Harvard University President Claudine Gay was forced to resign yesterday after most of her meager published work turned out to contain plagiarism. As Tech CEO Steve Mur notes, she was guilty of “50 pretty clear-to-the-eye examples of plagiarism which would have gotten students kicked out, including ones that at least two original authors feel was academic plagiarism.”
The Washington Free Beacon reported that there were “dozens” of instances of plagiarism in Gay’s academic work, even before a January 1 report revealed additional examples of “duplicative language without proper attribution,” as Harvard’s governing body euphemistically referred to Gay’s misconduct. Harvard’s progressive student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, defended Gay “until the end, writing on Dec. 31, ‘President Gay Plagiarized, but She Should Stay. For Now’“.
But famous black professors and civil-rights lawyers are blaming Gay’s resignation on racism. “Racist mobs won’t stop until they topple all Black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism,” Boston University Professor Ibram X. Kendi posted on X on Tuesday in the wake of news that Gay was stepping down. “What these racist mobs are doing should be obvious to any reporter who cares about truth or justice as opposed to conflicts and clicks.”
Black journalism professor and critical race theorist Nikole Hannah-Jones responded to the news by posting on X: “Let’s be real. This is an extension of what happened to me at UNC, and it is a glimpse into the future to come. Academic freedom is under attack. Racial justice programs are under attack. Black women will be made to pay. Our so-called allies too often lack any real courage.”
Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, claimed that the criticisms of Gay’s plagiarism that led to her resignation were about inciting “hate.”
“Attacks against Claudine Gay have been unrelenting & the biases unmasked. Her resignation on the heels of Liz Magill’s set dangerous precedent in the academy for political witch hunts. The project isn’t to thwart hate but to foment it thru vicious takedowns. This protects no one,” she posted on X.
CUNY sociology professor Heba Gowayed tweeted that people “could not stand a Black woman in authority…the racism is barely hooded in 2024.”
Duke University professor Eric Deggans claimed the plagiarism charges were racial intimidation. “The intimidation is the point,” Deggans posted Tuesday on X. “Will the next president at Harvard stand for diversity? Will that person be female? Will that person be Black? If not, they have forced several steps back. And everyone across the school gets the message.”
Kimberlé Crenshaw, the black professor who invented the critical race theory term “intersectionality,” reposted the claim that “Whatever one’s feelings about Gay, to not see this as a victory for the far right, for crowing racists, and for the new McCarthyism aimed at ideologically cleansing Higher Ed, is to be willfully blind.”
Gay herself claimed that “racial animus” fueled the attacks on her.
