Roxane Gay is the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. She currently serves as the artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School and was called this week to the “liberation” of accused assassin Luigi Mangione. Gay (the cousin of former Harvard University President Claudine Gay) is the latest example of the radical chic of higher education.
Professor Gay was on a panel on “fat liberation” at Harvard Medical School. In a video posted to X, Gay responds to a question about the health industry by declaring “Free Luigi, for one.” She added that “The health insurance industry is equal opportunity evil. They are terrible for thin people, for fat people, for white people, for black people … They just want to prioritize profit over bodies and health.”
It appears that it is not evil to murder UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024, leaving a widow and children without a husband and father.
It is unclear what an artist-in-residence entails or why Harvard Medical School considers this a priority, given the other pressing health care issues. It is reminiscent of the bizarre “activists-in-residence” at UCLA medical school.
She is not only someone whom Harvard wants to educate their doctors, but Rutgers also gave her a prestigious academic chair.
Another panelist author Da’Shaun Harrison reportedly used the panel to explain to medical students how “Fascism, is the very foundation of the Western society, the very foundation of the U.S., through the transatlantic slave trade and through colonialism.” Harrison added that “body fascism” is part of that evil foundation for Western society.
Gay is hardly unique.
Radical faculty members on the left are common across the country and many espouse the same hate-filled and violent rhetoric.
Professors have regularly advocated “detonating white people,” denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters, and making other outrageous statements. A San Diego University professor celebrated the death of an Israeli soldier who was eaten by a shark.
While you cannot be too radical on the left for many departments, even a moderate or center-right applicant will find it challenging to secure a teaching position today. An open conservative would be a nonstarter with many departments. Forty percent of faculty admit they would never vote for a Trump supporter, regardless of qualifications, publications, or accomplishments.
Instead, they hire and give chairs to extremists like Gay. Rutgers University, a public university, believes that a hate-spewing extremist is the ideal chair for its Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies department.
Likewise, Harvard Medical School, which charges roughly $122,000 for tuition and other costs, insists that Gay is an important part of its students’ education.
The scene perfectly embodies the state of higher education in America today.
If someone correctly said that institutions of higher education like Harvard “just want to prioritize profit over students and education” and thereby justified the assassination of professors and other academics, people like Roxane Gay would be shocked and outraged. But when it’s something the Fascist left finds abhorrent, like a healthcare company that operates for profit while providing vital goods and services, they justify extreme violence.
“Fat liberation panel?” Sounds very boring to me. In fact, the mental machinations that university faculty put themselves through are probably boring enough to lull everyone into a coma. No wonder they come up with crazy ideas like freeing Mangione. They have to spice things up just to maintain consciousness.
As of June 30, 2025, Harvard’s endowment was valued at $56.9 billion.
One wonders about academic incest in terms of liberal versus conservative and how such a state could evolve? Look no further than Roxane Gay, the “artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School” and “the cousin of former Harvard University President Claudine Gay”, You remember Claudine, the world renowned academic plagiarist and wobbly bigot who remains on the faculty of Harvard despite a demonstrated lack of academic virtue? Harvard, a university that not only failed to check out Claudine’s plagiarized work but hired Claudine and then made her President, also hired her cousin as an artist in residence at their medical school? Shocking? Not for Harvard.
Keep it simple. In the last analysis it is really not academic incest, it is about the attractive forces between incompetents and academic frauds who capitalize of bigotry and hate, finding a home in the weak-kneed world of academia. And with those kind of forces at work, is anyone really surprised that Harvard would find itself before the SCOTUS involving cases of discrimination?
No longer can we say the academic left lives in its own bubble. In fact, they live in a black hole with a different physics altogether. They hire only those likely to be sucked within. They support the most bizarre, extreme views, and they are internally protected. This cannot be sustainable. They really produce little that is new; most of their work could be AI-generated in minutes. Even now, many younger people are rejecting college as a pathway to a better life. It seems the colleges are out of phase with the new generation.
@gdonaldallen
This is where I’m at too. The left’s ideas are so bizarre they beggar not just belief, but sanity, at this point. It is absolutely like watching insane clowns imitate regular humans. We still need educated people, so it is tragic that schools like Harvard are now just a punchline, and they are.
Who cares what a Rutgers Professors Calls for? They are morons with no political power. You want political power, run for office and see if you can win or most people reject you lunacy. Otherwise your calls mean nothing,
The current academic appointments of the “Gay” cousins is really a disservice to those among us who categorize and in that way distinguish themselves by the supposed identifiable representative color of their epidermis. These two women are intellectually challenged. Because of that their opinions are of no value to our society other than to identify them as idiots.
Intellectually challenged? So you think brains is a prerequisite to hold a professorial job? In business too? You’ve learned nothing in life.
The good professor again mischaracterizes the state of academic indoctrination on campuses across the nation as “higher education.” The term “education” no longer has any meaningful relevance where the “privilege” of being indoctrinated costs more than $125K annually.
I would say I’m shocked, but not anymore.
Makes no sense.