As we all know by now, Harvard’s President Claudine Gay the first black woman head of the University, resigned on Tuesday (her letter of resignation, here, is also reproduced below the fold). In her formal letter she doesn’t explain why she resigned, but simply says this:
. . . . after consultation with members of the Corporation, it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.
There’s a soupçon of self-pity in her resignation, as well as calling attention to “personal attacks” and “threats fueled by racial animus.” I don’t doubt she received these, but had it been me, considerations of dignity would have compelled me to omit this stuff. Still, it doesn’t bother me that much, but it’s worth noting this stuff:
Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.
Originally there was speculation that Gay might resign because of her rather uninspiring performance testifying before a House committee, but I didn’t think her performance was that bad: she reiterated that Harvard’s speech code allowed people to call for Jewish genocide on some occasions, but not others. As she implied, “context matters,” and that’s true if one is adhering to the First Amendment. The problem was that Harvard had never adhered to the First Amendment, for it has no speech code stipulating that. Rather, Harvard applied its speech code unevenly, sanctioning or warning some people for “offenses” far smaller than saying, “Gas the Jews.” The problem was not context but hypocrisy.
That said, I thought that this could be a “teachable moment” for Gay and Harvard, one that might prompt her and the Overseers to finally fix the problems with “free” speech at Harvard. But when accusations of plagiarism began accumulating, and were undoubtedly plagiarism, eventually her position became untenable (see above). Do note that those accusations were leveled largely by conservatives: Christopher Rufo and the New York Post. This shows you that, unless you want a plagiarist as President of Harvard, it’s not good to write off what conservatives say simply because of their politics.
Gay will be replaced temporarily by economist and physician Alan Garber, Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer. And then the search will begin for Gay’s replacement. There is lots of speculation here (will it be another black woman?, etc.), but I won’t engage in any prognostications. As for Gay, she will return to her position as tenured professor of government and African and African American studies. But the tweet below suggests that she’s going to keep the enormous salary she got as President—nearly a million bucks a year. And that implies that she made some kind of deal with the Overseers to resign quietly so long as she got to keep that huge salary. To me that seems unfair, but it’s better for Harvard that she leaves and gets a big salary than if she stayed.
"Gay will now return to a role within the political science department, and will retain a salary on the same level as while she was president."
Cheating upwards, Gay returns to low-output low-impact scholarship, soothed by a $900,000/year salary.https://t.co/cTafPDhChy
— i/o (@eyeslasho) January 3, 2024
The New York Times allowed Dr. Gay to respond to her “resignation”—surely more than just a suggestion from the Corporation—by writing an op-ed giving her take on the matter. And I have to say that she’s far less dignified, far too unwilling to own up to why she was fired, and far too self-pitying for such a piece.It makes her look petty, fragile, and too willing to blame others for her faults. She should have just stuck by her resignation letter. Click the headline below to read.
I’ve reproduced her op-ed, paragraph by paragraph (indented) with my own comments, which are flush left.
Gay begins with a combination of self-pity, virtue-flaunting, and deflecting the blame for her resignation onto others. Now I have no use for people who threaten her or use the n-word, but again, considerations of dignity would, at least to me, mandate that she leave this stuff out. The bit about “weaponizing her presidency”, and accusing “demagogues” (Ackman?) of engaging in a campaign to erode the ideals of Harvard is simply silly, and makes her look unwilling to accept any culpability. Furthermore, it’s not right. People like Steve Pinker have used the occasion not to impugn Gay or call for her resignation, but to lay out principles Harvard could use to improve itself.
On Tuesday, I made the wrenching but necessary decision to resign as Harvard’s president. For weeks, both I and the institution to which I’ve devoted my professional life have been under attack. My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.
My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.
Continuing on:
As I depart, I must offer a few words of warning. The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there. Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.
Here she shows what, exactly, is “bigger than me” (it should have been “bigger than I”). She clearly blames anti-wokeness as the force behind attacks on her. Or at least that’s how I interpret it, for I can see no other forces trying to undermine “trusted institutions of all types”. Yes, the antiwoke went after the liberal media, but did they go after “public health agencies”? Perhaps, if you think that that’s what motivated the conspiracy theorists and Republicans who fought covid mandates. (But some of them were right, viz., about the value of masking and closing schools.) Here Gay lumps together a whole bunch of disparate groups—conservatives, conspiracy theorists, people concerned with the truth about medicine, and liberals like me—as her “basket of demagogues.” The Associated Press implies that in the tweet below. But does it really matter whether liberals, conservatives, or centrists call attention to plagiarism, so long as it turns out to be true?
