Carney’s decisions at Harvard could cause him political problems.

Going along to get along when the chips are down inevitably leads to failure.

This morning, as the scandal surrounding embattled Harvard University president Claudine Gay persists, Canadian columnist Warren Kinsella noted that potential Liberal leadership contender Mark Carney sits on Harvard University's board of overseers.

For those unfamiliar with Harvard’s current scandal, Carney's tenure on Harvard's board might not immediately raise eyebrows. But once armed with a few facts about the controversy, it's easy to see how Carney's role could damage his credibility if he wants to throw his hat into the race when the Liberal party's top job opens up.

By way of background, last month, Harvard University president Claudine Gay gave monumentally disastrous testimony to an American congressional committee. In a rambling, word-salady response, Gay wouldn’t definitively say that students at Harvard would face consequences if they called for the genocide of Jews. Her obfuscation drew bi-partisan condemnation throughout Congress and American civil society. Since then, further controversy has beset Gay, with allegations of significant plagiarism in her previous academic work coming to light.  

Resting on a brief apology piece in Harvard's newspaper, Harvard's board of trustees has remained resolute in supporting Gay in the face of increasing calls for her resignation. This comes despite a significant donor revolt and concerns the federal government could rescind or curtail funding to Harvard, two big problems for a university teetering on the brink of major financial problems due to a bloated administration and billions in annual operating costs. 

Enter Carney.

Should Carney decide to throw his hat into the ring for the Liberal party’s top job, he will be faced with the significant task of changing the culture of a political party that has cratered after nearly a decade of policy that has seen Canada's debt double, inflation reach generationally historic highs, housing become unaffordable for most, and diminished Canada's relevance on the global stage. For the party to be electable, he’d have to make tough, unpopular decisions over an extended period and be willing to take personal political heat for doing so.

In a Globe and Mail interview teasing his potential entry into a future leadership race, Carney laid out the beginnings of a narrative claiming that he was best positioned to do just that, stating, "I'm the one in the conversation who's actually been in business, who actually is in business, and makes decisions." 

The problem for Carney is that it takes little effort to muddy the water on that claim. For example, in 2021, Carney found himself in hot water after having to backpedal claims that Brookfield Asset Management, of which he is Chair, had achieved net zero emissions. That Carney claimed such while acting as the UN special envoy on climate action potentially exposed both Brookfield and the UN to reputational risk. A further major stumble by failing to take action in his role on the board of overseers during Harvard's current high-profile financial and reputational crisis wouldn't bode well for him, and could provide another substantive proof point that he lacks the chops to change the status quo of a calcified Liberal Laurentian consensus.

Carney’s detractors have already started to craft a narrative that he's an out of touch elitist incapable of being able to understand the problems of the average person to counter his own nascent political narrative. In that, digging his heels into the status quo at Harvard and quite possibly relying on (probably very bad) public relations advice that the heat will come off (and subsequently stay off) of Claudine Gay over the winter holiday season could be political kryptonite for Carney.

That’s because it shouldn’t be hard for anyone in a governance role to see how Claudine Gay can stay in her role (under the current operating status quo, at least) without Harvard taking a significant hit to its brand, donor base, and organizational integrity. The momentum already turned on Gay’s colleague at the University of Pennsylvania, who also was involved in the disastrous congressional hearing Gay took part in, who has already resigned. Gay’s tepid apology for her part in the testimony didn't put the fire out, and the plagiarism allegations against her are serious. And now, Harvard’s fundraising is drying up. It doesn't take a genius to know that something needs to change, with Harvard's board responsible for figuring out what that is.

If Carney wants to run for Canada's top political job, he can’t sit on the sidelines for this very public debacle without risking potential personal political disaster. Being on a board of directors - or the head of a government - isn’t an honorific, and comes with very real responsibilities that include eschewing a supportive attitude towards the status quo when the shit is clearly hitting the fan. In that, silence in this instance probably means Carney is more focused on escaping the potential corporate reputational fallout from the Harvard drama than on actually planning to run for Prime Minister.

Merry Christmas.