Subject: Re: the honorable new york times
Ackman, another response, “” I find it difficult to believe that the
@Harvard
Corporation board could still be in unanimous support of President Gay.

They must now realize that they made a bad choice and that their continued support for President Gay is not just enormously damaging to Harvard, but it is also incredibly destructive to their own reputations.

When I first watched the train wreck begin to unfold at Harvard, I approached two friends on the Corporation board and requested a meeting with President Gay and the other directors as I thought I could help.

My requests for a meeting were ignored. Weeks went by. I continued to push. Finally, I was offered the opportunity to speak with Penny Pritzker, the board chair. I was told: “This is the protocol.”

The conversation with Penny was incredibly disappointing. It was clear that the board members had become deer in the headlights, were listening to bad ‘professional’ advice, and were unreceptive to input from outside the board room.

So I wrote my first public letter to the board, and received no response. Not even an acknowledgment from President Gay or the board that they had received the letter.

The situation got worse, and I was compelled to write a second letter.

I got no response.

The day after President Gay’s disastrous testimony I reached out again to my two friends on the board. One promised to call back and then ghosted me. The other did not respond to my texts, so I wrote a third letter.

Now, I am not the only person to have written strong letters to the Harvard board. They must have received literally hundreds of letters, emails, and calls.

I know because I have been copied and blind copied on many of these communications from some people I know and many people I do not.

We are well past the point where Claudine Gay is the only one to blame for the mess that is Harvard.

Ultimately, when management fails, the board needs to step in. It has failed to do so and nearly three months have passed.

As a result, the reputations of the eleven individuals who comprise the board are in the process of being destroyed. It is sad to watch this happen as there are some very high quality people on this board.

Why, you might ask, are they self destructing?

The principal reason I believe is that they are afraid of being called racists. They have concluded that if they fired President Gay, Harvard’s first black president, they would be cancelled and deemed racists.

They have failed to act out of fear.

They would also have to admit that they made a bad choice in selecting Gay, and acknowledge that they ignored concerns raised about Gay’s scholarship and leadership prior to appointing her.

Sometimes successful people have a hard time admitting mistakes, particularly when doing so will make the news.

So they have stuck their heads in the sand and they have made matters much worse.

Not only are they damaging Harvard’s and their own reputations, they are now materially damaging the black community.

By not acting to fire Gay for transgressions for which no other previous president of Harvard, administrator or faculty member would survive, they are telling the world that lower standards apply to black people at Harvard.

This is incredibly damaging to the many highly talented black faculty at Harvard.

Sadly, some will now question the legitimacy of faculty of color at Harvard because apparently lower academic and leadership standards are being applied to President Gay because of her intersectionality status.

In effect, the board’s failure to fire Gay delegitimizes other faculty of color at Harvard. This is very very wrong, and the Board needs to act now before more damage is done.

Someone on the Board must understand all of the above, but has yet to break ranks.

A word of advice: if you find yourself on a board which has lost its way and won’t reverse a disastrous decision for ego, personal fear, or other reasons, the best time to get off the board is now.“”