Harvard president's resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism https://t.co/GiVkT3LgUo
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 3, 2024
Gay continues:
Yes, I made mistakes. In my initial response to the atrocities of Oct. 7, I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know: Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state. And at a congressional hearing last month, I fell into a well-laid trap. I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate.
Well, it would have been better for her not to have doubled down on Hamas, but rather to point out the hypocrisy of Harvard’s uneven enforcement of the speech code, noting how odd it was that calls for adherence to the First Amendment arose only when that Amendment would have permitted calls for genocide against Jews. But yes, she appeared wooden and unengaged, and she could have done better. Blame the lawyers. Still, her performance alone would not have gotten her to “resign” (the euphemism for “being asked to leave”).
Then she goes on to the plagiarism charges, refusing to admit she copied (well, she could hardly admit that, could she?):
Most recently, the attacks have focused on my scholarship. My critics found instances in my academic writings where some material duplicated other scholars’ language, without proper attribution. I believe all scholars deserve full and appropriate credit for their work. When I learned of these errors, I promptly requested corrections from the journals in which the flagged articles were published, consistent with how I have seen similar faculty cases handled at Harvard.
I have never misrepresented my research findings, nor have I ever claimed credit for the research of others. Moreover, the citation errors should not obscure a fundamental truth: I proudly stand by my work and its impact on the field.
Despite the obsessive scrutiny of my peer-reviewed writings, few have commented on the substance of my scholarship, which focuses on the significance of minority office holding in American politics. My research marshaled concrete evidence to show that when historically marginalized communities gain a meaningful voice in the halls of power, it signals an open door where before many saw only barriers. And that, in turn, strengthens our democracy.
Here plagiarism becomes “material that duplicated other scholars’ language, without proper attribution”. It’s been euphemisms all the way down with her and Harvard, with nobody daring to use the p-word. However, she requested corrections of only three items (there were forty or more), and attributed her mistakes to “errors”—as do all plagiarists. It’s hardly possible, I think, to engage in the amount of plagiarism she did without knowing that you’re doing something wrong. She also decries the people who brought her down as being afflicted with “obsessive scrutiny”. Her “scholarship” is still under question, with some saying that what she published from her thesis differs from what the original sources say, but we’ll wait to see how that shakes out.
Throughout this work, I asked questions that had not been asked, used then-cutting-edge quantitative research methods and established a new understanding of representation in American politics. This work was published in the nation’s top political science journals and spawned important research by other scholars.
Never did I imagine needing to defend decades-old and broadly respected research, but the past several weeks have laid waste to truth. Those who had relentlessly campaigned to oust me since the fall often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument. They recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament. They pushed a false narrative of indifference and incompetence.
I’ll let others assess her scholarship and methods, but let it be known that she published a total of only eleven papers in her career (and edited one volume), a remarkably thin record of scholarship for a scholar picking up the reins of Harvard. As for the “truth” of her research, other scholars are now vetting her papers (some have claimed that she won’t provide her original data), and we’ll see what happens. If she did manipulate or misrepresent data, that is one thing that could cost her her job at Harvard, though I doubt that this will happen.
It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution. Someone who views diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism. Someone who has advocated a modern curriculum that spans from the frontier of quantum science to the long-neglected history of Asian Americans. Someone who believes that a daughter of Haitian immigrants has something to offer to the nation’s oldest university.
Above she descends deeply into defensiveness and self-pity, and most clearly plays the race card, which is beneath her. Yes, racists may have assailed her, but she should ignore them in a public discussion like this, except perhaps for a brief mention. There’s no evidence that she was attacked by Rufo, Ackman and the NY Post because of her race. In Ackman’s case, it was clearly his being fed up with the antisemitism at Harvard, not Gay’s race. Self-pity is undignified.
Finally, she engages in a bit of virtue flaunting, and once again refers to the demagogues who brought her down, implying that she was unfairly pressured to resign by Evil Outside Forces pursuing an agenda to destroy Harvard’s wonderful values:
I still believe that. As I return to teaching and scholarship, I will continue to champion access and opportunity, and I will bring to my work the virtue I discussed in the speech I delivered at my presidential inauguration: courage. Because it is courage that has buoyed me throughout my career and it is courage that is needed to stand up to those who seek to undermine what makes universities unique in American life.
