Ivy League Campus Wars Aren t About Gender … Are They? – The New York Times

Four women presidents, all new in their roles, far too new to have shaped the culture on their campuses, called before Congress? Of course there s a pattern, Dr. Andrews said. The question is, What s the agenda? Is it to take down women leaders? To attack elite universities through a perceived vulnerability? To further a political purpose?

Privately if not always publicly, other women in the academy described a similar reaction to the spectacle around the hearing on Dec. 5 and the fallout since: Ms. Magill and Dr. Gay resigned, their critics made it clear they were coming for Dr. Kornbluth, and last week, prominent male donors demanded the ouster of Cornell president Martha Pollack, too.

Almost invariably, the women will run through a list of qualifiers and questions. Yes, there might have been plagiarism, in the case of Dr. Gay, and the issue of race to consider. Yes, the presidents sounded so lawyerly, so coached, at the hearing: Why couldn t they have more passionately declared their opposition to slogans encouraging genocide?

But then there are the suspicions in the other direction: If the question was safety, why didn t Congress summon the (male) presidents of Yale and the University of Chicago, where pro-Palestinian groups occupied quads and administrative offices?

Underlying all the conversations was the most maddening, familiar and ultimately unanswerable question of all: Would a man have been treated the same way?

via www.nytimes.com

I knew it. All the presidents were women. How could we have missed that? It was the patriarchy all along. Darn, we’ll have to keep out eyes open for that next time. Thanks, NY Times. You’re the best.