Journalist and 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones met with ousted Harvard President Claudine Gay and insisted the university re-enact affirmative action at a legacy of slavery symposium.
Hannah-Jones delivered a keynote speech and met the ex-president, who she previously defended from critics, during the Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery Initiative’s 2024 conference on Tuesday.
The 1619 Project founder recommended the implementation of ‘a lineage-based affirmative action program’ based on ancestral ties to slavery during her remarks, reported The Harvard Crimson.
The Supreme Court decided in a 6 to 2 vote – with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused – that Harvard’s admission policy should also be struck down in decision sending shockwaves nationwide in June.
The ruling ended the decades-old ‘affirmative action’ policy that was designed to boost the number of black and Hispanic students in colleges.
The case against Harvard argued that Asian American students specifically have been illegally disadvantaged by affirmative action policies because despite achieving high grades, they score lower on Harvard’s vague ‘personal rating scale,’ particularly on ‘likability’ ratings and ‘positive personality,’ compared to other applicants.
The 1619 Project founder slammed ‘wealthy white people’ on the Supreme Court for the decision.
‘An elite, white majority determining after just 50 years of weak, half-hearted affirmative action efforts, that they are the ones to decide that enough has been done to address centuries of explicit racial exclusion against black people is the most American ruling ever,’ she wrote on Twitter following the ruling.
‘Let me make it simpler,’ she added. ‘Rich white people thinking THEY are the ones who get to say that society has done enough to mitigate that devastation of 350 years of explicit discrimination against black people is the most American thing of all.’
‘Was going to write an essay about it, but why even bother. (Also, Clarence Thomas is actually irrelevant here. So thanks but no thanks),’ she concluded.
Hannah-Jones posted a picture with Gay from the event, who was forced to quit after a barrage of criticism over plagiarism accusations and her tepid response to campus antisemitism.
‘The epitome of everything they fear. Met Dr. Claudine Gay today
Hannah-Jones told CNN’s Abby Phillip ‘it’s racist’ to call for Gay’s resignation over her controversial remarks at a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism.
‘They’re using the guise of pretending that this is about concern over anti-Semitism, which is, of course, something that all of us should be concerned about,’ she said. ‘It’s really just further their propaganda campaign against racial equity.’
Gay testified before Congress and squared off with New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik in a hostile back-and-forth.
Stefanik asked the ex-Harvard president ‘does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment?’ at her university.
Hannah-Jones insisted the Ivy League give ‘a substantial sum’ of its $50.7 billion endowment to historically black colleges and universities during her speech.
‘All the HBCUs combined don’t have the endowment of Harvard alone,’ she said.
Gay’s predecessor, Lawrence Bacow, committed $100 million for an endowment fund and other measures to close the educational, social and economic gaps that are legacies of slavery and racism in 2022.
During the event Hannah-Jones was informed that Harvard has given over $2 million to descendants slaves, which she called ‘insulting’.
‘A true investment would be hundreds of millions more,’ she said.
Hannah-Jones told The Crimson she was interested in ‘how the funds are being spent and distributed.’
‘If you are serious about an acknowledgement and trying to make repair, transparency is the number one thing because why would people trust an institution with this history to do the right thing,’ she said.
