 1: and the word is getting everything, where are the rest
Speaker 1: of us, where are we? I would love to know
Speaker 1: if what are you is saying is true and that
Speaker 1: people are just being given things. When it comes to
Speaker 1: VC funding, why is it that black women get less
Speaker 1: than one percent of all VC funding? Not even like
Speaker 1: less than one not even one. One is the smallest
Speaker 1: amount of a number that something can be and still
Speaker 1: be a number, and we don't even get that. Why
Speaker 1: if what you are saying is true, how can that
Speaker 1: be possible? And I think hearing comments like that from
Speaker 1: people like Jason against the backdrop where we already get
Speaker 1: so few of anything, so little of anything. We already
Speaker 1: get the crumbs, the scraps, the less than one and
Speaker 1: to have people say, well, what little you do have,
Speaker 1: you don't even really deserve that it was handed to you.
Speaker 1: It's just such a slap in the face. And what
Speaker 1: upsets me about this is that it negates the reality
Speaker 1: that people on the outside don't always see. And I honestly,
Speaker 1: like work very hard to like not get down on
Speaker 1: it and not focus on it. But the reality is
Speaker 1: that we are dealing with so much just to be
Speaker 1: in these spaces, like I had to fight to have
Speaker 1: shows on the same chart as Jason's albeit one hundred
Speaker 1: slots down, but I had to fight to be there.
Speaker 1: You think they gave me anything. You think anybody on
Speaker 1: my Dora and said here, take this. I fucking wish
Speaker 1: I would. If that were the case, I would be
Speaker 1: the first person to be like, oh my god, like,
Speaker 1: can you believe I got this? How cushy? And this
Speaker 1: assumption that it is about merit for him and not
Speaker 1: about merit for me on the basis of me being
Speaker 1: a black woman, it's not just wrong, it's offensive, like
Speaker 1: it's a lie. It is hurtful because these are my
Speaker 1: colleagues and this is how they really see me. This
Speaker 1: is what they really actually think about me. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I do take it personally to have someone say like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: for him, it's about merit, but for me, I gotta
Speaker 1: be the diversity higher. And so we have to work
Speaker 1: very hard to fight for what we get, and what
Speaker 1: we get is not often a lot and not often
Speaker 1: what we deserve, and we kind of have to like
Speaker 1: make a meal of that. But then on top of it,
Speaker 1: to have people like them who set the agenda, set
Speaker 1: the tone and be like, oh, well, you don't even
Speaker 1: deserve what you have Meanwhile, if they knew the stuff
Speaker 1: that I have to smile through, the amounts of shit
Speaker 1: I have to eat regularly, the kind of resiponses that
Speaker 1: we get from people who don't think that we deserve
Speaker 1: to be where we are, just to have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to work and make less it would shock him, Like, y'all,
Speaker 1: remember they had to have public campaigns to remind white
Speaker 1: people not to touch black people's hair in public places.
Speaker 1: This has happened to me before in a professional context, Jason,
Speaker 1: Has it ever happened to you? Have you ever had
Speaker 1: to experience that in front of your colleagues and then
Speaker 1: just smile through it and brush it off and keep
Speaker 1: going and do your job, because that's just how it is.
