A second comment re Claudine Gay is that I was forced out of desperation to get "The Slave's Cause" from the public library because UNC Press was delayed in shipping the books. Manisha Sinha had to cut the book to 600 pages (~700 with footnotes) so there is not much time for brilliance in here because of the sheer number of facts that have to be known but there is plenty of time to display mastery because of the sheer number of primary documents that she was willing to read along with every obvious (to me) relevant secondary source that she was willing to cite. A university president may primarily need mastery in their scholarship because their primary job is to gain the respect of both the faculty and outside communities to whom they represent the university. The NYT story made clear that Claudine Gay could not even protect the individuals on the board from intrusive questions from people that they knew even if the board might have personally liked her.
A second comment re Claudine Gay is that I was forced out of desperation to get "The Slave's Cause" from the public library because UNC Press was delayed in shipping the books. Manisha Sinha had to cut the book to 600 pages (~700 with footnotes) so there is not much time for brilliance in here because of the sheer number of facts that have to be known but there is plenty of time to display mastery because of the sheer number of primary documents that she was willing to read along with every obvious (to me) relevant secondary source that she was willing to cite. A university president may primarily need mastery in their scholarship because their primary job is to gain the respect of both the faculty and outside communities to whom they represent the university. The NYT story made clear that Claudine Gay could not even protect the individuals on the board from intrusive questions from people that they knew even if the board might have personally liked her.
(Yes, "Slave's Cause" is Yale UP but UNC Press was delayed in shipping the books that I ordered from them from their end-of-year sale)