Having now seen how quickly the truth can become a casualty amid controversy, I’d urge a broader caution: At tense moments, every one of us must be more skeptical than ever of the loudest and most extreme voices in our culture, however well organized or well connected they might be. Too often they are pursuing self-serving agendas that should be met with more questions and less credulity.
College campuses in our country must remain places where students can learn, share and grow together, not spaces where proxy battles and political grandstanding take root. Universities must remain independent venues where courage and reason unite to advance truth, no matter what forces set against them.
It all comes down to this summary statement: “Antiwoke people, including demagogues, brought me down, largely because of my race. Yes, I made mistakes, but they were trivial. In the end, it was political grandstanding that pried me out of my position as President. And by the way, I’m a very good person.”
She’s enmired in victimhood. Color me unimpressed.
Click “continue reading” to see Gay’s letter of resignation:
Forgive the formatting, which is what happened when I did a cut-and-paste on her letter.
Dear Members of the Harvard Community,
It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president. This is not a decision I came to easily. Indeed, it has been difficult beyond words because I have looked forward to working with so many of you to advance the commitment to academic excellence that has propelled this great university across centuries. But, after consultation with members of the Corporation, it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.
It is a singular honor to be a member of this university, which has been my home and my inspiration for most of my professional career. My deep sense of connection to Harvard and its people has made it all the more painful to witness the tensions and divisions that have riven our community in recent months, weakening the bonds of trust and reciprocity that should be our sources of strength and support in times of crisis. Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.
I believe in the people of Harvard because I see in you the possibility and the promise of a better future. These last weeks have helped make clear the work we need to do to build that future — to combat bias and hate in all its forms, to create a learning environment in which we respect each other’s dignity and treat one another with compassion, and to affirm our enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth. I believe we have within us all that we need to heal from this period of tension and division and to emerge stronger. I had hoped with all my heart to lead us on that journey, in partnership with all of you. As I now return to the faculty, and to the scholarship and teaching that are the lifeblood of what we do, I pledge to continue working alongside you to build the community we all deserve.
When I became president, I considered myself particularly blessed by the opportunity to serve people from around the world who saw in my presidency a vision of Harvard that affirmed their sense of belonging — their sense that Harvard welcomes people of talent and promise, from every background imaginable, to learn from and grow with one another. To all of you, please know that those doors remain open, and Harvard will be stronger and better because they do.
As we welcome a new year and a new semester, I hope we can all look forward to brighter days. Sad as I am to be sending this message, my hopes for Harvard remain undimmed. When my brief presidency is remembered, I hope it will be seen as a moment of reawakening to the importance of striving to find our common humanity — and of not allowing rancor and vituperation to undermine the vital process of education. I trust we will all find ways, in this time of intense challenge and controversy, to recommit ourselves to the excellence, the openness, and the independence that are crucial to what our university stands for — and to our capacity to serve the world.
Sincerely,
Claudine Gay
“…It makes her look petty, fragile, and too willing to blame others for her faults..”
Cultivation of all of these characteristics is exactly how one survives and thrives in an environment dominated by wokeness and DEI. Indeed, these are not liabilities…these are huge assets!
Only the chumps stick to grinding out rigorous research and trying to make material contributions to their field of study…
Well, it’s all of a piece, isn’t it? As Lindsay has pointed out the tactic: “DARVO – Deny, Attack, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender – a classic abuser tactic, is always the Woke go-to. . . . The whole moral blackmail scheme that keeps the extortion racket in business depends on it.”
As for the ideals of Harvard she says she is upholding, viz. “excellence, openness, independence, truth,” she herself has undermined three of these.
+1
I’d go with all 4. What a hack and proof not only that she’s full of incompetence and woke bullshit but that the rot at Harvard goes to the roots because they vetted her, knew the accusations of plagiarism, and still gave her the job.
Hey Harvard – reach out to Nicole Hannah-Jones! She’s a black woman with some publications! She’d be a perfect president because she is uniquely qualified, having led the 1619 Project which could help Harvard return to its roots as recommended by Prez Gay because Harvard wasn’t founded until 1636.
Don’t give them ideas, Jimbo!
It is clear that the prevailing narrative, in much of the media, will consist of the brave and principled Gay, fighting, in Kendian fashion, against the nefarious forces of racism and reaction which are in unprincipled opposition to the noble goals of DEI. Also of interest is the fact that one of the scholars from whom she has apparently lifted significant amounts of material grew up poor and disadvantaged (Carol Swain, emerita, Vanderbilt, also black) while Gay herself was a child of privilege (not everyone can afford Phillips Exeter).
