HAS Through the Claudine Gay affair, so many things intertwine that it is difficult to grasp them straight away. The president of Harvard announced her resignation on January 2, under pressure from two controversies. She faced accusations of plagiarism and failed to denounce calls for Jewish genocide during an appearance at Congress in December.
But it also embodied several developments in the American university that are now being called into question. His appointment, in December 2022, was a new manifestation of the growing role taken by the administration. Over the past twenty years, its numbers in higher education have grown, to the point that Harvard now has only 2,452 professors while 7,708 employees work within its administration. The situation is the same in most American universities, public or private.
Different explanations have been put forward to account for this phenomenon. But this is the sector brought together under the acronym DEI, for “diversity, equity, inclusion”, which raises the most questions. Appearing in recent years, these services are in some ways the heirs of the policy of positive discrimination, since they aim to facilitate the integration of students and professors from minorities, a laudable intention. They are not enough to explain the increase in administrative staff. At Harvard, around fifty people reportedly work in DEI alone. But a much larger number of employees are involved in this policy.
New bureaucracy
Claudine Gay is, for her detractors, a figure of this new bureaucracy. Professor of political science, she chose, in 2015, to take a turn and join administration. She thus became dean of social sciences within the department of arts and sciences, then, in 2018, dean of this department. In both positions, she made DEI-specific goals her priority.
When the controversy concerning it erupted, in the fall of 2023, such a course weakened its position, because these devices are today contested. They are associated with a reorientation of the university intended to serve purposes other than the pursuit of knowledge, without these mechanisms making it possible to achieve the set objectives.
The University of Michigan provides a cruel illustration of this. She has made significant efforts in this area, with 163 employees with responsibilities related to DEI. However, African-American students, the main target audience, do not benefit from a better welcome on campus. They do not exceed 3.9%, while the African-American community represents 14% of the population of this state.
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