Duke University economics and political science professor Timur Kuran, who, based on his social media feed, either enjoys ironclad tenure or has a substantial secondary income ensuring he need not rely on his Duke-derived salary for a living, in January 2024 posted a lengthy treatise on what he sees as DEI’s shark-jumping moment in the presence of now-former Harvard President Claudine Gay. After laying out his observation of how, in his words, “preference falsification has been central to the trajectory of DEI,” Kuran states:
The shock that unleashed the ongoing cascade in reverse was the Hamas massacres of October 7. The chain of events that they triggered in the U.S. — anti-Jewish demonstrations, the Congressional hearings, the plagiarism revelations — brought to the surface outrage that had been building up quietly for years. As public criticism of DEI grew, and as it…
