Regarding the situation at Harvard University involving allegations of plagiarism by its 30th president, Dr. Claudine Gay, and the subsequent calls for her to resign from that position, what is fundamentally at the root of that institutional kerfuffle is society’s acceptance of the faulty notion that there is such a thing as human ‘races.’

The legacy of the 19^th-century eugenicist and evolutionist Dr. Samuel George Morton, widely regarded as the ‘father’ of scientific racism and a staunch proponent of polygenesis, the idea that each human “race” was a separate act of creation, continues to cast a long and precarious shadow over today’s culture more than 170 years after his death.

Morton’s poly (many) genesis (origin) stands in stark contrast to what Scripture teaches, namely, that humanity originated from one act of creation (monogenesis), not many acts (e.g. Gen 1:27; Acts 17:26).

But let’s take the Bible out of it for a moment.

Science itself acknowledges that there is no biological or scientific basis for human “races,” a fact to which Harvard’s own website attests: “Contemporary scientific consensus agrees that race has no biological basis, but scientific racism still exists. While it’s now more subtle than craniometry, its long history demonstrates the influence social ideas about race can have on supposedly unbiased research.”[1] Conversely, the late Dr. Robert Wald Sussman, in his book “The Myth of Race,” said,

What many people do not realize is that this racial structure is not based on reality. Anthropologists have shown for many years now that there is no biological reality to human race. There are no major complex behaviors that directly correlate with what might be considered human “racial” characteristics. There is no inherent relationship between intelligence, law-abidingness, or economic practices and “race,” just as there is no relationship between nose size, height, blood group, or skin color and any set of complex human behaviors. However, over the past 500 years, we have been taught by an informal, mutually reinforcing consortium of intellectuals, politicians, statesmen, business and economic leaders, and their books, that human racial biology is real and that certain races are biologically better than others. The biologically deterministic, racist worldview . . . has been tested and disproven consistently and yet its proponents have remained resistant to all empirical scientific evidence for more than 500 years.

Scripture obliterates the idea of human “races” and it does it in only one verse: Acts 17:26, which reads, “And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation” (NASB). The word “He” in Acts 17:26 is referring to God. The “one man” (literally “one” in the Greek) is referring to Adam. The word “nation” is the Greek noun “ethnos” from which the English word “ethnicity” is derived.

My point is that such discriminatory ideologies like DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), which Harvard’s board has apparently adopted in its unwavering support of Dr. Claudine Gay, despite mounting evidence that she is in fact guilty of multiple instances of plagiarism, are fundamentally the fruit of a culture that has, for nearly 200 years, embraced the pseudo-science of Dr. Samuel Morton.

DEI would not exist today were it not for the cultural and societal acceptance of the biological falsity that there is such a thing as human “races.”

When viewed through the lens of theological anthropology, we would do well to understand that there are no such categories as “black” people or “white” people (Gal 3:28). They are merely cultural distinctions that serve only to foster and perpetuate animosity between various groups of God’s image-bearers. And that is how you and I must view one another, not as belonging to a sociocultural “racial” category, but as image-bearers of the God who created each one of us (Gen 1:27; 5:2).

In disposition the Negro is joyous, flexible, and indolent; while the many nations which compose this race present a singular diversity of intellectual character, of which the far extreme is the lowest grade of humanity. – Dr. Samuel Morton (1839)

When you examine objectively the situation involving Harvard and Dr. Gay, particularly as it relates to the refusal on the part of the board of that once-venerable institution to discipline her for repeatedly (allegedly) violating the university’s own plagiarism policy, what you’ll find is that Harvard is guilty of practicing the very same scientific racism that Dr. Samuel Morton promoted. The only difference is that the hierarchy upon which Morton’s scientific racism was founded has been inverted by the university to promote black supremacy instead white supremacy.

Harvard University’s origins date back almost 400 years to 1636. Its original motto was Truth for Christ and the Church. Its current motto is simply Truth (Veritas in Latin).

If only Harvard had the integrity and fortitude to live up to that motto today.

The real problem at Harvard is not DEI.

The real problem at Harvard is that it has embraced as virtuous the sin of partiality under the nefarious and flagitious pretense of diversity, equity, and inclusion (Jas 2:9). 

I’m sure Dr. Samuel Morton, himself an Ivy League graduate (University of Pennsylvania), would be proud. 

[1] https://library.harvard.edu/confronting-anti-black-racism/scientific-racism 

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