Harvard’s Real Scandal Was A Black Woman Leader — NEW EPISODE

and I had a lot of big feelings. And eventually you said, you know, if you feel like getting on the mic and yelling at me about it, I'm here.

a lot of big emotions about it. When Gay resigned, a bunch of the like black women's group chats that I'm in, we're all buzzing about what it means and how we should all be feeling in this moment. So I say all of that to say this, which is that it is important to me that I am giving y'all very clear facts and also separating my feelings and my opinions from those facts so that y'all can make sense of what's actually happening and also come up with your own take on it. But this story was, I

have to say, pretty complex for me. It's not a terribly complex story, but it has a lot of intersecting feelings and thoughts, and a lot of those feelings and thoughts were really raw and nuanced, and so at times it was like difficult for me to say where my own feelings ended and the facts began. So I just want to say that right off the top, if this seems like a more emotional episode than you're used to getting for me, that is why. Because this feels really personal.

So let's start with the basics of what's going on. Doctor Claudine Gay was the first black woman president, first black president, and the only the second woman president of Harvard in the university's almost four hundred years. On January second, she announced that she was resigning from that position, making her tenure as Harvard's president the shortest in the university's history, lasting only six months. And here's how we got here.

So after the attack in Israel in October seventh, there was a big conversation about anti semitism on college campuses. This is my opinion, so I want to state it carefully. I think that those conversations were hijacked by people with other agendas, and that concern about anti Semitism was being used as a smoke screen to mount larger attacks on culture war issues on university campuses, and also some just

personal grievances unrelated to anti Semitism at all. I'll get into that in a moment, but first here's a timeline. Amid concerns about anti Semitism on campuses, there was a congressional hearing with the heads of Harvard, MIT and University of Pennsylvania being questioned before Congress. When Gay was questioned by Republican representative A Lease Stephonic on whether calls for genocide of Jews violated Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment,

Gay responded, it can be depending on the context. Gay went on to say, anti Semitic speech, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, and intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action. Now, this moment was a particular moment that became a big flashpoint from the hearings. It got a lot of attention on

social media, mostly negative, but the university stood by Gay. Next, in an unexpected ad hominem attack that had nothing to do with anti semitism, right wing activist Christopher Rufo surfaced plagiarism allegations against Gay, calling her academic in integrity into question with allegations of plagiarism. Then a writing newspaper based here in DC called The Free Beacon wrote about it. From then the New York Times starts writing about it a ton multiple times per week, and then it becomes

a larger thing. Now, Harvard did an investigation that cleared Gay of any academic misconduct, and they were standing by her.

The Harvard Corporation, which is, I guess the university's like overall governing body, conducted a review of her published work, and they found that she had not violated the university standards for quote research misconduct, but they did find quote a few instances of inadequate citation and stated that as a result, doctor Gay was quote proactively requesting four corrections and two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that

were omitted from the original publications. So here's a little bit of a caveat, which is that I am not an academic, so I don't even really want to weigh in too much here beyond what Harvard's governing body has already said. I was. I'm sort of an academic, like I dropped out of a PhD program after completing my coursework and really struggling, like struggle struggling, struggling to finish a dissertation. So technically I'm what you call ABD like

all but dissertation. But you know, I could not manage to adequately put together a dissertation, and I was like, nah, I'm out, So what the hell do I know? Mike, You do you consider yourself an academic. You kind of you have a PhD, But like, what do you consider yourself?

governing body. They had independent experts who looked into it and determined that, nah, there wasn't plagiarism there.

in academic writing and it's like, well, you know, I'm not the expert. I don't know why these people who don't have any expertise in it why they have become the expert. But whatever. Like, these charges are not coming from her academic colleagues or her peers, or like other academics. They're coming from people who have exuplicitly already said they

have a grievance against her. If they wanted to do a survey where we looked at the academic publishing records of every college president in the United States, totally fine, let's do that. But that is not what they're saying or doing. They are saying, we need to zero in on just her for some reason, and that reason is race. Like, that's not me saying that. That is what Chris Rufo, the person who initially surfaced these allegations against her, has said.

