In Search of a Mea Culpa

So, Harvard president Claudine Gay has resigned. This has felt inevitable pretty much from the moment she and two of her Ivy League colleagues couldn’t bring themselves to offer an unambiguous response to the question of whether or not calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment in the wake of October 7. It felt like even more of a foregone conclusion after evidence of multiple instances of plagiarism in her published work began to surface.

Bracketing the plagiarism issue (for the moment), I feel genuinely sorry for Ms. Gay. Leadership in institutions of any size has come to feel like something of a poisoned chalice in these days of relentlessly policed and politicized speech, under the totalizing and merciless idols of identity and performative virtue. I can think of few leaders who endured the COVID years who wouldn’t be able to spare at least a shred of sympathy for her given the demands of leading in politically and ideologically volatile times.

And yet, it was grimly fascinating — and sadly indicative of our cultural moment — to read Ms. Gay’s resignation letter. She spoke of her “distress” at having doubts cast on her “commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor.” She spoke of her no doubt quite legitimate fear at being subjected to “personal attacks and threats fuelled by racial animus.” She spoke about how much she loved Harvard, about how she hoped the institution could “heal.” She talked about how painful it was to witness “the tensions and divisions that have riven our community in recent months” She made it clear that more work was needed to “combat bias and hate in all its forms, to create a learning environment in which we respect each other’s dignity and treat one another with compassion, and to affirm our enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth.”

What was noticeably absent from Ms. Gay’s resignation letter was anything resembling a mea culpa or an acknowledgement of personal responsibility in creating or at the very least contributing to said atmosphere of “tension and division” with her equivocation on the “Do calls for genocide constitute hate speech?” question. One would have also searched in vain for any direct or unambiguous refutation of the plagiarism charges. One could be forgiven for reading the entire letter and saying something like, “Well, yes, I realize that this is all very distressing and painful for you to see a campus in conflict and to have your academic record called into question but, you know, do you have anything to say about your role in all this?”

I’ve had a book sitting mostly unread on my shelf for probably two years. Maybe more. A few people recommended it to me, and so I picked it up, looked at it on my desk for several months, read the introductions, set it aside, and then “filed” it on my bookshelf. As one does. The book is called A Failure of Nerve by the late rabbi and therapist Edwin Friedman. Like many pastors, I have his Generation to Generation on my shelf as well — it was and may still be the go-to resource for understanding how family processes influence congregations (among other things).

I sat down to read the book again yesterday (you know, “new year, new me” and all). I was struck by the following passage in the introduction:

This book is for parents and presidents. It’s also for CEOs and educators, prioresses and coaches, healers and generals, managers and clergy. It is about leadership in the land of the quick fix, about leadership in a society so reactive that it cannot choose leaders who might calm its anxiety. It is about the need for clarity and decisiveness in a civilization that inhibits the development of leaders with clarity and decisiveness. It is for leaders who have questioned the widespread triumphing of data over maturity, technique over stamina, and empathy over personal responsibility. And it is for anyone at all who has become suspicious of the illusions of change — suspicious of the modern fashion wherein solutions, as well as symptoms, burst upon us in every field of endeavor (management, healing, education, parenting) and then disappear as unexpectedly as they had first appeared, only to be supplanted by the fad of another “issue” or cure, sending everyone back to square one.

So much about that paragraph struck me as timely for our time — the reactivity and anxiety of our cultural moment, the hunger for the “quick fix,” the need for maturity and stamina, the endless fads and issues that masquerade as solutions but end up sending us “back to square one.” But that little line about personal responsibility really stood out. Empathy (of a sort) is everywhere. Leaders (and I include myself in what follows) are very good at reciting our lines about combating hate and bias and working toward compassion and dignity. We can do empathy. We know its structures and its rewards. But personal responsibility? Well, that’s a different matter.

Probably the most galling thing about the Claudine Gay affair, for people across the political and ideological spectrum, is the hypocrisy it lays bare. The hypocrisy of conservatives who seem only too eager to gleefully tear down Ms. Gay and the “woke agenda” in higher education while often being quite willing to advance their own agendas through similar methods. The hypocrisy of campus bureaucrats being quite clear that departing from the script when it comes to gender, sexuality and race quite clearly constitutes hate speech but calling for the eradication of Jews does not (to say nothing of the deafening silence of many progressives around the extreme and gruesome sexual violence of Oct 7… so much for “Believe Women” or #metoo). The overall strategy of being quite willing to see (and helpfully itemize) the evils of those you disagree with or whose views and challenges are inconvenient for you, while ignoring those of your own team. It’s enough to make one despair of the possibility of reasoned and reasonable discourse.

A certain saying about specks and logs in eyes comes to mind. Jesus understood (and understands) the human heart only too well. He knows the naked and self-protective hypocrisy that we are all so easily and naturally drawn to. He knows that our eyes can be laser-focused on the sins of others while studiously avoiding our own. He knows how easily our empathy (like everything else) can become mostly about us. And he uncompromisingly calls each one of us — leaders or not — to take responsibility for our words and our actions. It is the only way forward in these punitive, reactionary, self-righteous, merciless, and deeply confused times.