‘No! No! No! No!’ CNN’s Bakari Sellers Calls Out Fellow CNN Analyst For Saying Ousted Black Harvard Prez Wasn’t Qualified

CNN analyst Bakari Sellers pushed back hard when Republican fellow CNNer Scott Jennings said ousted Harvard President Claudine Gay had “a thin academic record” when she was hired.

Controversy erupted after Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) asked Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay and the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Pennsylvania if calls for genocide equate to harassment during a hearing this week. The answers were not a flat “yes,” which generated significant outrage.

But a new strain of criticism arose after Harvard announced they’d be standing by President Gay — conservatives attacking her as a diversity hire who lacks qualifications.

On Thursday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Jennings made such a suggestion during a discussion of Gay’s resignation from the institution. Sellers — while conceding the “below poor” answers at the hearings — called out what he identified as “racial animus” in the argument that “this Black woman didn’t deserve it in the first place”:

SCOTT JENNINGS: But Harvard is our national flagship university. The president of that university has to be held to the highest standards in terms of both morals and values, in terms of condemning antisemitism, but also an academic rigor. She had a thin academic record to begin with–.

BAKARI SELLERS: No! No! No! No! No! No!

SCOTT JENNINGS: And then when the plagiarism issues popped up, I just don’t believe it was tenable to ever say to ever say that we have to have we can we won’t hold our president to the same standards that we would hold our students.

BAKARI SELLERS: No! No! No! That’s —

AUDIE CORNISH: Scott, we want to let Bakari jump in here. You wanted to respond?

BAKARI SELLERS: Yeah. No, that’s, that– there are two things. One, we actually refer to Harvard as Morehouse of the North. It’s not the greatest academic institution on the planet. That’s first.

But number two, this is when we have to draw the line! I cannot sit here on national TV and allow individuals to attack the credentials and the academic record and and the professionalism of Claudine Gay to get the position, because that’s what that that’s what this conversation has delved into, that this Black woman didn’t deserve it in the first place.

And so when you when we go down this path of saying that she had a thin academic record to begin with? She was overly qualified! She was just as qualified as the 30 people who came before her, who just all happened to be White.

And so that is the when we begin to talk about the racial animus that creeps into this conversation, it’s it’s yes, you have the hearing and her poor answers, below poor answers.

And yes, you have the issues of citations which were ginned up by the right wing. We can deal with that.

But now we’re at this point where they’re saying that this Black woman didn’t deserve this job in the first place. That DEI is bad.

And I saw this missive by I believe his name is Bill Ackman, which was just full of just I can’t use the word because it’s too early in the morning on live TV. But it was full of that.

And and when you have people questioning DEI, when you have people questioning diversity, equity and inclusion and then question the record of this Black woman, we have to draw the line and say, see, that is the game that we’re talking about being played. She didn’t cause that on, that part on herself. And we have to root that part out the conversation.

AUDIE CORNISH: Bakari Sellers and Scott Jennings, thanks so much.

Watch above via CNN This Morning.