If someone is only appointed owing to their race, it would indeed seem to them that they were only fired owing to their race.
Also:
I’m not so sure. I’ve met instances of weak students who genuinely think that that sort of grabbing sentences and paragraphs and putting them together is how it is done, and how other people do it.
PS
Not so sure: “bigger than me”, or “bigger than I am” would seem correct.
(Though these days there are so many instances of native speakers using “I” when “me” is formally correct, that it’s hard to say that it is incorrect any more.)
” weak students who genuinely think that that sort of grabbing sentences and paragraphs and putting them together is how it is done…” Exactly. And a generation of weak students have learned that if they go into grievance studies, that is
how it is done—and this academic pantomime can be a path to positions at places with a big reputation and bigger salaries. What a treat!
Too right, sadly.
“pantomime”
^^^excellent word to express that idea
In my language, it would be the analog of “bigger than me”.
“Bigger than I” is grammatically correct because the “am” is implied. “Than” is a comparator not a preposition so it doesn’t require the objective case whether the “am” is written or only implied. “Am” of course takes the subjective case, always. Kipling is sometimes misquoted as “You’re a better man than I [am], Gunga Din” but the misquote is still correct.
However, in idiomatic conversational English it can sound stilted to follow the rule. Phone rings. Receiver picks up. Caller says, “Hi. It’s me.” No native speaker would say “It’s I”, except theatrically, ” ’tis I.” Trust your ear.
This was the advice given in my old Strunk and White from 50 years ago. “Better than me” is probably even more idiomatic today.
Hmm, I agree that “You’re a better man than I am” is correct. But can you really just drop the “am” and it still be correct? (In formal English that is; I presume it’s ok in informal English.)
Just looked it up in “Fowler” who says that both “me” and “I” are ok, that “I” is more formal (so Jerry was indeed correct), but that it’s rapidly changing (so given when Fowler wrote, “me” is now likely to be as good).
I’m chuckling at this conversation between you and Leslie. Why? Well, I sleep with a linguist, so this constitutes pillow talk over here.
An insignificant tangent, but Merriam-Webster has this to say on the issue of “than I vs. “than me”:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/than-what-follows-it-and-why
tl;dr:
If one writes or says, e.g., “He’s taller than me,” the speaker or writer is using “than” as a preposition, and in that case the objective case “me” is called for.
‘…it should have been “bigger than I…”
I’m with Coel. Following a comparative adjective, ‘than’ is either a conjunction introducing a subordinate clause or a preposition whose object is a (pro)noun. The former is the older usage, but the latter has been used for centuries: both are common in formal English and without restrictions on usage in my dictionaries.
These are jokes, right?
The mere fact that these weren’t her first responses should automatically disqualify her from holding any responsible position at all. Mutatis mutandis, what would she think of a Jewish person who, upon hearing a violent racist call for ridding America of black people, did not immediately, loudly, and wholeheartedly denounce that speaker? Quod, as they say in the now-moribund classics department (for which DEI is in a large part responsible), erat demonstrandum.
+1
The line in her NYT op-ed that I think is most revealing is her characterization of herself as “Someone who believes that a daughter of Haitian immigrants has something to offer to the nation’s oldest university.”
Wow. Sounds like someone who rose from poverty to achieve success through nothing but her own grit, hard work, and brilliance. B…but wait. Her parents were not poor at all, and Gay went to Philips Exeter Academy, one of the country’s most prestigious private high schools. She has led a life of privilege — and there is nothing wrong with that — but her life has not exactly been the kind of life that first comes to mind when someone is described as a “daughter of Haitian immigrants” — and she is certainly smart and knowledgeable enough to be aware of that.
Yep, notably, that line is about her identity, not about her scholarship or ideas.
I think her upbringing is the emotional blackmail that was used to brainwash her into Woke Marxism in the first place.
If only we could tell her it’s ok, it’s not her fault.
She’s not that smart. She is “smartish”…which means “someone who has figured out how to speak and act as if they were highly intelligent”. This involves adopting certain vocabulary, a particular cadence and way of speaking (which usually comes across as condescending), and espousing strange beliefs that appear sophisticated but are anything but (such as “there are more than two sexes”).
I heard this word years ago and I wish I knew who to attribute it to.