He explicitly has said that his disdain for DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion is the point of why he is

doing this, why he is mounting these allegations. So the focus on if she plagiarized or not totally allows what are exuplicitly bad faith actors to set the agenda and the terms of the conversation, so they say she plagiarized, and rather than responding with like, well, what kind of standard are you setting with regards to plagiarism accusations, mainstream media outlets like The New York Times are just scrambling to cover and answer the like well did she plagiarize

question in dozens of front page stories without doing any of the examination of the larger question of why they are presenting this as a question that needs to be answered, And that is what I object to. All of this is at the exuplicit urging of right wing education activist

Christopher Rufo. If that name sounds familiar to you, it might because he is the person who brought us the disingenuous moral panic on critical race theory that dominated our national discourse and led to a flurry of state laws against teaching critical race theory or really anything related to like black people. Really, this is not me saying this. This is from Christopher Rufo's own words and public tweets.

In March twenty twenty one, he tweeted, we have successfully frozen their brand critical race theory into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic as we put all the various cultural insanities under that brand category. So as he says, it is not about critical race theory, is it's about anything that he thinks is a quote cultural insanity, putting it under the umbrella of critical race theory, and then being like,

critical race theory. There it is, let's get it, let's make a law against it. He goes on to say, the goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory. We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans. So any So, by his own admission, anything that he don't like is critical race theory, and that's going to

be what he's trying to make toxic. And I gotta give it to him because he did it mission accomplished. Like people passed laws. There are laws on the books fanning critical race theory from being taught. Even though he's saying, I'm not even operating from the actual definition of whatever it is. I'm just saying anything that I don't like, anything I've agreevanced against. I'm I'm gonna get people to fold that in with critical race theory and be against it.

And by the way, I just recently found this out thanks to journalist Kayleie Holloway, Ruffo, who has positioned himself as the person who should be reshaping our academic institutions, has been saying that he himself holds a quote Masters from Harvard, when in reality, dude went to Harvard's extension School, not at real Harvard. That is a different thing. I know this might sound like a little bit petty, but it is just too ridiculous to ignore. The Harvard Extension

School is not Harvard. Like when I say Harvard, you're thinking of Harvard the university. The Harvard Extension School is a different entity.

So the fact that anyone can sign up for a course at any time of the Harvard Extension School should probably be a giveaway that it is not real Harvard, where famously not everyone can just decide to go and then go at any time.

about Rufo not having actually gone to Harvard. I was actually joking a few weeks ago that I think, in twenty twenty four, I want to go to an Ivy League extension program and then start telling people I graduated from Harvard, because I don't think that people really check. And by the time anyone like actually looks into it, you've already said You've gone to Harvard so many times that like everybody's accepted it. Think I don't think anybody is like really checking.

graduate of Harvard University or whatever. How long do you think it would be until somebody called me out publicly? It was like, you didn't actually go to Harvard, you didn't actually go to MIT, it.

other school. He said that he was unaware of any debate over whether Harvard Extension School should be referred to

differently than any other graduate degree from Harvard. So we are meant to believe that Rufo is uniquely qualified to be determining how higher education functions in the United states how it should be run on all of that, And also, if we take him at his word, he is also too unfamiliar with higher education to know and understand the difference between the Harvard Extension School and act Harvard, and that he doesn't understand that he did not actually graduate

from the real Harvard University after having gone to an institution that he didn't even really have to like apply to attend. Either he's lying, he's stupid, or both a complete mess. So Rufo was behind this pressure campaign to else gay bad actor number one, the guy who literally surfaced the plagiarism allegations. And this is what I mean when I say that bad actors with agendas have nothing to do with the stated goal of eradicating an anti

Semitism on college campuses or concern about plagiarism. They are the ones who are setting the agenda. And again this is not I don't know this because I'm super smart or have done some like super sleuth thing. The reason why I know this is because he says it explicitly in his own words. In an interview with Politico. He says this in very clear terms. We will link to the piece in the show notes, but here is a bit. Gay's resignation was the result of a coordinated and highly

organized conservative campaign. It shows a successful strategy for the political right. He told Politico how we have to work the media, how we have to exert pressure, and how we have to sequence our campaign in order to be successful.

