Politicians have been placating various constituencies since the dawn of American democracy. At various times throughout our history, those aspiring to office or hoping to retain it have focused on the farmer vote, the slaveholder vote, the abolitionist vote, the urban vote, the Irish vote, the Black vote, the Italian vote, the armed forces vote, the women’s vote, the Cuban vote, the environmental vote, the student vote, the abortion rights vote, the pro-life vote, the law and order vote, the defund the police vote, the . . . well, you get the idea.

Unsurprisingly, a number of political figures—both those of significance and those who are forgettable—have been elected or appointed to office based in some part on their group identity, which makes perfect sense in a nation as diverse as ours, one that has strived (sometimes haltingly and with difficulty) to represent the wide variety of lived experiences in our country.

We have, however, taken quite a wrong turn in recent years by deciding that the only qualification necessary for a key leadership position is a particular group identity, and to raise an objection or question regarding this practice is itself bigotry. The result has been we have people in positions of authority in America today who check the boxes on the diversity, equity, and inclusion checklist—but seem to have no idea how to do their jobs.

The latest and most prominent example of this phenomenon is the current Harvard President, Claudine Gay. Perhaps she has some heretofore unseen talent for her position, but recent events have called into question whether the quest for diversity (the university’s first Black, female President!) overlooked some obvious issues with her expertise and judgment.

This issue first leapt into public view when she, the President of the University of Pennsylvania, and the President of M.I.T. all testified to Congress about the explosion of open and vicious anti-semitism on their campuses in the wake of the bloody Hamas on Israel on October 7th. To say it was a disastrous display of dissembling and equivocation would be an understatement. Their collective inability to condemn threats to the Jewish students at their schools has already led to the resignation of the UPenn President, and it prompted a lot of individuals who had been forced into silence to start expressing the concerns they had held for a long time about Dr. Gay’s qualifications and leadership.

First on the list is her academic record. For reasons that defy all understanding, Dr. Gay was granted tenure at Harvard with only 11 publications and the co-editorship of a book—none of which demonstrated the original thought or significant contribution to her field that one associates with the honor of lifetime employment at a prestigious Ivy League university. There is no doubt that she benefitted from a tailwind of white guilt and institutional bias when her thin and undistinguished list of accomplishments was rubber stamped into departmental tenure before she was quickly and inexplicably elevated to a position as Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 

Worse yet, there is credible (read: irrefutable) evidence that a substantial portion of her academic publications, including her Ph.D dissertation, were plagiarized from the works of other scholars in her field—allegations that were previously dismissed by Harvard when they were raised. At least one American newspaper was threatened with a lawsuit if they published information about Harvard’s own internal investigations into this matter. Those who have spoken out publicly against Harvard’s cover-up of these allegations include the President of the National Association of Scholars as well as many prominent Harvard alumni and donors, but the university has remained steadfast in their support of Dr. Gay, perhaps fearing the Woke firestorm that would erupt were Harvard’s first Black, female President to be summarily fired for professional incompetence and malfeasance.

There is a hard lesson to be found in this sad tale, one that calls into question the focus on appointing people with questionable experience and competence in order to satisfy some illusory quota or social engineering goal. In the final analysis we all benefit from privileging those with brains and judgment over those with an identity group affiliation, and to do otherwise actually harms individuals who are striving for advancement because they are damned by the unfair associations made with the problems caused by disastrous diversity hires.

Meritocracy built our nation; the reverse discrimination that advantages race, ethnicity, and gender hustlers is an ongoing catastrophe, and we neglect this lesson at our own peril.