“Where is college going? asked a worried columnist in these pages. Like many, he had just learned of the election of Claudine Gay as president of the illustrious Harvard University, which he would have attended in the more or less distant past. Not long enough, obviously, to be among the 400,000 recipients of the email that launched the process of seeking a candidacy for the Harvard presidency.
What worries him is the thinness of M’s university record.me Gay, who should not justify his access to the presidency of this high place of knowledge. According to the columnist, what best explains her being appointed to the highest office of this prestigious American institution would be the application of a hypothetical policy of inclusion.
Harvard, which nevertheless represents the “quintessence of thought”, would have sunk into ideological confusion: “As if the university, which was the center of universalist thought, had become a place of horse-trading between the ethnic communities which dispute the places without any criterion of excellence”, he adds.
Horse traders are cattle dealers known for their dishonesty. Crooked peddlers. What Christian Rioux says is important, words count: the ethnic communities would compete for privileged places without any criterion of excellence.
For the columnist, excellence must triumph!
Speaking of triumphant excellence, Rioux quotes the director of scientific research for the National Association of Scholars (NAS), David Randall, whose arguments he mimics, moreover.
As for me, who rather considers rigor, I wanted to know more about the “source” of Christian Rioux. After all, I too have a question: where is the scientific director going?
Step 1: Assess the institution. The National Association of Scholars is not scientific, it is a conservative lobby group that produces reports and fights against progressivism, including inclusion. It’s a lobby.
Step 2: Assess the source. David Randall is an obscure historian who reportedly earned his doctorate from Rutgers University. No trace in the institution’s register, except for his doctoral thesis, which concerns the credibility of military news in the Elizabethan era.
So I turned to two artificial intelligence systems (AIS) to explore scientific and professional publications, as well as author networks. Very useful for identifying collaborations and filiations. David Randall is also said to have published a series of fantasy novels, revivals of Snow White, all filed in the “Catholic Fiction” department. In itself, that two SIAs devoted to the search for references did not return any scientific publication signed as first author by a director of scientific research, that is already a feat!
According to Google Scholar, Mr. Randall has published numerous reports, all edited by the association whose research he directs, and as a second author.
A little concerned about Mr. Randall’s poor academic record, I consulted my own university’s library, just to be sure I had followed all the leads. I found the digital version of the thesis cited above. Notice to the curious and curious.
Christian Rioux points out that Mr.me Gay can claim only a dozen scientific papers. That’s already twelve times more than Mr. Randall and the columnist put together! In addition, his curriculum vitae is public: she is a quantitative sociologist graduated from Stanford, she has a long experience of management and administration. While she can claim a great deal of scientific rigor, others are content to spout on the triumph of academic excellence.
Step 3: wrap up. Where is Christian Rioux going? According to the latter, “the social contract which has long ensured the wealth and prosperity of our societies” would be respected when it comes to a mediocre scientific director who, after having usurped a title he does not deserve, for a lobby. In two words, Christian Rioux quotes an excellent minion.
In doing so, he gives a patent example of the application of a double standard hidden under a veneer of pretension, two attitudes that are contrary to the academic ideal.
His thinking has nothing to do with excellence, an empty word that only serves here to make a statement that he knows is offensive socially acceptable. The watermark of his thinking, the source of his anxiety, is that Harvard University will henceforth be presided over by a black person.
Replica of Christian Rioux
It will not have escaped your notice that David Randall is not running for president of Harvard. To denigrate and call a private citizen a “flank” while carefully avoiding responding to his arguments against “affirmative action” – a policy that is in no way “hypothetical” in the case of Harvard and of which Ms.me Gay is the pure product — stems from bad faith. You knowingly do not know that M.me Gawas also appointed there to face a possible decision of the Supreme Court in 2023 on positive discrimination. As for your insinuations in the conditional that I would have “attended in the more or less distant past” Harvard Universitya simple check would have shown that I was a Nieman Fellow there in 2004.