CNN analyst Bakari Sellers and commentator Scott Jennings feuded over whether racism was behind Harvard President Claudine Gay resigning this week after the embattled official faced multiple charges of plagiarism.
In the New York Times on Wednesday, Gay accused critics of waging a coordinated racial campaign to force her out of leadership.
Sellers, a former Democratic member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, defended Gay on CNN Thursday. He claimed that Gay was targeted because she is Black as part of an effort to discredit diversity, equity and inclusion in academia.
"You can't help but see the racial animus and the racial overtones in this. You can’t help but see the attack on higher education. And this is even more troubling — you can’t help but see the complicity in mainstream media. When you have institutions like Politico yesterday platforming Christopher Rufo and giving him an interview and giving him a Q&A, that’s not journalism," he complained.
DISGRACED FORMER HARVARD PRESIDENT PENS NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED ATTACKING RACIAL ‘CAMPAIGN’ AGAINST HER
Sellers downplayed the dozens of plagiarism charges against Gay and doubled down on his argument that racist conservatives had forced her out.
"What we’re seeing is that this is someone – this wasn’t an attack from her peers. This wasn’t an attack from other colleagues who had a problem with her utilizing their words without the proper cites because it doesn’t rise to level of plagiarism, it's improper citations. This is the right-wing, particularly right-wing conservative males attacking another Black woman in authority and people have to call it out as such," he urged.
Conservative commentator Scott Jennings disagreed that the right was waging a "war on higher education," saying they were actually trying to reform higher education. Claudine Gay's troubles came about because of her own testimony before Congress and her own acts of plagiarism, he said.
"Conservatives didn’t invent time travel, go back in time and make up these plagiarism instances and conservatives certainly didn’t cause her to sit in front of the American people and the United States Congress and fail to unequivocally condemn genocide against the Jewish people. That’s not anybody’s fault but her own," he insisted.
"As the leader of one of the most prestigious colleges in the United States, Gay had to be held to a high standard morally and ethically," Jennings said.
"She had a thin academic record to begin with and when the plagiarism issues popped up, I just don't see how it was tenable for Harvard to ever say that we won’t hold our president to the same standards that we would hold our students," he argued.
Sellers furiously shook his head and repeated, "No," while Jennings spoke of Gay's "thin academic record."
"This is when we have to draw the line. I cannot sit here on national TV and allow individuals to attack the credentials and the academic record and the professionalism of Claudine Gay to get the position," he shot back.
"Because that’s what this conversation has delved into. That this Black woman didn’t deserve it in the first place. When we go down this path of saying she had a thin academic record to begin with — she was overly qualified. She was just as qualified as the 30 people who came before her who just all happened to be White," Sellers claimed.
The Democrat complained conservatives had "ginned up" Gay's "issues of citations" as he lamented the larger push by figures like Bill Ackman to eradicate DEI at Harvard and other universities.
"When you have people questioning DEI, when you have people questioning diversity, equity and inclusion and then question the record of this Black woman, we have to draw the line and say, ‘see, that’s the game we’re talking about being played.’ She didn’t cause that on that part on herself. We have to root that part out of the conversation," Sellers responded.
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The former Harvard leader made a similar argument in her Times op-ed on Wednesday, accusing her critics of using "tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament" and promoting "a false narrative of indifference and incompetence."
"The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society," she also wrote.
