Some at Harvard might say this is a crisis sparked by external forces: the government, donors, and the public. But it developed long before Gay became president and won't end with her fall. Over time, Harvard, like many other universities, has allowed the core academic mission of research, intellectual inquiry, and teaching to be subordinated to other values that, though important, should never have been allowed to work against it.
Sometime in the twenty-tens, it became common for students to speak of feeling unsafe when they heard things that offended them. I've been a law professor at Harvard since 2006. The first piece I wrote for The New Yorker, in 2014, was about students' suggestions (then shocking to me) that rape law should not be taught in the criminal-law course, because debates involving arguments for defendants, in addition to the prosecution, caused distress. At the very least, some students said, nobody should be asked in class to argue a side with which they disagree. Since then, students have asked me to excuse them from discussing or being examined on guns, gang violence, domestic violence, the death penalty, L.G.B.T.Q. issues, police brutality, kidnapping, suicide, and abortion. I have declined, because I believe the most important skill I teach is the ability to have rigorous debates.
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