Feb. 19, 2018
Harvard University had only just announced its next president before he came under attack — not for anything he did, but for who he is.
That is, in the eyes of his critics, at least, a “white male.”
The New York Times greeted the selection with a news article reporting in its second paragraph that, in selecting Lawrence Bacow earlier this month, the search committee had missed “an opportunity for Harvard to choose a leader who would reflect the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements.”…
…The Crimson columnist complained that Mr. Bacow “does not understand, first-hand, what it means to be reduced to your gender or the color of your skin.”
And there, precisely, is encapsulated the irony of the situation. The vanguard of the anti-racism, anti-sexism movement on campus looks at an individual chosen for a job and can’t see past his skin color or his gender.