“Smartish” people are rife in the lightweight grievance studies. This is the best place for folks with high aspirations, but very mediocre abilities.
Absolutely. This is why identity ideology is meaningless.
Highlighting some parts of the letter, trying to keep it short:
“… our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.”
I see. Soooo…
“… it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor ”
Gnostic wizards know best — “how dare you.”
” … respect each other’s dignity …”
The Stupidity of Dignity
Steven Pinker
The New Republic, 2008
So I’m not taking that temptation.
” I pledge to continue working alongside you to build the community we all deserve.”
Gnostic temptation – the serpent offering Eve the life she is told that she deserves, that Garden of Eden is keeping her down. Also note the word “all”.
“When my brief presidency is remembered, I hope it will be seen as a moment of reawakening ”
Mmm. Awakening.
“… our [University’s] capacity to serve the world.”
I see – with all its means of knowledge production. I suppose that’s what students and faculty signed up for – and do on a daily basis – “serve the world”. There must be a higher consciousness needed to recognize that. Is that a new idea? Asking for a friend.
Ah – missed the edit deadline: Correction:
reawakening.
There was an awakening, and then they awakened again… I suppose it could go another round… and round and round, like.. a… Revolution.
[ Ouroboros image ]
.. that’d be a useful emoji, actually – the Ouroboros.
As for the duplication of other scholars’ language without attribution, Gay’s explanation is simple: she didn’t know they had happened. As she says: “When I learned of these errors, I promptly requested corrections.” Apparently, a scholar of Professor Gay’s eminence can publish stuff without knowing how it gets written, a sort of AI procedure long before ChatGpt arrived. No wonder work at this level merits a salary of 900K. Moreover, her automatically written research revealed an astounding, breakthrough discovery: “…when historically marginalized communities gain a meaningful voice in the halls of power, it signals an open door.”
Excellent article highlighting the major factors that brought her down. You might have included one more; a privileged entitlement, by virtue of an elite education that most can only dream of. It makes a mockery of much of the the concerns regarding underprivilege and race. One only hopes that Harvard appoints as a replacement someone with both the academic integrity and the balls to stand up for free speech in the face of both the far right and woke left. Fingers crossed. 🤞🏼
Also yesterday in the NYT, this by A. O. Scott on all the missing “context” in both Gay’s version of events and that of the Harvard Corporation on Tuesday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/books/review/claudine-gay-harvard-resignation-letter.html
Gay’s inability to admit to the plagiarism is one thing. But Gay’s assertion that her scholarship somehow justified her rise to be Dean and then President at Harvard is just stunning misdirection away from the “diversity hire” elephant in the room.
As my academic wife said yesterday, this whole sad episode will do immense damage to smart talented black women in all areas of leadership who will wonder whether they got to be leaders on merit, and who will have to deal with colleagues wondering the same thing.
That’s a great piece by A. O. Scott – thanks!
I am extremely disappointed by the Harvard Corporation board. They are allowing a serial plagiarist to be on their teaching faculty for a huge salary. It appears that they are willing to tolerate plagiarism. If they opposed plagiarism, they would have fired her with no severance and no position at Harvard. Although I am not holding my breath, I hope some of these people will be investigated and forced to resign. It’s hard to imagine Harvard regaining its reputation with these people in charge.
While our host is probably correct that the next president of Harvard will be a black woman, I hold out hope for a conservative Asian Jew.
I hope this (from Mad Magazine’s David Berg) is appropriate.
Talmudic scholars at Yeshiva University heard rumours from Protestant missionaries working in China that one of the lost tribes of Israel had fetched up in a remote Chinese village and had been practising Judaism in a clandestine synagogue for 19 centuries, assimilating so as to be overlooked by the local mandarins. The scholars decided to establish contact with them, a delegation making the arduous journey around Cape Horn, up the Yangtze River and across a remote steppe to where they introduced themselves to the rabbi as fellow Jews from New York.
The rabbi peered up at the strange bearded visitors. “Funny,” he said. “You don’t look Jewish.”
Conservative Asian Jew? Wesley Yang might give it a go, but it would be a tough ask for him to give up eating pork should he convert.
Any Jew born in Israel is an Asian Jew. Of course, being Israeli is likely an insurmountable obstacle to getting a prestigious job at Harvard.
Her keeping the same salary seems unlikely. Larry Bacow is too recently gone as president for his professor salary to be known yet, but Drew Gilpin Faust, the president before Bacow, got $450K as a professor in 2021; she made $1.7 million in her last full year as president (2017). There may be some one-time payments, though.
