FRANCIS TURNER HAS A NEW VENUE AND A BANG UP FIRST POST:  Sympathy for Claudine Gay.

And this is where I have a smidgen of sympathy for the woman. You see, she’s been a diversity hire all her professional career and has never had to actually face any consequences for sloppy academic research that would hole below the waterline, and probably sink, the careers of white and/or male and/or non-immigrant academics even in her chosen area of grievance studies.

So rather like my sympathy for the unfortunate child who has never been taught not to stick the silverware in a power socket and then gets electrocuted when she does so, I sympathize for Gay because no one ever told her to shape up and made it stick and now, after she’s reached pretty much the pinnacle of her career all sorts of impertinent sorts are going over her sparse academic record and looking for faults. Indeed if one can stretch the metaphor a bit, it’s more like helicopter parents not just not telling her to stick the fork in the socket but making sure that no one else told her not to either and then the poor girl goes and jams a knife into the 220v washer/dryer circuit.

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