So basically, he describes it as a three pronged attack political led by representatives Stefanett, the member of Congress who grilled Gay about anti Semitism during the congressional hearing, who, by the way, is a graduate of real Harvard, not the extension school, but who was later removed from a senior advisory committee at Harvard's School of Government after she declined to resign voluntarily. Can you guess what happened with her that she was basically forced out of this position.

said after she was pushed out. The decision by Harvard's administration to cower and cave to the woke left will continue to erode diversity of thought, public discourse, and ultimately the student experience. So again, not exactly somebody who has no agenda in all this and is purely worried about rooting out the rot of anti Semitism in our institutions. And because like, come on, she supports former President Trump and has said nothing when he had dinner with Nick Flintes,

but a literal Nazi. She also found herself in hot water last year when she ran a campaign ad that warrened immigrants could overthrow our current electorate, which is pretty much a not so subtle nod to the great replacement theory touted by white supremacists like the Buffalo Gunmen and other trolls and bad actors. And so I just do not believe that this is somebody who is purely motivated by sniffing out the rod of anti semitism in our universities.

her job. On December nineteen, Ruffo tweeted that it was his plan to quote smuggle the plagiarism story into the media apparatus from the left, which legitimizes the narrative to center left actors who have the power to topple Gay. So this is what really pisces me off in a story where there is a lot to be pissed off about. Here's what Rufo told Politico about the strategy of getting folks on the left and in legacy media at the New York Times to comment on and thus legitimize the story.

He said, it's really a textbook example of successful conservative activism, and the strategy is quite simple. Christopher Brunette and I broke the story of Claudine's plagiarism on December tenth. It drove more than one hundred million impressions on Twitter, and then it was the top story for a number of weeks in conservative media and right wing media. But I knew that in order to achieve my objective, we had

to get the narrative into left wing media. But the left wing media uniformly ignored the story for ten days and tried to bury it. So I engaged in a kind of a thoughtful and substantive campaign of shaming and bullying my colleagues on the left to take seriously the story of the most significant academic corruption scandal in Harvard's history.

Side note, there's just no way that can be true, right Like, in twenty nineteen, Harvard released a report talking about how many of the faculty and staff owned enslaved people during slavery, and taught racial eugenics. Oh no, but this president might have misattributed some citations. That is the biggest scandal.

calling on Gay to resign. Once my position, which began on the right, became the dominant position across the center left, I knew it was just a matter of time before we were going to be successful. He goes on to say that this strategy gives permission for center left political figures and intellectual figures to comment on the story and then editorialize on it. Once we crossed that threshold, we saw this cascade of publications calling on her to resign.

And this is why I am really looking at legacy media publications at the New York Times about this, like I'm not saying that it shouldn't be written about, but it can't be news worthy enough to be written about that amount, as Adam Johnson that the citations needed podcasts

put it. Articles about Clauding Gay and her various quote scandals were top five featured stories on the New York Times homepage December seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteen, seventeen, twenty second, twenty fifth, and her firing is now their top story. There is simply no way this is proportionate, sober, or reasonable coverage. And I agree, I'm not saying it shouldn't have been written about, but that is not a

reasonable amount of coverage. And especially when Christopher Rufo is out here saying explicitly saying, oh, we're playing the New York Times. We're getting them to legitimize this issue. We're getting them to make this into an issue and write about it and write about it and write about it until it becomes true, just like me not going to Harvard. If I say it enough times, eventually, who's gonna really check whether or not I went. Who's gonna really check?

letting them set the agenda. And I don't understand why when he flat out says I plan to make this plagiarism thing a smoke screen to get this woman fired as a larger attack on DEI, why pretend that that's not what he's saying. Why act as if these are conversations legitimately about just anti semitism, or legitimately about plagiarism, when plain as day in English, he is saying that

they are not. Because again, here is what he says in his own words, when asked by Politico, what is your broader objective here beyond forcing the president of Harvard to resign, he said, my primary objective is to eliminate the DEI bureaucracy in every institution in America and to restore truth rather than racialist ideology as the guiding principle

of America. There it is so in all of these articles where you are saying he was the person to surface these plagiarism allegations, why don't you say why don't you follow the thought that he gives you dot dot dot because I hate THEI. So I don't understand why legacy media continues to allow themselves to be used in this way over and over again by this one grifter who is so clear about what he is doing, so as revealing as I think his interview with Politico is.

Here's where they kind of lose me because after the question where he says, oh, the entire thing is about how much I don't like DEI, the next question that interviewer, if I had been interviewing him, I would have asked, is what does Claudine get have to do with DEI? Because that's the threat I see here?

was encountering in their day to day life. It was about labeling anything having to do with race or wokeness as critical race theory and then making that label a toxic brand. In her resignation letter, Gay kind of attludes to that. She says, it is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses.

A black woman selected to lead a storied institution, someone who've used diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism. Someone who has advocated a modern curriculum that spans from the frontier of quantum science to the long neglected history of Asian Americans. Someone who believes that a daughter of Haitian immigrants has something to offer to the nation's oldest university.