GCM
Might it be dignified and wise to allocate half or more of her huge salary to scholarship(s) for TBD (inner city, or low income or…) applicants to Harvard? Leaving Ms Gay with a , by most standards, enormous sum. Plagiarism should not be rewarded
in any way- it is stealing. Judging from its very severe punishments of students there who do stoop to plagiarism , it agrees. Harvard doesn’t seem to know if it’s ‘afoot or ahorse.’
“My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned.” One cannot make this stuff up. What an arrogant, aggressive and sociopathic individual. Her speech pattern reminds me of Putin and his cronies.
I am very disappointed in the many justifications excusing her plagiarism, along with euphemisms not just downplaying but attempting to erase the problematic nature of her choices. The extreme right going on the attack is a movement to beware of and put up a fight against. Too bad she gave them ammunition. She did commit plagiarism, plain and simple. I am confused as to how she could have lifted so many paragraphs from other’s work without being aware. Defenders made it sound as if those things happen all the time, no big deal.
Maybe someone needs to go back to fundamentals: write an essay explaining what plagiarism is, why it is wrong, how standards developed, and the value of such standards. For now, I am actively thinking how I will approach this issue with my students next semester.
Emily, people know what plagiarism is. It’s just that there is a double standard for judging plagiarists:
The Actual Problem
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2023/12/21/congress-to-investigate-claudine-gay-plagiarism-allegations/
I Vote on Plagiarism Cases at Harvard College. Gay’s Getting off Easy. Dec 31, 2023
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/31/honor-council-member-gay/
Double standard between the powerful and the powerless- go figure! That’s one of the reasons the mush-mouthed descriptions of her actions is so disturbing, and why I need to think how to approach this with my undergraduates.
+1
James Lindsay’s “Iron Law of Woke Projection” strikes again. Yes, she’s correct: her rise and downfall are parts of a larger cultural war that threatens to undermine trust in institutions, especially in education. But it’s not right-wingers who are trying to capture teachers’ unions, universities and the like.
consistent with how I have seen similar faculty cases handled at Harvard.
Citation needed, as Wikipedia editors would say.
It makes her look petty, fragile, and too willing to blame others for her faults. She should have just stuck by her resignation letter.
As with #OperationLetThemSpeak on X/Twitter, regarding trans rights activists, letting people use their own words is often the best way of exposing the weaknesses in their position.
Color me unimpressed.
Me, too.
I hope that when all this is far enough in the past to only be a curiosity, someone will study and explain the pathology of these people. To me, it seems like they have some of the worst traits of aristocracy.
In the military, we sometimes had people who showed up with a vastly high opinion of their own abilities, unconstrained by any reality. I saw a great many of them experience epiphany once confronted with their actual limitations. The more “empowered” they feel before, the harder it is to hit that wall.
I obviously do not know Ms. Gay, but she seems that type, except that instead of being challenged, she was fawned over, and her mediocre scholarship was treated as if it were first rate. Now, as president of Harvard, she probably does believe that she deserves it, and likely feels that she is a peer of great scholars like Copernicus or Hawking. It is the opposite of imposter syndrome.
The only explanation for why anyone would criticize her is that they are bad people, probably racists.
Claudine Gay as Copernicus, I love that. I hope you don’t mind if I steal, er, borrow it. With citation of course!
Leonardo diCaprio will play Claudine Gay in the biopic, “Catch Me If You Can II: Harvard High Jinks.”
She’s hurt. She’s bitter. She’s disappointed. She’s embarrassed. She’s lashing out. The New York Times, in publishing her piece, exploited her pain. She should have let her resignation letter stand on its own and let some time pass before speaking publicly again, if at all. A more dignified act would be to simply disappear from view and focus on her teaching and research.
Claudine Gay’s failings are her own and, while they became a focus of the right, they also became a focus of those across the spectrum who care about intellectual honesty. Her lack of intellectual honesty—her cheating by representing the work of others as her own—is what demanded her resignation. Cheating is neither left nor right, black nor white. It’s simply an unmitigated wrong that cannot be tolerated in the President of Harvard University.
+1
+1. Well said.
Completely agree. Well said, sir.
It’s possible she’s made things a lot worse for herself with this whining commentary. It shows she hasn’t accepted responsibility for what she did wrong. Lashing out at those who pointed out her mistakes is craven and uncouth.
People who might have now left her alone will respond to this mendacious attempt to self exculpate.
