The bonfire of the elites
singes another.
The American meritocracy is odd. Melting pot it ain’t. And it has kept few holy shrines – until now.
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post are calling for the head of Harvard University’s president. Her crime? Plagiarism. Plagiarism? What public figure doesn’t plagiarise in the land of the stock phrase and the mixed metaphor? Even that most sacred text, the ‘Declaration of Independence’ (T Jefferson 1776), was an edited reworking of similar texts.
No, the president’s crime was not committing plagiarism; nor was it allowing herself to be seen as a token hire who reads from a script. Her crime was letting the cat out of the bag. A Harvard man called Pinker has described the cat thus: ‘a network of like-minded cronies conferring prestige on each other’.
Anybody who knows the first thing about such institutions, secular and sacred, or who has read a few pages of Pareto, will say, yes.. and?
America’s great institutions are like its cities and suburbs where each cohort of residents denounces its successors for their laxity. The neighbourhood ‘went’ Irish, then Jewish, then Black… Woe, there goes the neighbourhood!
Get ready for more gentrification in Kalamazoo.