Gay is the daughter of Haitian immigrants. Also, fun fact, she is the cousin of the writer of Roxanne Gey. So I think what Chris Rufo and people like him are actually saying is that they are looking at this institution that is Harvard, right, this big shining school, and saying, if there is a black woman who is at the helm of that institution. It could not possibly be because

she is qualified. It is because she is black. She has been given this job as a diversity higher and that is representative of all that is wrong that needs to be righted in a society that has gotten two woke and too obsessed with identity politics. And that she is a black woman at the helm of the oldest and most prestigious university in the country is representative of that, representative of all that is wrong with our current society,

our current woke agenda. Blah blah blah. So Ruffo said that Bill Ackman represented the financial plank of getting Gay pushed out of Harvard. So who is he, Well, he is a billionaire hedge fund manager and a donor to Harvard. He has given tens of millions of dollars to over the years to Harvard, but that money actually does not rank him even close to the top donors, not even a little bit. He has not given near enough money

to rank as a top donor to the school. He said that he was really upset about the way that Gay handled charges of anti semitism on campus, and like that is what he has said is his issue with her. But according to a piece in the New York Times. Even before the October seventh attack, the relationship between Acman as a donor and Harvard had already begun to deteriorate.

Mister Ackman has privately steamed at Harvard over at least the past three years, Several people who have discussed the subject with him say, in part, after the university's administration brushed off his suggestions for how to set up a testing lab to get totudents and staff back to campus during the pandemic two years ago, in an incident not previously reported, mister Ackman told members of Harvard's fundraising team he might not give another dime because they hadn't heeded

his advice on how to invest an earlier donation, said two people with knowledge of the exchanges. Mister Ackman sent off a series of fiery letters to Harvard administrators, questioning their financial acumen. He wound up donating more money anyway. So it is possible that Acman was concerned about anti Semitism. Like I'm not saying that that's a lie or made up, but it's also clear that this is somebody who felt that because they were giving some money again, though not

even close to a top donation that Harvard receives. And I guess because he's like got business acumen, he's a billionaire or something that like he should be having more say in how things are run at Harvard and honestly like to really keep it one hundred, to extrapolate a little bit from what I've been in the New York Times. Again, this is my opinion. I think he probably felt like when Gay got into that position of president at Harvard and then didn't immediately like look to him with the

reverence he felt he deserved. I bet that he was like, who does this black bitch think she is not capitulating to me? I'll show her like. I think that that's probably how he felt. It sounds like even before Gay was ever at the Helm, that relationship was deteriorating, and now having a black woman at the Helm not listening to his brilliant financial advice, I think that probably chapped is s like I have dealt with my fair share of this kind of dynamic, and that's what it reads

like to me. More after a quick break, let's get right back into it. So y'all might recall that after the October seventh attack in Israel. The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee published an open letter in which they said that they hold quote the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence, declaring that millions of Palestinians and Gaza have been forced to live in an open air prison, and called on Harvard to take action to stop the

ongoing annihilation of Palestinians. After they published this letter, Ackman called for the publication of the names of all the students involved in signing the letter so that he could ensure that his company and others do not inadvertently hire any of the people who sign the letter. Acman posted, one should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield with issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists, and the name should be made public so that their views

are publicly known. Keep in mind, we are talking about undergraduate students here. Now this is my thing. Whether or not you think that these undergrads should written this letter or not, I'm not saying that's what I think, but let's say, for the sake of argument, that's what somebody thought. I can tell you, having an aggrieved sixty year old billionaire donor to the school who has his own unrelated gripe against the university. Litigating what should happen to a

bunch of undergrads is not good. Like issues of campus protest and speech are you know, I guess they're important in a kind of sense, like this is a whole other episode. But and this is my opinion, even if you think that these undergrads should not have written this letter, they are in college. They are undergraduates. Like, where else are you meant to be working out your political and social opinions as a young person if not in college?

Like I don't even want to get into some of the stuff I believed and publicly said when I was an undergrad. I was walking around identifying as a libertarian, thinking that that sounded cool and smart, But in reality, I was nineteen and I was just like stoned all the time, and I didn't know what I was saying

because I was young. So I just don't think a dynamic or a billionaire who thinks everybody should be cow chowing to him injecting himself into what is happening on a college campus with undergrads is gonna be good for anybody.