As Jeff Vader points out under #6 above, former Pres. Gay belongs to the “smartish” category of academics who inhabit the grievance studies depts. and the associated DEI bureaucracies. Quite aside from ethnic or gender categories, it is the “community” of smartISH copycats for which these institutions provide not merely a career path, but a way to avoid dread marginalization. In the Eurasian galaxy far away, this community adopted the vocabulary of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and “Michurinism”, and thereby hit the jackpot in Biology and marginalized everything else—for a while .
I asked ChatGpt to analyze Claudine Gay’s resignation letter based on the fact that she plagiarized. Note, ChatGpt claims that its data is based on and is limited to a 2021-events-limited-database (in some cases to a 2022-events-limited-database). Meaning, it has no knowledge of occurrences and/or events after 2021/2022.
Here’s the response:
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Me: Analyze this piece of writing: [Resignation Letter]
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…
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Me: Can you please analyze this piece of writing in context: Claudine Gay is the previous president of Harvard who resigned after multiple instances of plagiarism were exposed.
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ChatGpt: Assuming that this is a hypothetical scenario as there’s no public record of actual plagiarism involving Claudine Gay, here’s an analysis.
If this letter was written under such circumstances, it would be critiqued differently knowing that Claudine Gay is resigning due to incidents of plagiarism.
However, it’s important to note that Gay doesn’t directly address or acknowledge plagiarism in the letter. This could suggest a lack of transparency or willingness to accept responsibility for her actions, which might leave some readers unsatisfied or even angry. Her communications around “upholding scholarly rigor” and “commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth” come across as contradictory or even hypocritical given the context of plagiarism allegations.
Her remarks about serving “a vision of Harvard that affirmed their sense of belonging” and fear of “personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus” may also be seen as attempts to distract from or indirectly attribute her resignation to other unrelated issues instead of plagiarism, which could potentially damage her credibility as a leader who takes accountability.
While the tone is sincere, compassionate, and hopeful, it is important for those accused of misconduct, such as plagiarism, to directly and honestly address such instances, unless advised otherwise by legal counsel.
Please note, this analysis is based on a hypothetical scenario and doesn’t reflect real events.
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Not bad.
Better than “not bad”. I nominate ChatGpt for the presidency of Harvard.
Good article and fresh insights from someone who mucked through Higher Ed alongside Gay
https://www.aei.org/education/the-claudine-gay-affair/
“Maybe Gay was a discreet radical but I tend to suspect that, like so many others, Gay embraced higher ed’s DEI groupthink mostly as a means of personal advancement. Gay has spent most of her time at Harvard as a bureaucrat, not a scholar.”
“And at a congressional hearing last month, I fell into a well-laid trap.” I’m not seeing how she can make this claim. If she is as smart as she thinks she is, surely she could have anticipated where the questioning would go and had prepared some well developed responses
Not to mention, she was coached by a law firm and surely parroted some of their talking points. So she had professional legal help to further avoid pitfalls and prep her rebuttals. And yet, it took mere minutes for her to stomp clumsily right through the tripwires and fall onto the spikes below. Fortunately, she’s an intellectual lightweight and didn’t sustain too much damage. Actually, she stuck the landing! After a light track record of publications, seasoned liberally with others’ words, she got fired as president in just 6 months and for her exemplary performance got a -$700,000 retention bonus annually to vacate the position and return to her dept. That will be great for morale! Making 3-4x the salary of all her dept peers (presumably the non-plagiarists with more publications) who failed to apply for the prez job and summarily screw it up in less than a year. Gotta give her credit – that was a genius move!
I was explaining the Claudine Gay trajectory to progressive friends…who listen to MSNBC, The View, etc.
At one point I mentioned that Harvard’s being a private university meant that it was not under the jurisdiction of the 1st Amendment, etc.
I was contradicted again and again saying that private enterprises were also under the jurisdiction of 1st Amendment etc. etc.
Humor me, please, I am correct that the 1st Amendement and other parts of the Bill of Rights does not apply to private enterprises. Only public ones.
This article may help from FIRE:
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/private-universities
“Private universities are not directly bound by the First Amendment, which limits only government action. However, the vast majority of private universities have traditionally viewed themselves—and sold themselves—as bastions of free thought and expression. Accordingly, private colleges and universities should be held to the standard that they themselves establish. If a private college advertises itself as a place where free speech is esteemed and protected—as most of them do—then it should be held to the same standard as a public institution.”
