If America is so oppressively evil, how did it happen that this black professor, with embarrassingly meager qualifications, found herself at the pinnacle of American academic life as president of Harvard? How is it that, having been forced to resign—not, as she claims, because of racism but because of her own shortcomings, including extensive plagiarism—she will stay on as a professor at the university with a salary of more than $900,000 a year? The cost of a four-year Harvard education these days is estimated at $334,000. Instead of firing her for cause, it will be as if Harvard had decided that a dozen undergraduates’ painfully assembled tuitions are to be allocated each year to finance Ms. Gay’s opulence and soothe her bruised feelings.
