Journalist and founder of the 1619 Project Nikole Hannah-Jones met with ousted Harvard President Claudine Gay and insisted that the university recreate affirmative action at a symposium on the legacy of slavery.
Hannah-Jones gave a keynote speech and met with the former president, whom she previously defended from critics, during the Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery 2024 conference on Tuesday.
The founder of the 1619 Project recommended during her remarks the implementation of ‘a lineage-based affirmative action program’ based on ancestral ties to slavery, reported The Harvard Crimson.
The Supreme Court decided in a They voted 6 to 2 (with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused) that Harvard’s admissions policy should also be overturned in a decision that sent shockwaves across the country in June.
The ruling ended the decades-old “affirmative action” policy that was designed to increase the number of black and Hispanic students at universities.
1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones met with ousted Harvard president Claudine Gay and said they are both “unwavering”
Hannah-Jones Calls on Ivy League to Recreate Affirmative Action for Descendants of Slaves at 2024 Harvard and Legacy of Slavery Initiative Conference
The case against Harvard argued that Asian American students specifically have been unlawfully harmed by affirmative action policies. The judges agreed that despite earning high marks, they score lower on Harvard’s vague “personal rating scale,” particularly in ratings of “agreeableness” and “positive personality,” compared to other applicants.
The founder of the 1619 Project harshly criticized “rich white people” on the Supreme Court for the decision.
“An elite white majority determining, after only 50 years of weak and half-hearted affirmative action efforts, that they are the ones deciding that enough has been done to address centuries of explicit racial exclusion against blacks is the most American ruling of history,” he wrote on Twitter after the ruling.
“Let me simplify it,” he added. ‘That rich white people think that THEY are the ones who can say that society has done enough to mitigate the devastation of 350 years of explicit discrimination against black people is the most American thing of all.
‘I was going to write an essay about it, but why bother? (Also, Clarence Thomas is actually irrelevant here. So thanks but no thanks),’ he concluded.
Hannah-Jones posted a photo with Gay from the event, who was forced to resign after a barrage of criticism over accusations of plagiarism and her lukewarm response to anti-Semitism on campus.
‘The epitome of everything they fear. I met Dr. Claudine Gay today. Both of them: upright,” she said.
Hannah-Jones told CNN’s Abby Phillip that “it’s racist” to call for Gay to resign over his controversial comments at a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism.
“They are using the pretext of pretending that this is concern about anti-Semitism, which is, of course, something we should all be concerned about,” he said. “In reality, this only increases their propaganda campaign against racial equity.”
Gay testified before Congress and faced off against New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik in a hostile back-and-forth.
Stefanik asked the former Harvard president: “Does calling for the genocide of the Jews violate Harvard’s bullying and harassment rules?” at his university.
The founder of the 1619 Project harshly criticized “rich whites” on the Supreme Court for the decision ending affirmative action in college admissions.
Hannah-Jones said “it’s racist” to call for Gay’s resignation over his controversial comments at a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism.
In response, Gay said: “It may be, depending on the context.”
Hannah-Jones insisted during her speech that the Ivy League give “a substantial sum” of its $50.7 billion endowment to historically black colleges and universities.
“Not all HBCUs combined are solely funded by Harvard,” he said.
Gay’s predecessor, Lawrence Bacow, committed $100 million to 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 had donated more than $2 million to its slave descendants, which she called “insulting.”
“A real investment would be hundreds of millions more,” he said.
Hannah-Jones told The Crimson she was interested in “how funds are spent and distributed.”
“If you’re serious about recognizing and trying to make amends, transparency comes first, because why would people trust an institution with this history to do the right thing?” he said.