Harvard's Claudine Gay cited 'racial animus' in her resignation letter. But experts see a bigger attack on DEI.

In Claudine Gay’s resignation letter on Tuesday, Harvard University’s first Black — and now former — president cited the fear of being “subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus” while battling allegations of plagiarism and her congressional hearing comments related to the Israel-Hamas war. But Gay and DEI — or diversity, equity and inclusion — experts point out that racial animus was not the only driving factor that led to her resignation.

“She was targeted partially due to her race, but as part of the larger, extremist, right-wing push to reverse social progress under this banner of anti-wokeness,” Lily Zheng, a DEI strategist and best-selling author of DEI Deconstructed, told Yahoo News.

Here’s what racial animus means and how it fuels the resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion in academic and corporate spaces.

What is racial animus?

Zheng defined racial animus, in plain terms, as “racial hostility.”

“She is talking about having a target on her back for being a Black woman, the first in Harvard's history. That's essentially what I am reading, when I see her words, ‘racial animus,’” Zheng said.

A day after stepping down, Gay penned an op-ed in the New York Times in which she said she was “called the N-word more times than I care to count,” in her short six months at Harvard.

“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,” Gay wrote.

Racial animus is fueling resistance to DEI

Civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton said on Tuesday that the resignation of Harvard’s first Black president (she’s also only the second woman to hold the position) was “an assault on the health, strength and future of diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Gay also shared her views on diversity, calling it a “source of institutional strength and dynamism,” and said she advocates for a “modern curriculum.”

But as the academic world and corporations moved to create or enhance DEI initiatives in the wake of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, conservative leaders in the U.S. have attacked such initiatives as “tactics of liberal elites who suppress free thought in the name of identity politics and indoctrination.”

“Understanding our current racial landscape as a zero-sum game, where only one group of people can ‘win’ is at the heart of a lot of the current anti-wokeness, anti-DEI movement," said Zheng.

In her op-ed, Gay spoke of the conservative campaigns that “often trafficked in lies” to oust her and “often start with attacks on education and expertise.”

“They recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament,” Gay wrote.

In an email to Yahoo News, Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who has taken credit for leading a conservative campaign to push Gay to resign, compared Gay’s “racism” to that of her critics.

“Evidence that Gay is racist: she oversaw a discriminatory admissions program ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; led a discriminatory DEI bureaucracy that sought, among other things, to reduce the visual presence of ‘white men’ on campus; minimized antisemitism and the call for the violent ‘decolonization’ of Jews; supported policies that reduce individuals to racial categories and judge them on the basis of ancestry, rather than individual merit. Evidence that Claudine Gay's critics are racist: Claudine Gay claiming, but providing no hard evidence, that some unknown person or persons sent her mean emails,” Rufo wrote.

“It is a shame that some people appear to be using the tragedy playing out in the Middle East to further their agenda around attacking what they see as a too-liberal institution of higher education,” Sarah Soule, a professor who teaches organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, told Yahoo News. “If such attacks on higher education hadn't been playing out in other places in recent years, such as in Hungary, it might seem surprising. But it is just plain terrifying.”

‘Extremely strong desire’ for social progress

Zheng says that DEI efforts have historically been about “eliminating discrimination, creating fairness” and building organizations and universities that work for everyone.

“There are articles from Harvard themselves essentially admitting to, in the past and in the present, the social networks of these kinds of prestigious universities have been typically rich white men, building social, political and financial connections with other rich white men that weaves the fabric of America's political and corporate landscape for decades to come.”

Zheng added that this model of Ivy League institutions needs to change.

While Gay’s resignation, political efforts to ban DEI initiatives and the Supreme Court striking down affirmative action have been “disheartening,” according to Zheng, the decisions have not deterred people’s attitudes toward social progress. Zheng said DEI continues to be an “extremely strong desire” for working Americans and students pursuing higher education.

“There’s value for DEI for institutions at Harvard, institutions that have in the past, and in the present, continue to be bastions of this ‘old boys club,’ this kind of informal network that is fundamentally anti-meritocratic, and is about people from one set of social groups helping others from the same social group,” Zheng affirmed.

“We need to build institutions that actually work for everyone, that support everyone, that give everyone a fair shot for success that open up the doors of opportunity for everyone.”