Speaker 1: We just didn't add for the service delete me, and
Speaker 1: in the when I got that ad it, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what I'll say, which is that even
Speaker 1: before the podcast started, when I was just working out
Speaker 1: what we were going to be talking about, one of the
Speaker 1: first things I did a sign up for delete me
Speaker 1: because I was afraid that people were gonna come after
Speaker 1: me and come after my family and come after my
Speaker 1: loved ones because of the things that I was saying
Speaker 1: on here, and those fears are not unfounded, they are
Speaker 1: actually very reasonable, Like people like Jason have no idea
Speaker 1: what people like me have to go through just to
Speaker 1: be here and get less, like he could not be
Speaker 1: me for one second again, Like it just upsets me
Speaker 1: that this to hear, to hear what I what you
Speaker 1: always suspect, to hear what you really know deep down,
Speaker 1: it just really hurts. And yeah, I mean I'm hurt,
Speaker 1: Like it's upsetting to me. And I think it goes
Speaker 1: for women, It goes for black women, it goes for
Speaker 1: other people of color, it goes for trans folks, it
Speaker 1: goes for queer folks. Like if people really knew how
Speaker 1: hard it is to do what we do, to have
Speaker 1: to show up in some of these spaces, how much
Speaker 1: of ourselves we have to like cut and cut off
Speaker 1: and cut out be in these spaces. Like we know,
Speaker 1: we feel it every day, We deal with that reality
Speaker 1: every day, but they don't know. And then on top
Speaker 1: of it, they get to go out in public and
Speaker 1: say shit like this, and not just say it, but
Speaker 1: have what they say set the agenda, set the tone,
Speaker 1: establish the conversation, be accepted as truth. It is just
Speaker 1: like so wrong and so ignorant, and it hurts like
Speaker 1: it hurts it. These are the people that I'm like
Speaker 1: in the same space with. It hurts that this is
Speaker 1: how they this is genuinely how they see us. And
Speaker 1: I know, I know this sounds like very woe with
Speaker 1: me right now, and I am sorry, but it hurts
Speaker 1: me very personally, very deeply. And the reality is that
Speaker 1: it hurts all of us. The data is super clear
Speaker 1: that these kinds of public conversations trickle down to other
Speaker 1: marginalized people and it paints us all as unqualified and
Speaker 1: bad leaders. Like it is. It was so easy for
Speaker 1: people to say Clauding Gay is unqualified, she's a PhD
Speaker 1: from Harvard. Too many people have that, like they are
Speaker 1: so quick to cut her down and give and tell
Speaker 1: us that she didn't deserve to get where she is.
Speaker 1: And other people see that and it has a real impact.
Speaker 1: It makes it so easy to look at marginalized people
Speaker 1: and leadership positions and say we don't belong there, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be there. This stuff has real consequences. It keeps
Speaker 1: us out of rooms where decisions are being made, which
Speaker 1: makes us all worse off. It makes us all less safe.
Speaker 1: It makes technology worse because it's being designed by less
Speaker 1: people who are in more silos. Everybody suffers when this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff flourishes. As it's flourishing right now. Other
Speaker 1: marginalized people see this and they think, well, it's not
Speaker 1: worth it to strive if this is going to be
Speaker 1: what it is. It prevents us from having a truly
Speaker 1: representative democracy, the democracy that we deserve, and keeps us
Speaker 1: from having civic and public spaces that look like the
Speaker 1: communities that they're supposed to be working for. And I
Speaker 1: think that that is what people like RUFO are saying,
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't be able to have any avenues to
Speaker 1: be in civic and public life and build power in
Speaker 1: those spaces. We shouldn't have any avenues to power Black women,
Speaker 1: who we already hold so little institutional power, and they
Speaker 1: want us to not have that either. And honestly, like
Speaker 1: the thing about Gay, it's not really about her as
Speaker 1: an individual, but I do think I might have a
Speaker 1: little bit of an unpopular opinion about her, which is that, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know Gay, but she is unquestionably qualified to
Speaker 1: be the president of Harvard. The question of whether she
Speaker 1: got there by merrit or not like is laughable, does
Speaker 1: not deserve a response. But I think that maybe part
Speaker 1: of gay maybe thought that like carrying weight for Harvard's
Speaker 1: status quo was going to be the answer for her
Speaker 1: and that like maybe that would save her, Like if
Speaker 1: she doesn't mix it up too much, the storm will pass.
Speaker 1: And in the end it didn't save her. My friend
Speaker 1: Tim put it really well on Twitter. Her resignation is
Speaker 1: proof that you can be middle of the road, a
Speaker 1: political and innocuous and your black ass will still get clipped.
Speaker 1: So you might as well stand for something and fight back,
Speaker 1: all right, I am I genuinely upset.
Speaker 3: Yeah that was a lot. Yeah, thank you for that.
Speaker 3: The emotion really came through.
Speaker 1: So that was a lot. What does it all mean? Well?
Speaker 1: This month in Texas, Texas SB seventeen went into effect,
Speaker 1: which is a law that requires public universities in Texas
Speaker 1: to no longer have offices dedicated to DII or employees
Speaker 1: focused specifically on that purpose. Higher education workers and job
Speaker 1: applicants can also no longer sign any statements dedicated to
Speaker 1: upholding any kind of DEI standard or attend trainings that
Speaker 1: reference race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation. According
Speaker 1: to this law. DeSantis signed a similar law in Florida
Speaker 1: last year too. So I think the next iteration of
Speaker 1: this is going to be corporations and brands facing pressure
Speaker 1: to drop or distance themselves from DEI. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you saw, but the former CEO of the active
Speaker 1: wear brand Lululemon basically said like, oh, we have to
Speaker 1: get away from DEI. You need to make it clear
Speaker 1: that you don't want certain people buying your clothes, which
Speaker 1: is like WHOA Trust and believe when I say I
Speaker 1: will never buy another I like mission accomplished, suck is
Speaker 1: overpriced garbage anyway, But trust and believe that my black
Speaker 1: ass never will. You will never get a die of
Speaker 1: my money, can do, don't got to worry about me.
