A Rutgers University professor who also holds an artist-in-residence position at Harvard is facing backlash after publicly calling for the release of an alleged killer during a Fat Liberation panel at Harvard Medical School.
According to the Gateway Pundit, Roxane Gay, a Rutgers professor and artist-in-residence for Harvards Master of Science in Media, Medicine and Health and the Media and Medicine Certificate Program at Harvard Medical School, used her platform to advocate for Luigi Mangione, who pleaded guilty in August to federal stalking charges resulting in death in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Gay made the remarks during Harvard Medical Schools Against the Pathology of Unruly Bodies event, a panel that focused on what organizers described as the intersection of fatness and healthcare and how medical professionals treat overweight patients.
When the discussion shifted to the health insurance industry, Gay responded, Free Luigi, for one, openly aligning herself with a man tied to a brutal crime rather than with the victim and his family. She then escalated her rhetoric by labeling the health insurance industry equal opportunity evil, The College Fix reported, turning a serious policy debate into a radical slogan session.
The event drew additional scrutiny after Stu Smith, an investigative analyst at the Manhattan Institute, posted about Gays comments on X. At tonights Harvard Medical School event, artist-in-residence Roxane Gay responded to a question about the health insurance industry with Free Luigi, Smith wrote, highlighting the disturbing casualness with which an elite academic figure appeared to champion an accused killer.
Smith further noted the hypocrisy in Gays posture toward the healthcare system, pointing out that she personally avoids the system she condemns. Minutes earlier, Gay admitted she uses concierge medicine after deciding to throw money at this problem and buy my way out of ordinary healthcare. Gay, incidentally, is former Harvard president Claudine Gays first cousin. We all know Harvard is morally bankrupt at this point, but this was a great reminder, he added, underscoring the growing perception that Americas academic elites operate by a separate set of rules.
For months, left-wing activists and commentators have worked to recast Mangione from an accused killer into a kind of folk hero, a trend that many see as emblematic of a broader ideological drift that excuses or romanticizes criminal behavior. The spectacle of a Harvard-affiliated figure publicly saying Free Luigi only reinforces the sense that higher education in the United States is such a hot mess, with powerful institutions increasingly siding with radical narratives instead of law, order, and basic moral clarity.
Login