Yes, with the proviso that an American college, private or public, is also 1) a workplace and 2) a business that has entered into a contract with its students to provide them with an education. The college therefore has legal obligations to employees and students that the police who patrol the soapboxes in public parks and sidewalks do not. I believe Ken Kukec and others have helpfully explained how “time, place, and manner” restrictions on expression (necessary to meet these obligations) can still be compatible with the First Amendment, even for public colleges which are explicitly bound by it.
I continue to be “impressed” (as in astonished and horrified and confused) by this thing about fixing (washing away) the plagiarism by adding some footnotes retroactively.
This is outside my experience — is this really a Thing? For a 20 (?) year old polisci paper (those I do know about). If it is a real thing, does the publisher have any compulsion to spend the time and money required to “fix” Dr. Gay’s sloppy work? Or does Gay have to pay the costs of making it all nice? Really, I’m wondering. If I were a poli sci journal owner/publisher, I sure wouldn’t do her any freebies.
And what about the real pioneer scholar, the black woman scholar who wrote about Gay’s subject before Gay, and was plagiarized, without attribution? I forget her name, but it was within the last couple weeks she surfaced with the impressive argument that being properly cited for her original, pathbreaking scholarship was the whole ball of wax, and a plagiarist like Gay takes that away.
Carol Swain is the woman Gay plagiarized.
“Gay will be replaced temporarily by economist and physician Alan Garber, Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer.”
That seems to be a lot on anyone’s plate, to do justice to any one of the three occupations. He must be some guy, eh?
“Yes, racists may have assailed her, but she should ignore them in a public discussion like this, except perhaps for a brief mention.”
Perhaps she herself should only make a brief mention. But, if not her, I am not opposed to some third parties at length expiating in detail – and documenting for the record – what racists have said about her, for all the world to hear and see. Being half a chromosome away from a chimpanzee, they apparently can’t help themselves from thusly holding forth. Apparently the facts of her plagiarism, and whatever other transgressions she has committed, are not enough for them, those good Christians.
Well you won’t have dick Nixon to kick around anymore.
!!
Just to show that a Haitian refugee who *didn’t* have the advantage of attending a swanky private school can nevertheless build a career of real distinction, you need look no further than Michaëlle Jean, the 27th Governor General of Canada. Claudine Gay pales in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micha%C3%ABlle_Jean
I’m guessing that anti-plagiarism software used by professors is going to be unleashed against professors in the following months. Gay could be the tip of the iceberg.
I think it matters who does the plagiarism. It seems to me, plagiarism is used as an excuse to fire someone, or pressure them to resign (case in point) but only after another factor preceded it, and then plagiarism was “found out”; after the reveal, plagiarism is a take-down tool. In other words, politics. Think of SCOTUS justice Gorsuch who essentially plagiarized the same way as Gay: copied writers verbatim, didn’t cite sources. No one cared. Then there was FLOTUS Melania whose speech writer plagiarized a Michelle Obama speech. The speech writer admitted it, no one cared. I’m not giving Gay an out, I’m implying that plagiarism is just an excuse, no one really cares unless it can be used effectively against the plagiarizer. For people like Gorsuch or Melania Trump, it wasn’t an effective tool to discredit them. For someone like Gay, it was. BTW, I know the Melania example is apples/oranges, just didn’t want people to forget the fakeness and ridiculous irony of Trumpworld.
This column (link is for ungated version) by conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is worth reading:
Harvard Couldn’t Save Both Claudine Gay and Itself
https://archive.is/9pJ08
“Do note that those accusations were leveled largely by conservatives: Christopher Rufo and the New York Post. This shows you that, unless you want a plagiarist as President of Harvard, it’s not good to write off what conservatives say simply because of their politics.”
The failure to handle campus antisemitism and committing plagiarism may be completely valid reasons to push for the resignation of the president of Harvard University. But if a conservative’s politics include one scintilla of support for making Donald J. Trump president of the United States again, I will indeed write off what such a conservative says “simply because of their politics.”
Nice to know that good healthy partisanship is still alive and well. I have to say, though, that I’ve just written off anything you might have to say. Explicitly, “The failure to handle campus antisemitism and committing plagiarism may be completely valid reasons . . .” [my emphasis]. May be, but if the person stating the reasons had a scintilla of sympathy for the current front-runner in a democratic election, not really. So bring on a plagiarizing lightweight racist character assassin as long as it keeps Trump out of office?