Anyone who listened to the college presidents defending calls for the genocide of Jews with condescending smirks in their Dec. 5 congressional testimony could see they were insufferably smug. But then we got evidence that Ivy League universities may not have selected the best and brightest to lead them.
Consider Harvard President Claudine Gay, who evinced no ability to think on her feet or even adjust wording undoubtedly scripted for her by lawyers. Yet despite her brilliant display of dullness, Ms. Gay grinned as though she were the cleverest in the room.
This was, perhaps, understandable. Ms. Gay is, after all, president of Harvard University. Typically, you get to be president of Harvard only if everyone knows that you are very, very smart. After her shameful performance, however, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Gay rose to this post despite a shockingly unimpressive scholarly record.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo has since produced convincing evidence that Ms. Gay plagiarized parts of her dissertation. Failing to properly quote source material can either be a sign of carelessness or a symptom of struggling to generate original ideas. Her academic output since then suggests it was the latter.
Over about two decades, Ms. Gay has written 10 journal articles and no books. This is about half the average rate for a political science professor, even at a middling university. By comparison, Amy Gutmann — who like Ms. Gay is a political scientist and until early last year served as president of the University of Pennsylvania — has published more than a dozen books and well over 100 articles.
Some academics make their name by developing one profound insight into an important question. Others make their reputation by offering consistently interesting insights on a range of questions. Ms. Gay has done neither. She has authored only a handful of articles offering uninteresting insights on the narrow question of African American political opinion and representation.
In her last article, published six years ago, titled “A Room for One’s Own?,” Ms. Gay found that Democratic governors direct federal housing subsidies to supportive constituencies when they have the discretion to do so. Amazing!
In “Knowledge Matters,” Ms. Gay found that political ignorance is a key reason why African Americans support Democrats despite policy disagreements. Who knew?
In “Seeing Difference,” Ms. Gay found that African Americans resent economically successful Hispanic neighbors. Wow!
How did Ms. Gay rise so far despite such a mediocre academic record? You already know how, or at least part of how. Ms. Gay is a woman of color, and within the liberal ivory tower of Harvard, it’s impermissible for a White professor to accuse a woman of color of being intellectually mediocre. Only a Black professor could possibly do that.
It’s interesting, then, that Ms. Gay’s institutional rise was marked by a pattern of destroying the careers of genuinely brilliant Black scholars who had the stature to point out her mediocrity.
Harvard economist Roland Fryer, for example, has published more in a single year than Ms. Gay has in her entire career. But while serving as the dean of faculty, Ms. Gay led the charge to strip Mr. Fryer of almost all of his academic privileges on trumped-up charges of having run an office with a hostile work environment.
As documentary filmmaker Rob Muntz put it, “Fryer was the victim of a coordinated professional assassination. And … the chief architect of that assassination was none other than Claudine Gay.”
Another target of Ms. Gay’s character assassination was Ronald Sullivan, a Black professor at Harvard Law School. In addition to being an accomplished law professor, Mr. Sullivan was dean of Winthrop House, one of Harvard’s residence halls. After Mr. Sullivan agreed to serve as an attorney to help defend Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein against rape charges, several Winthrop House students complained that they no longer “felt safe.”
When she realized that it would be impossible to remove Mr. Sullivan for providing legal representation, Ms. Gay launched a witch hunt to find a pretext for his removal. Despite a decade of leading Winthrop House without incident, Ms. Gay insisted that he had presided over a hostile environment.
Ms. Gay’s appointment as Harvard president felt like an “emperor has no clothes” moment. If academics can’t admit or even think that someone is an affirmative-action pick, then Harvard just pretended that she was robed in the finest scholarly garb. What harm could come to Harvard from picking Ms. Gay as its president? As it turns out, quite a lot.
Although one doubts that Harvard’s newfound institutional commitment to free speech would extend so far as to permit speaking obvious truths, the truth is now abundantly clear not only on campus but also across the country. Everyone paying attention knows that Harvard picked its president because of her immutable characteristics despite her lack of scholarly accomplishment.
