The trials and tribulations of Claudine Gay‚ the former president of Harvard University who resigned this week after being exposed as both a Jew-hatred apologist and a serial plagiarist‚ perfectly expose America’s cultural divide. To the Right‚ she is the embodiment of the woke ideology and the “Diversity‚ Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) regime: a ruthless careerist who knifed fellow black scholars in the back during her institutional ladder-climbing‚ a middling intellectual who has never advanced meaningful scholarship and has never even published a book under her name‚ and someone who—a la Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—was transparently picked solely due to checking some identity boxes. To the Left‚ she is a martyr par excellence: a black woman in a position of high prominence who came under withering assault from hidebound racists‚ and whose defenestration should—a la George Floyd’s death in May 2020—bring about a broader “racial reckoning” about America’s continued shortcomings and injustices. The latter narrative‚ dutifully peddled by Gay herself in both her shameful resignation letter and a New York Times op-ed a day later‚ is wrong. That narrative is woefully out of touch with the commonsense sentiments of the American people‚ who correctly value merit and excellence—now dismissed by our decadent elites as “anachronistic” at best‚ or as vestiges of “white supremacy” at worst—over the zero-sum identitarian scraps offered by the DEI regime. Claudine Gay is no martyr. In fact‚ Gay managed to maintain her sinecure for more than three weeks longer than did Liz Magill‚ who resigned her perch as president of the University of Pennsylvania within days of the leaders’ disgraceful‚ morally bankrupt congressional testimony on Dec. 5—the most-viewed in the history of the U.S. Congress—in which the ladies smirked their way through rigorous bipartisan questioning and refused to unequivocally denounce on-campus calls for Jewish genocide. If anything‚ it is dispiriting that it took a massive additional plagiarism scandal—exposed by intrepid investigative journalists such as Chris Rufo and Aaron Sibarium—to attain the justice that should have resulted from Gay’s “mere” refusal to adequately protect Harvard’s Jews at a time of skyrocketing global antisemitism. As Sen. J.D. Vance‚ R-Ohio‚ tweeted‚ the “most important point” about the Claudine Gay saga isn’t that she resigned after facing intense (if proper) scrutiny‚ but “that she had the job—the most prestigious job in higher education—after an extremely thin record of accomplishment” in the first place. That is indeed the real scandal. The fact that a comically underqualified serial plagiarist who cannot condemn calls for Jewish genocide and cannot accept any criticism without immediately attributing it to “racism” attained the presidency of Harvard University should indeed lead to a national conversation and soul-searching—albeit not the kind of “racial reckoning” conversation the Left now desires. That necessary conversation about the absurdities of the DEI catechism‚ however‚ would require honesty‚ good faith and informed patriotism from all participants. Alas. Gay’s is undoubtedly a nice scalp for the forces of civilizational sanity in our roiling culture war against the aggressor forces of civilizational arson. But unless broader changes are made‚ beginning but by no means ending with the Harvard Corporation that exercises board oversight duties‚ Gay’s departure will end up more symbolic than meaningful. Gay demonstrated neither contrition nor self-awareness in her resignation letter and Times op-ed‚ and there is no reason for thinking the university has engaged in self-reflection about its role in pushing the DEI cancer. Unless and until Harvard indicates that it has learned any of the proper lessons from the saga of its shortest-tenured president in its nearly 400-year-old institutional history‚ aspiring matriculants should withhold their applications‚ donors should withhold their checkbooks‚ and taxpayers should not contribute a penny. Ultimately‚ the civilizational struggle against the DEI regime‚ and the broader effort to restore commonsense values such as merit‚ industry and excellence to their proper place‚ necessitates a sprawling‚ grassroots national effort. Salutary one-off developments such as the resignation of a high-ranking Jew-hatred apologist and serial plagiarist are helpful for energizing the masses. But that energy must be properly channeled: In the political arena‚ that means freezing the hiring of DEI bureaucrats on public university campuses‚ as Wisconsin has done‚ or (better yet) fully eliminating the bureaucracies‚ as states like Florida and Texas have done. Similar pressure should be applied on corporations‚ some of which seem to be heading in the right direction. Google‚ for instance‚ has slashed DEI-related job postings from 20%-30% year over year‚ according to data from the job-listing site Indeed. There can be no resting on our laurels. We must not rest until this cancer is fully eradicated. DEI delenda est. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off‚ please email letters@DailySignal.com‚ and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. The post Claudine Gay Is Not a Martyr appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Top 20 Jobs to Have When the Economy Collapses

2024 Predictions: Our Wild &; Bold Predictions!

‘Tip of the Iceberg’: At Least 309 Infections and 16 Escaped Pathogens Linked to Lab Accidents

25 Foods You Can Grow In Buckets Year Round

How to Save Money on Calendars and Planners

Hunter Biden... Documentary Film Star?

Seattle's Tragic‚ Record-Breaking Year

Morale is Low so Biden Administration is Throwing a Party For Itself

Uranus and Neptune are the ice giant planets of the Solar System and have plenty of similarities. A major difference at a glance has always been their color – sure‚ they were both on the blue spectrum‚ but the aquamarine Uranus was strikingly paler than the cobalt Neptune. It turns out that contrast was down to the processing of the image. To the naked eye‚ they wouldn’t look that different.Researchers have reprocessed the Voyager images to match what our eyes would see. Cameras do not operate like our eyes. Imaging systems on telescopes and spacecraft have filters‚ and these can be used to highlight certain features more than others.Voyager 2‚ the only spacecraft to ever fly past these two planets‚ took single-color images‚ and they were later reprocessed into what we have seen for the last few decades. Scientists knew that the processed Uranus and Neptune images were not their true colors. Hubble images of the two planets (also not true colors) show them much closer in hue than the Voyager 2 snaps. But creating a true-color image is not an obvious exercise.“Although the familiar Voyager 2 images of Uranus were published in a form closer to ‘true’ colour‚ those of Neptune were‚ in fact‚ stretched and enhanced‚ and therefore made artificially too blue. Even though the artificially-saturated colour was known at the time amongst planetary scientists – and the images were released with captions explaining it – that distinction had become lost over time‚” lead author Professor Patrick Irwin‚ from the University of Oxford‚ said in a statement.“Applying our model to the original data‚ we have been able to reconstitute the most accurate representation yet of the colour of both Neptune and Uranus.”It is thanks to observations from Hubble and the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope that they were able to get to the true colors. The instruments collected the spectrum of the light from the planet and used it to make the Voyager images more faithful to our own seeing apparatus.Neptune is a little bluer than Uranus due to a thinner haze. Uranus's colors‚ meanwhile‚ change from greener to bluer during its peculiar seasons. The planet orbits roughly on its side following a major collision‚ so its seasons go from one pole facing the Sun‚ to the equatorial regions‚ to the other pole. At the solstices‚ when the Sun is over either pole‚ the planet is a little greener.         The team suggests that a haze of methane ice particles and a lack of methane at the pole could explain the difference in colors. Decades of observations show the subtle variations as the planet goes on its 84-year-long trek around the Sun.“This is the first study to match a quantitative model to imaging data to explain why the colour of Uranus changes during its orbit‚” Professor Irwin added. “In this way‚ we have demonstrated that Uranus is greener at the solstice due to the polar regions having reduced methane abundance but also an increased thickness of brightly scattering methane ice particles.”Dr Heidi Hammel‚ of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)‚ who has spent decades studying Neptune and Uranus but was not involved in the study‚ said: “The misperception of Neptune’s colour‚ as well as the unusual colour changes of Uranus‚ have bedevilled us for decades. This comprehensive study should finally put both issues to rest.”The study is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.