Like I listened to a lot of the podcast You're Wrong About and Michael Hubbs, friend of the show, talks about this a lot when he covers issues about like campus culture wars, where he says, like, when stuff happens on a college campus outside forces with an axe to grind, swooping in and pouring gasoline on the fire is not making things any better, especially at a time and you had trucks displaying the names and faces of undergraduates who were supportive of Palestine on campus, Like, this is not

a safe or reasonable college campus climate for anyone. So the day after Gay resigned, Actmen published a four thousand words screed against Dei on Twitter where he says that Dei is quote the root cause of anti Semitism at Harvard, which, like, think about that, right, because Harvard is almost four hundred

years old. Dei wasn't even a thing until like around the sixties, So he is saying that, Say, back in nineteen twenty two, when Harvard is then president A. Lawrence Lowell was doing all kinds of stuff like proposing a quota on the number of Jewish students that Harvard should allow. Well, it turns out that was actually because of Dei. A school of thought that would not even exist for another

forty years, and it's such a rewriting of history. Like I do think an honest assessment of anti semitism in institutions is a worthwhile practice, but pointing to DEI as your starting point is ridiculous when history exists. But you know why, look at the rots in our institutions. Where do you can just blame black people and blame wokeness

and call it a day, Ackman writes. Under DEI, one degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides on a so called intersectional pere men of oppression, where white Jews and Asians are deemed depressors and a subset of of people of color, LGBTQ people and or women are deemed to be oppressed. DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people. And it is remarkable that I even need to point

this out. This country has seen burgeoning resentment and anger grow materially over the last few years, and the DEI movement is an important contributor to our growing divisiveness. Resentment is one of the most important drivers of racism, and it is the lack of equity I e fairness and how DEI operates that contributes to this resentment. He continued, So what he is actually saying, in my opinion, is that it is not about anti semitism and it's not

about plagiarism. And they are saying that out loud and in print. It is this attitude that says that black people and people of color have like gotten too much handed to us because we are black, or because we are women, or because we are black women. And honestly, I agree with them that it is about resentment, white resentment and white breathance and white anxiety that people like

him are stoking. And this anti DEI campaign is about stoking those white grievances and resentment and saying, hey, look, those freeloaders get everything and it's gotten out of hand. Let's put a stop to it. To put a point on the argument that I think he's making, Akman and Rufo see a black woman at the helm of an elite institution like Harvard and say she could have only gotten there because she's an affirmative action hire and she took that job from a more qualified white person, and

that needs to end. Vivek Ramaswami current Republican presidential candidate tweeted after Gay's resignation, here's a rat apply idea for the future select leadership based on merit. Who By the way, for as much as he is handwringing about people who might have gotten any support based on their identities, Ramaswami himself got a fellowship from the Soros family intended to support the educational pursuits of students who were raised by immigrants. And to me, that is really what it comes down to.

It's different when he does it. When he is successful, it is because of merit, even if he objectively got a fellowship because of his identity. When Gay is successful, it's because she's a diversity hire who just didn't work hard and deserve it like he did. Like of course he deserved it, not like her who gets things because of her identity. He doesn't do that. That fellowship was something else. He worked hard and it's merit for him. And that is why you see this infuriating double standard

that only Gay is being held to. Like do people think that Gay is the first and only university president to have omitted a handful of citations over her academic career? Why are we not digging into all of their publishing records. If this is such a big deal for university presidents now, like if you are affiliated with the university, is the standard that we're going to go through every piece that that you've ever published and every citation that you've ever

published to make sure that it checks out. If so, fine, But if that's not happening, why are we only talking about it with regards to Gay? And this is what really pisces me off and where I kind of get into my feelings about the whole thing, because when this happens to qualify black women, what they are really saying is that none of us deserve to be anywhere or have power over anything. If you're Vice President Harris, you got power because you slept your way to the top.

Or if you're Supreme Court Justice Katanchi Brown Jackson, it's because of affirmative action. Like it doesn't matter if you have a PhD from Harvard, which Gay has. It doesn't matter if you've gone to the best schools and ben at the top of your class forever as Gay has. Black excellence will not protect you, Because what the fuck makes these people think that this is a woman who didn't get where she did on merit. It is only because she is a black woman, by virtue of just

being a black woman. In these spaces, these people automatically think that we were just handed a position or a fellowship or a job or support. It is automatic to them. The people tweeting about gay just to and don't even give it a second thought. And that wouldn't be so infuriating if it did not also coincide with this reality