Speaker 1: Will never be buying another Lulu a Lemon item again
Speaker 1: in my life.
Speaker 3: Oh what a statement. I had not seen that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so I think that's going to be the
Speaker 1: next push getting brands and corporations to distance themselves. And
Speaker 1: I think the bigger game is to make DEI, just
Speaker 1: like with critical race theory, into a toxic brand, you know,
Speaker 1: where anything that right wing culture warriors don't like can
Speaker 1: be labeled DEI and automatically conjure up negative association. So
Speaker 1: like a black woman in a leadership position DEI, a
Speaker 1: book written by a black person on a college syllabus, DEI,
Speaker 1: a black woman in an ad campaign DEI. And I
Speaker 1: think the goal really is a society where marginalized people
Speaker 1: do not hold power in civic and public life, and
Speaker 1: any avenues where Bobby might have access to power or
Speaker 1: support toward power are obliterated. It's the same reason why
Speaker 1: after gutting affirmative action, Edward Blum, that right wing activist
Speaker 1: went after funding fellowships that support black women in like
Speaker 1: fearless fun. And I think doing this via attacks on
Speaker 1: DEI as racist or like reverse racist or whatever just
Speaker 1: sets up this fictitious idea that we're living in a
Speaker 1: society where black folks are being given everything, all the power.
Speaker 1: It is the most callous, disingenuous way of stoking the
Speaker 1: fears and anxieties of the dominant group while they get
Speaker 1: to continue enjoy being the dominant group and also pretending
Speaker 1: to be underserved. But as always, those attacks always up
Speaker 1: hurting everyone right like, they end up making us all
Speaker 1: worse off. Ruffo has said that one of his goals
Speaker 1: is to make DEI work at the professional level obsolute
Speaker 1: dead end jobs. He said one goal for twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four fifty percent net reduction of DEI jobs in corporate America.
Speaker 1: Put the entire industry into chaos, make it a career
Speaker 1: path to nowhere. And do you know who has held
Speaker 1: the majority of DEI jobs in the United States? White women?
Speaker 1: The data is very clear over the past ten years.
Speaker 1: White women not only hold the majority of executive and
Speaker 1: consulting DEI roles, but are also the best compensated for
Speaker 1: this work, with the longest tenured This is according to
Speaker 1: a write up by a partner R of Data for
Speaker 1: Inclusive Change, which we will link to in the show notes.
Speaker 1: And So I say all of this to say, like,
Speaker 1: it is not just about black women. These attacks, if
Speaker 1: left to fester, hurt all of us. And so women,
Speaker 1: white women, all women, all of us should be concerned
Speaker 1: about this because it's like Prince said, when you play me,
Speaker 1: you play yourself. And like if we are to if
Speaker 1: if he succeeds in making DEI not tenable loss a career,
Speaker 1: it's white women are the ones who are holding those jobs.
Speaker 1: You could you could ask the question as to like
Speaker 1: why that is that's a whole other issue, but like
Speaker 1: that's that's who is currently holding power in the DEI
Speaker 1: space currently. The data is very clear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and more broadly, it harms all of us by
Speaker 3: excluding talented, insightful people with unique and valuable perspectives from
Speaker 3: conversations from positions of authority, it hurts all of us.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. That like diversity and inclusion makes is
Speaker 1: like what makes our country good. It's what makes our
Speaker 1: companies good. Like not even from the level of like
Speaker 1: it's nice to do, which it is. It makes our
Speaker 1: products better, it makes our businesses better, it makes people
Speaker 1: more money, it makes it makes us more creative. It's
Speaker 1: like it's a good thing. And so I think that
Speaker 1: we're just in this place where it's like people have
Speaker 1: to decide whether or not they agree. And Mark Cuban,
Speaker 1: he made the point that you made. He said, the
Speaker 1: loss of deiphobic companies is my gain. Cuban went on
Speaker 1: to defend the core principles of DEI and saying, having
Speaker 1: a workforce that is diverse and representative of your stakeholders
Speaker 1: is good for business.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's it's like an obvious thing. Having employees who
Speaker 3: are representative of the stakeholders who you're trying to serve,
Speaker 3: who you're trying to sell products or services to, is
Speaker 3: a good smart thing.