The country can also reasonably suspect that Harvard is refusing to fire its president despite her manifest failure to respond properly to the current wave of antisemitism on campus and despite credible allegations of plagiarism because of her immutable characteristics. Perhaps the Harvard board of trustees will act with integrity, but we rather doubt it.
It seems more likely that Harvard will be stuck being led by an academic whose alleged early plagiarism could not plausibly be redeemed by the merit of her later scholarship. Play DEI games, win DEI prizes.
Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on education reform, specifically K–12 and early childhood education. Before rejoining AEI, he was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Reprinted with Permission from AEI.org – By Max Eden
These are no longer “allegations of plagiarism”; they’ve been proven. In many instances of what Claudine Gay has written, entire paragraphs were plagiarized from Dr. Carol Swain’s published works. As plagiarists do, no credit was given and no attempt was made to change the wording.
Swain grew up in a 2-room shack with numerous siblings crammed together on the floor. She suffered extreme poverty and domestic violence growing up, and married young to get away from the abuse. When others remarked that she was smart and should attend college, she decided to change her life. Swain received her doctorate degree in political science, taught at universities, and has endorsed more conservative views.
If Claudine Gay had known that Swain believed social welfare programs do nothing for an individual’s independence and well-being, she might not have used her (Swain’s) original thoughts in her dissertation. That’s hardly something Claudine Gay would have supported, having been educated in a private New England boarding school and feeling entitled–despite the lies–to don the robes of Harvard University. With persistent public uproar over this sham, Gay should be driven out before Harvard’s reputation–such as it is–is damaged any further.
Yes, I listened to her responses…the same memorized speeches over & over. The only reason she is still there is because she filled a quota, the Black/African American quota. Good luck getting rid of her!
Give Ivy League a F grade
It doesn’t matter if she stays or goes, another just like her will take her place. These robots are massed produced.
The marxist goal is to level every institution and tradition that made this country outstanding. Ms Gay is succeeding at that in her role at harvard by turning it into a cesspool of mediocrity and irrelevance. You cant judge these people by your standards; only theirs.
Should she be let go perhaps one of the Obamas could take her place They too belong to the racial quota category Has anyone seen their transcripts from college Can’t be that brilliant else it would be splattered all over the place
Personally, I love this. She is the perfect President for Harvard University because she represents what they currently stand for: an apologetic, blame White people and Western civilization philosophy that divides the world into the oppressed and oppressors. The highly education folks at Harvard think that they’re smart than the rest of us. Yet her continued tenure at the university shows that it is the faculty of Harvard, not the American people as a whole, that have an unrealistic view of reality. They continue to insist that she is a fine scholar and are willing willing to redefine plagiarism to do so.
Claudine Gay needs to be fired immediately from Harvard. she is a disgrace. If a student got caught plagiarizing their dissertation, the consequences would have quick and severe (namely expulsion). She is also responsible for condoning a hostile learning environment for Harvard’s Jewish students.
My concern is why the Harvard Board allowed Obama’s interference to govern their decision allowing Gay to stay. He has too much power behind too many scenes.
This is really a failing grade for the education department. Teachers have been failing the American Taxpayers who pay their salaries for decades, by indoctrinating our children with Progressive Socio Fascist ideas and “dropping the ball” when it comes to reading, writing and arithmetic. If we performed as poorly as they in our professions, we would not be employed. Just plain sad.
Ok…so now she has stepped down but she is still teaching at Harvard and still called Dr.. she didn’t earn her title and should not be teaching her bias and hatred blaming her dismissal on white people. This is a very uneducated ignorant person who didn’t earn anything but was put in position by Obama! Another dumb uneducated black person! God bless Dr swain!
This is what happens when someone is so smart that they are dumb. They are not in the real world because they have elevated themselves above everyone else who is not as smart as they are. Well, I am smart enough to not accept her drivel.
Goes to prove the old adage……..”monkey see, monkey steal”