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The Associated Press posted this tweet about the belated ouster of Claudine Gay:
"Harvard president's resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism."
Perfect, right? It’s the big bad conservatives that are to blame. Plagiarism isn’t a heinous academic offense, it’s a weapon.
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When you can’t defend a public figure, you blame it on the attackers without engaging on the substance of the allegation. And while the AP softened the tweet after a backlash, this echoed the coverage by a number of news outlets. Politico’s headline: "How The Right Toppled Harvard’s President."
Another time-tested technique is blaming whatever happened on racial or ethnic identity. It’s not the offense, it’s the demonizing of the victim.
Former Harvard President Claudine Gay, who recently made headlines for refusing to say if genocide of Jews was against Harvard policy during a congressional hearing, has accused of multiple accounts of plagiarism in recent weeks. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Gay herself, in her resignation letter Tuesday, said she had been "subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus."
No mention of the mounting and humiliating allegations of stealing other people’s words. No mention of her craven refusal to condemn antisemitism at a House hearing. Just doing what’s in the best interest of the institution.
Let’s get this straight: Claudine Gay wasn’t pushed out by the university’s board because she was Harvard’s first black president. If anything, she lasted as long as she did because of her race. A white leader would have been bounced out of there much faster.
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Case in point: Elizabeth Magill, who resigned as UPenn’s president days after she gave similarly evasive testimony about antisemitism on her campus.
The Harvard board did everything it could to protect Gay, who immediately apologized the day after her awful testimony. She took it all back. After prepping with a law firm also used by Magill, she said she was wrong.
Harvard President Claudine Gay attends a menorah lighting ceremony on the seventh night of Hanukkah with the University's Jewish community on December 13, 2023, in Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Harvard trustees voted to keep President Gay after she responded to a Congressional hearing with an answer to a question about hate speech on campus. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
Is that leadership? How hard is it to say anti-Jewish prejudice and action is disgraceful and has no place on our campus? Was Gay simply trying to cater to liberal students and faculty who support the Hamas terrorists?
Instead, she told Elise Stefanik that it all depended on the "context" – which the GOP congresswoman immediately rejected, calling for Gay to quit.
During the hearing on antisemitism, Magill, Gay, and Kornbluth all gave "evasive" answers when asked by Rep. Elise Stefanik if calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their institution's policies on bullying and harassment. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
But then came the accusations of plagiarism. The Harvard board–which has yet to be held accountable–brushed them off. It was just improper attribution or some such nonsense.
In reality, what Gay did violated the school’s own rules and would have gotten any student expelled.
To their credit, the New York Times and other major outlets stayed on the case. And then, the Washington Free Beacon, and activist Christopher Rufo, reported that Gay had plagiarized in her own student dissertation back in 1997. So yes, you could say conservatives played a role in her demise, but they were not alone and they had the additional virtue of being right.
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All told, Gay had committed plagiarism on half her small number of published papers.
The situation had become untenable. Harvard had become a punchline. The board could no longer protect Claudine Gay. And so she had to step down, with a final blast about racial hate that made clear she still didn’t grasp the gravity of what she had done.
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Footnote: Perhaps the liberal gang at "SNL" would like to revisit that skit where they mocked Elise Stefanik as an out-of-control ogre and merely portrayed the university presidents as a bit confused?