Speaker 1: And I can't believe that that's not clear. And I
Speaker 1: guess the question is, like, do these people care more
Speaker 1: about grievance mongerings than they do about having successful companies
Speaker 1: and making money. Maybe they do. When we did our
Speaker 1: miniseries Internet Hate Machine last year, we broke down how
Speaker 1: right wing grievances are weaponized into these kinds of attacks.
Speaker 1: Now it is long past time for institutions like corporations,
Speaker 1: legacy media, universities, et cetera to understand these kinds of
Speaker 1: attacks and how they work. It has been going on
Speaker 1: for so long. It is time to figure out the
Speaker 1: game and figure out what you were going to do.
Speaker 1: It is past time to figure out the game and
Speaker 1: figure out what you're going to do. These same disingenuous
Speaker 1: tactics have been used too many times for these institutions
Speaker 1: to continue to feign ignorance and powerlessness and not know
Speaker 1: how to respond when they happen and to not be
Speaker 1: anticipating them. One of the biggest takeaways that I had
Speaker 1: from that series is that you cannot capitulate to these people.
Speaker 1: If you give them an inch, they will smell blood
Speaker 1: in the water and they will know they can take
Speaker 1: a mile. Gay announced her resignation like a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago. Ackman has already called for the entire board
Speaker 1: of Harvard to resign right after that, even after he
Speaker 1: got his way and she resigned. When trans influencer Dylan
Speaker 1: mulvaney made that one video for bud Light, the company apologized,
Speaker 1: basically threw her to the wolves, never called her, never
Speaker 1: even sent her an email like how you do and
Speaker 1: let her have to deal with death threats, have to
Speaker 1: leave her home. All of that, they parted ways with
Speaker 1: employees who had been involved, and these people were still
Speaker 1: not satisfied. They would after target for Pride merchandise nets.
Speaker 1: There is no pleasing these people because they are bad actors.
Speaker 1: So if you relent at all, they will know like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a winning strategy. Let's just keep doing it.
Speaker 1: So it is time to stand by your staff, stand
Speaker 1: by your people, and say listen, if you come for them,
Speaker 1: we will not budge go pound sand and to legacy media.
Speaker 1: You do not have to be Chris Ruffo's bitch. Like
Speaker 1: you can make a different choice. Victor Ray, who wrote
Speaker 1: the book on critical race theory, put it so beautifully.
Speaker 1: He said, accepting bad faith framing is a choice to
Speaker 1: ally oneself with bad faith actors, and that is absolutely
Speaker 1: the truth. And yeah, I guess that's really where we
Speaker 1: gotta leave it. Like I really hope that we see
Speaker 1: in institutions who do have power really preparing for this
Speaker 1: and understanding this. And yeah, I mean it's not how
Speaker 1: I wanted to start my twenty twenty four with a
Speaker 1: whole massive national conversation about how black women are unqualified.
Speaker 1: You know, when this was all going down, one of
Speaker 1: my mentors, Sabrina, and I were talking about like what
Speaker 1: we should be doing in this moment, like should prominent
Speaker 1: visible black women be like publishing an open letter putting
Speaker 1: legacy media on blast and being like we see this happening,
Speaker 1: we see you doing it, and we won't take it.
Speaker 1: And I thought about this for a minute, and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, all I really want to do
Speaker 1: is like exist and do my work and do my job,
Speaker 1: and that's it, and just like live our life, like
Speaker 1: live my life. All I want to do is live
Speaker 1: my life the same as anyone else without these attacks.
Speaker 1: When we get into leadership positions, all I want to
Speaker 1: do is know that I'm not going to be tossed
Speaker 1: out like garbage as collateral damage when the attack right.
Speaker 1: I just want my humanity recognize. And so I don't
Speaker 1: know the idea of like putting out a letter saying this.
Speaker 1: I just think in twenty twenty four we should be
Speaker 1: done having to advocate for our humanity in this way
Speaker 1: in public, and yet here we are. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
Speaker 1: out our merch store at tangoti dot com slash store.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi? You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tegodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Toad.
Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative edited by
Speaker 1: Joey pat Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison
Speaker 1: is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almada is our
Speaker 1: contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridge Toad. If you want
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