Mike Gonzalez writes for the Washington Examiner about one disturbing element of the Claudine Gay episode.
Are conservatives plotting to subvert American institutions? Tucked inside the op-ed that Claudine Gay published in the New York Times the day after she stepped down as Harvard president, she included this bold assertion.
Gay made the accusation twice in her op-ed, so it was not a passing fancy. She devoted a full paragraph to the idea. …
… “The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there.” …
… Further on in the op-ed, Gay added that courage was needed “to stand up to those who seek to undermine what makes universities unique in American life.”
This contention is at first blush paradoxical. Many people, especially those in the center and the center Left, are belatedly coming around to agree that our cultural institutions have made a gigantic mistake in enforcing the view that all of life must be seen through the power dynamic of the “oppressed vs. the oppressor.” But those of us who have been writing about this for years have made the case that to get power over these institutions, the Left first had to undermine American norms and institutions.
This is the heart of what is known as “cultural Marxism.” It is not always possible to settle economic scores and overthrow regimes through violent and bloody revolutions as Karl Marx wanted (and the bloodier they were, the more Marx liked them), so a better approach is to infiltrate the institutions and indoctrinate the population, especially the young.
