Harvard President Claudine Gay survived an antisemitism uproar solely to be engulfed by a plagiarism scandal that threatens her temporary time period within the high job and the popularity of the nation’s oldest college.
Calls for Ms. Gay to resign are piling up because the plagiarism claims snowball. She now stands accused of 41 situations of failing to provide correct credit score in seven articles over 30 years, in keeping with the most recent tally by Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Christopher Rufo, who aired the primary public fees two weeks in the past.
The seven printed writings in query signify greater than half of the 11 articles listed on her resume, a conspicuously skinny document of scholarship for the president of what many think about the nation’s most prestigious college.
“This is a scandal of epic proportions for the world of higher education and for the Ivy League,” Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, instructed The Washington Times.
He stated Ms. Gay reached “sort of the summit of Mount Everest, the highest position an American academic could attain—and she got there with a very meager publication record.”
“And then that record itself turns out to be largely bogus,” he stated.
The Harvard Corporation reacted to the rising furor late Wednesday by telling the Crimson, the coed newspaper, that Ms. Gay would request three corrections to her 1997 Ph.D. thesis primarily based on the findings of a subcommittee shaped by the board to think about the allegations.
Notably, Harvard didn’t use the phrase “plagiarism,” saying the subcommittee discovered “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.”
Ms. Gay beforehand submitted 4 corrections to 2 of her articles after an “independent review” discovered “a few instances of inadequate citation,” though Harvard stated the probe that concluded on Dec. 9 “found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.”
If members of the Harvard mind belief assume that seven corrections will resolve the matter, they haven’t been taking note of Carol Swain.
Ms. Swain, a conservative political scientist and authorized scholar, turned a central determine within the scandal following fees that Ms. Gay paraphrased practically verbatim two passages of Ms. Swain’s 1993 e book, “Black Faces, Black Interests” (Harvard University Press).
Ms. Swain, a distinguished senior fellow on the Institute for Faith and Culture, provided Thursday some “free unsolicited advice” for Harvard, a listing that included “Fire Claudine Gay posthaste.”
“She is a documented serial plagiarist,” Ms. Swain stated on “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.” “That cannot be denied, and Harvard University can’t decide unilaterally that they’re going to change the definition of plagiarism just to protect its first-ever Black president.”
I’ve some free unsolicited recommendation for Harvard University.
1. Stop listening to the apologists for plagiarism.
2. Fire Claudine Gay posthaste. She could be relieved of duties till the phrases are negotiated.
3. Stop listening to the racist mob of whites and blacks who cry racism… pic.twitter.com/TggW9QzTkB— Dr. Carol M. Swain (@carolmswain) December 21, 2023
Others calling Thursday for Ms. Gay to step down embrace Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, a Harvard alumnus who stated the resignations shouldn’t cease there.
“Of course Harvard’s president should resign in disgrace for tolerating antisemitism and her rampant plagiarism,” he stated on X. “But so should every member of Harvard’s board who covered up for her and allowed this to happen.”
Ms. Gay, who assumed the Harvard presidency in July, defended her educational integrity in a Dec. 12 assertion, saying her scholarship “adheres to the highest academic standards,” however she has not commented on the problem since.
Meanwhile, the plagiarism difficulty jumped this week from the conservative press to the left-tilting legacy media, together with the Boston Globe, which requested in a employees editorial, “Did Claudine Gay plagiarize or not? Harvard should be clear.”
The New York Times referred to as the allegations in opposition to Ms. Gay an “embarrassing development” for Harvard, whereas CNN stated the most recent corrections fail to deal with “even clearer examples of plagiarism from earlier in her academic history.”
A full-blown plagiarism uproar was the very last thing Harvard wanted within the wake of the furor over campus antisemitism following the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israelis.
The outcry over the school administration’s preliminary tepid response culminated in a disastrous Dec. 5 House listening to at which Ms. Gay and different college presidents stated that whether or not calling for “genocide of Jews” violates conduct codes would rely upon the context.
Those feedback prompted the resignations of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Penn Board of Trustees Chairman Scott Bok, however the Harvard Corp. refused to drive out Ms. Gay, billing her as “the right leader to help our community heal.”
Meanwhile, the college’s status and pocketbook have suffered. Applications for early admissions fell this 12 months by 17%, whereas arch-rival Yale University noticed a 1.4% improve, in keeping with figures launched this week.
The donor revolt additionally reveals no indicators of abating. Billionaire Len Blavatnik, a Harvard Business School graduate whose household basis has donated an estimated $270 million to Harvard, has paused his monetary assist, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
Harvard nonetheless boasts the nation’s largest college endowment at $51 billion.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Republican and chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, expanded the probe into antisemitism at Harvard to incorporate the plagiarism fees, expressing considerations that Ms. Gay might have gotten away with conduct for which college students would have been suspended or expelled.
In Ms. Gay’s nook are giant swaths of the Harvard college. More than 600 college members signed a petition after the House listening to, urging the board to “resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom, including calls for the removal of President Claudine Gay.”
Steven Levitsky, a Harvard authorities professor, instructed The New York Times that the examples of alleged plagiarism seem like “mild sloppiness,” including that quantitative students like Ms. Gay are much less involved with “their literature reviews.”
Taking difficulty together with his view was Rep. Elise Stefanik, New York Republican and a Harvard graduate.
“On the world stage, @Harvard continues to shred any remaining semblance of academic integrity,” she stated on X.