that they do not give us a fucking thing. Like if black women had been handed cushy positions at Harvard all this time, why did it take almost four hundred years for one of us to collect If there is a black woman working in a space where you do not usually see black women, trust and believe she is there because she earned it. They do not give us a thing. It takes so much work. You have to claw for it, fight for it, put up with shit that people could not even imagine, to stay there day

after day. It truly reminds me of that episode of Scandal where Carrie Washington's dad is yelling at her and he's like, we have to be twice as good to get half of what they have. Like that really is the truth of what it is like, and I don't know, just like seeing this unfold, seeing how quickly all of these people so quickly turned to her not being qualified

as an automatic given, it just really hurt. And I think that's one of the reasons like why this was so hard for me and why it's so personal for me.

After Gay resigned, Jason kalakanis who is one of the hosts of the All In Tech podcast, who I feel like I talk about that show a lot on this podcast, and it's probably because, like it is generally like the number one or number two tech podcast in the world, and so I think, like what they say, they have a huge platform when it comes to shaping opinions and technology, So what they say, I think really matters. He tweeted. We are returning to a colorblind, performance based society where

we judge people by their character, effort, and achievements. Identity politics is a road to nowhere, and it focuses a society on what divides us as opposed to what binds us. As we've been back, however, we must acknowledge that the world isn't there and everyone has a different starting line in life. It is virtuous to support everyone who starts behind us to catch up. But we should do this at the source education, internships and skills training. So this tweet is what really got me.

he would really think about me. That I didn't get there on my merit, that I couldn't be qualified, And it just really hurts. Like if somebody listening knows Jason or listens to his show or has a connection to him, I honestly hope he hears this and like, I don't mean that in like a badass bitch way I wish I did. I don't I don't mean that in a like tell Circey. I want her to know it was me kind of way.

a conversation about this. If you were to scroll the Apple tech podcasts where Jason and I both sometimes show up him all the time, me if I'm lucky the top Apple Tech podcasts, and you were to tell me how many of those shows were hosted black black women, or even how many of them had black women behind the scenes. How many of those shows even had black women as guests, let's say they have white hosts, how many of them regularly spotlight black women's voices even just

as guests as commentary. Take a look at those numbers, and then tell me, Jason with a straight face, that we have always that we are in a performance based colorblind society here in the tech space that we're both in. Look how few of us there are in this space and tell me with a straight face that you think that I got here because they are handing out positions and jobs and funding and podcasts and support to black women because of our identities. I am not saying that

I am the only one of us out here. Thank God, I am not the only one of us out here. I would not want to be in this space if I was the only Black women out here doing this. However, if what Jason is saying is true, and we're all just getting whatever be thrown at us because we're black women, then where are the rest of us? Why is this space so white and male? Why does this space feel so lonely sometimes when I look at your pod, the all in podcast? Why does your podcast have no Black women?

Why do y'all almost never spotlight black women, our research, our commentary, our analysis? Where is it if? If we are just been being forced into these spaces not because we deserve it, not because of merit, but because they're just giving them away because of because we're black women and the word is getting everything, where are the rest of us, where are we? I would love to know if what are you is saying is true and that

people are just being given things. When it comes to VC funding, why is it that black women get less than one percent of all VC funding? Not even like less than one not even one. One is the smallest amount of a number that something can be and still be a number, and we don't even get that. Why if what you are saying is true, how can that be possible? And I think hearing comments like that from people like Jason against the backdrop where we already get

so few of anything, so little of anything. We already get the crumbs, the scraps, the less than one and to have people say, well, what little you do have, you don't even really deserve that it was handed to you. It's just such a slap in the face. And what upsets me about this is that it negates the reality that people on the outside don't always see. And I honestly, like work very hard to like not get down on

it and not focus on it. But the reality is that we are dealing with so much just to be in these spaces, like I had to fight to have shows on the same chart as Jason's albeit one hundred slots down, but I had to fight to be there. You think they gave me anything. You think anybody on my Dora and said here, take this. I fucking wish I would. If that were the case, I would be the first person to be like, oh my god, like,

can you believe I got this? How cushy? And this assumption that it is about merit for him and not about merit for me on the basis of me being a black woman, it's not just wrong, it's offensive, like it's a lie. It is hurtful because these are my colleagues and this is how they really see me. This is what they really actually think about me. And yeah, I do take it personally to have someone say like, oh, well, for him, it's about merit, but for me, I gotta

be the diversity higher. And so we have to work very hard to fight for what we get, and what we get is not often a lot and not often what we deserve, and we kind of have to like

make a meal of that. But then on top of it, to have people like them who set the agenda, set the tone and be like, oh, well, you don't even deserve what you have Meanwhile, if they knew the stuff that I have to smile through, the amounts of shit I have to eat regularly, the kind of resiponses that we get from people who don't think that we deserve to be where we are, just to have the opportunity to work and make less it would shock him, Like, y'all,

remember they had to have public campaigns to remind white people not to touch black people's hair in public places. This has happened to me before in a professional context, Jason, Has it ever happened to you? Have you ever had to experience that in front of your colleagues and then just smile through it and brush it off and keep going and do your job, because that's just how it is.

We just didn't add for the service delete me, and in the when I got that ad it, I was like, Oh, I know exactly what I'll say, which is that even before the podcast started, when I was just working out what we were going to be talking about, one of the first things I did a sign up for delete me because I was afraid that people were gonna come after me and come after my family and come after my loved ones because of the things that I was saying on here, and those fears are not unfounded, they are

actually very reasonable, Like people like Jason have no idea what people like me have to go through just to be here and get less, like he could not be me for one second again, Like it just upsets me that this to hear, to hear what I what you always suspect, to hear what you really know deep down, it just really hurts. And yeah, I mean I'm hurt, Like it's upsetting to me. And I think it goes for women, It goes for black women, it goes for other people of color, it goes for trans folks, it

goes for queer folks. Like if people really knew how hard it is to do what we do, to have to show up in some of these spaces, how much of ourselves we have to like cut and cut off and cut out be in these spaces. Like we know, we feel it every day, We deal with that reality every day, but they don't know. And then on top of it, they get to go out in public and say shit like this, and not just say it, but have what they say set the agenda, set the tone,

establish the conversation, be accepted as truth. It is just like so wrong and so ignorant, and it hurts like it hurts it. These are the people that I'm like in the same space with. It hurts that this is how they this is genuinely how they see us. And I know, I know this sounds like very woe with me right now, and I am sorry, but it hurts me very personally, very deeply. And the reality is that

it hurts all of us. The data is super clear that these kinds of public conversations trickle down to other marginalized people and it paints us all as unqualified and bad leaders. Like it is. It was so easy for people to say Clauding Gay is unqualified, she's a PhD from Harvard. Too many people have that, like they are so quick to cut her down and give and tell us that she didn't deserve to get where she is. And other people see that and it has a real impact.

It makes it so easy to look at marginalized people and leadership positions and say we don't belong there, we shouldn't be there. This stuff has real consequences. It keeps us out of rooms where decisions are being made, which makes us all worse off. It makes us all less safe. It makes technology worse because it's being designed by less people who are in more silos. Everybody suffers when this

kind of stuff flourishes. As it's flourishing right now. Other marginalized people see this and they think, well, it's not worth it to strive if this is going to be what it is. It prevents us from having a truly representative democracy, the democracy that we deserve, and keeps us from having civic and public spaces that look like the

communities that they're supposed to be working for. And I think that that is what people like RUFO are saying, that we shouldn't be able to have any avenues to be in civic and public life and build power in those spaces. We shouldn't have any avenues to power Black women, who we already hold so little institutional power, and they

want us to not have that either. And honestly, like the thing about Gay, it's not really about her as an individual, but I do think I might have a little bit of an unpopular opinion about her, which is that, like, I don't know Gay, but she is unquestionably qualified to be the president of Harvard. The question of whether she got there by merrit or not like is laughable, does

not deserve a response. But I think that maybe part of gay maybe thought that like carrying weight for Harvard's status quo was going to be the answer for her and that like maybe that would save her, Like if she doesn't mix it up too much, the storm will pass. And in the end it didn't save her. My friend Tim put it really well on Twitter. Her resignation is proof that you can be middle of the road, a political and innocuous and your black ass will still get clipped.

So you might as well stand for something and fight back, all right, I am I genuinely upset.

to this law. DeSantis signed a similar law in Florida last year too. So I think the next iteration of this is going to be corporations and brands facing pressure to drop or distance themselves from DEI. I don't know if you saw, but the former CEO of the active wear brand Lululemon basically said like, oh, we have to

get away from DEI. You need to make it clear that you don't want certain people buying your clothes, which is like WHOA Trust and believe when I say I will never buy another I like mission accomplished, suck is overpriced garbage anyway, But trust and believe that my black ass never will. You will never get a die of my money, can do, don't got to worry about me. Will never be buying another Lulu a Lemon item again in my life.

a black woman in an ad campaign DEI. And I think the goal really is a society where marginalized people do not hold power in civic and public life, and any avenues where Bobby might have access to power or support toward power are obliterated. It's the same reason why after gutting affirmative action, Edward Blum, that right wing activist went after funding fellowships that support black women in like

fearless fun. And I think doing this via attacks on DEI as racist or like reverse racist or whatever just sets up this fictitious idea that we're living in a society where black folks are being given everything, all the power. It is the most callous, disingenuous way of stoking the fears and anxieties of the dominant group while they get to continue enjoy being the dominant group and also pretending

to be underserved. But as always, those attacks always up hurting everyone right like, they end up making us all worse off. Ruffo has said that one of his goals is to make DEI work at the professional level obsolute dead end jobs. He said one goal for twenty twenty four fifty percent net reduction of DEI jobs in corporate America. Put the entire industry into chaos, make it a career path to nowhere. And do you know who has held the majority of DEI jobs in the United States? White women?

The data is very clear over the past ten years. White women not only hold the majority of executive and consulting DEI roles, but are also the best compensated for this work, with the longest tenured This is according to a write up by a partner R of Data for Inclusive Change, which we will link to in the show notes. And So I say all of this to say, like, it is not just about black women. These attacks, if

left to fester, hurt all of us. And so women, white women, all women, all of us should be concerned about this because it's like Prince said, when you play me, you play yourself. And like if we are to if if he succeeds in making DEI not tenable loss a career, it's white women are the ones who are holding those jobs. You could you could ask the question as to like why that is that's a whole other issue, but like that's that's who is currently holding power in the DEI

space currently. The data is very clear.

he made the point that you made. He said, the loss of deiphobic companies is my gain. Cuban went on to defend the core principles of DEI and saying, having a workforce that is diverse and representative of your stakeholders is good for business.

attacks and how they work. It has been going on for so long. It is time to figure out the game and figure out what you were going to do. It is past time to figure out the game and figure out what you're going to do. These same disingenuous tactics have been used too many times for these institutions to continue to feign ignorance and powerlessness and not know how to respond when they happen and to not be

anticipating them. One of the biggest takeaways that I had from that series is that you cannot capitulate to these people. If you give them an inch, they will smell blood in the water and they will know they can take a mile. Gay announced her resignation like a couple of days ago. Ackman has already called for the entire board of Harvard to resign right after that, even after he

got his way and she resigned. When trans influencer Dylan mulvaney made that one video for bud Light, the company apologized, basically threw her to the wolves, never called her, never even sent her an email like how you do and let her have to deal with death threats, have to leave her home. All of that, they parted ways with employees who had been involved, and these people were still not satisfied. They would after target for Pride merchandise nets.

There is no pleasing these people because they are bad actors. So if you relent at all, they will know like, oh, this is a winning strategy. Let's just keep doing it. So it is time to stand by your staff, stand by your people, and say listen, if you come for them, we will not budge go pound sand and to legacy media. You do not have to be Chris Ruffo's bitch. Like you can make a different choice. Victor Ray, who wrote the book on critical race theory, put it so beautifully.

He said, accepting bad faith framing is a choice to ally oneself with bad faith actors, and that is absolutely the truth. And yeah, I guess that's really where we gotta leave it. Like I really hope that we see in institutions who do have power really preparing for this and understanding this. And yeah, I mean it's not how I wanted to start my twenty twenty four with a whole massive national conversation about how black women are unqualified.

You know, when this was all going down, one of my mentors, Sabrina, and I were talking about like what we should be doing in this moment, like should prominent visible black women be like publishing an open letter putting legacy media on blast and being like we see this happening, we see you doing it, and we won't take it.

And I thought about this for a minute, and I was like, you know, all I really want to do is like exist and do my work and do my job, and that's it, and just like live our life, like live my life. All I want to do is live my life the same as anyone else without these attacks. When we get into leadership positions, all I want to do is know that I'm not going to be tossed out like garbage as collateral damage when the attack right.

I just want my humanity recognize. And so I don't know the idea of like putting out a letter saying this. I just think in twenty twenty four we should be done having to advocate for our humanity in this way in public, and yet here we are. So I don't know. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store at tangoti dot com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can reach us at

Hello at tegodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative edited by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almada is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridge Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple podcasts.

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