Gay, Rufo, and the Blueprint for Conservative Activism

Earlier this week, the conservative movement erupted in celebration as Claudine Gay—the former president of Harvard University who had been embroiled in plagiarism and antisemitism scandals—issued her resignation.

As conservative commentators have been quick to note, Gay’s resignation marks a momentous victory against the corrupt higher education cartel. But perhaps even more important, it offers a much-needed blueprint for an effective and results-oriented brand of conservative activism that can successfully chip away at centers of left-wing power and influence.

Just days after Gay’s disastrous testimony on Capitol Hill on December 5, in which she failed to unequivocally condemn calls for genocide against the Jewish people and threats of violence against Jews on Harvard’s campus, conservative activist Christopher Rufo revealed droves of evidence that Gay is a serial plagiarist who routinely presented others’ writing as her own in her dissertation and other academic work.

In the not-so-distant past, a plagiarism scandal directly implicating the president of our nation’s most esteemed university would amount to front-page news and wall-to-wall media coverage. But in today’s political and cultural landscape—in which an unquestioned commitment to leftist political dogmas trumps any remaining devotion to academic rigor, meritocracy, and accountability—the corporate media at first remained largely silent.

The outlets that did report on the scandal disingenuously framed the incident as a racist attack on Gay, Harvard’s first black and second woman president, while relegating actual evidence of her plagiarism to a secondary concern. One left-wing pundit reduced the scandal to “technical attribution issues,” while other media entities waved it off as “duplicative language” or mere “sloppiness.”

Given that the media apparatus coalesced behind Gay from the very beginning, the right’s quest to hold her accountable was always destined to be a steep uphill battle. But Rufo’s clear-eyed vision and strategic precision succeeded not only in exposing the scandal, but also forcing the media’s hand.

“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on X in December. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”

As more and more accounts of Gay’s plagiarism started to trickle out—including an instance in which she stole, almost word for word, entire paragraphs of the writing of another academic—Rufo’s strategy began to prove fruitful. Legacy media outlets slowly began granting credence to Rufo’s findings, cementing the scandal in the eyes of the public and forcing other left-wing entities—up to and including Harvard itself—to acknowledge the revelations and treat them with the seriousness they deserve.

Eventually, once Gay’s rap sheet of plagiarism reached nearly 50 counts—which the corporate media reluctantly acknowledged—she had no choice but to tender her resignation, handing a substantial victory to Rufo and the conservative activist class, which has largely failed for decades to effectively force accountability on the left.

The corporate media is already acknowledging the effectiveness of Rufo’s strategy – although they are predictably lamenting it and sounding the alarm for the left rather than acknowledging they were wrong about Gay.

For instance, following Gay’s resignation, the Associated Press outrageously framed the scandal as a “conservative attack” meant to “fan outrage.” They even described completely legitimate accusations of plagiarism as a “new conservative weapon” being wielded against the left. As usual, for the corporate media the real problem wasn’t that a leftist did something wrong, but that conservatives dared to notice.

The Boston Globe, meanwhile, was concerned what the resignation would mean for “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Other leftists decried Gay’s ouster as “racist” and “vicious.” Gay herself refused to apologize for her brazen acts of plagiarism in her resignation letter, opting instead to blame her scandal on “personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”

Of course, the truth is that, if anything, Gay received the benefit of the doubt far longer than might have been expected. Despite the media’s accusations of racism, the Associated Press—notwithstanding its wildly irresponsible coverage of the scandal—is ultimately correct in its assessment that conservatives can use Gay’s ouster as a blueprint for taking on other progressive centers of power.

Rufo’s strategy should above all teach conservatives that properly coordinated and effectively targeted activism can indeed be successful, even in a hostile cultural, political, and journalistic environment that is increasingly suffocating for right-of-center Americans.

Some conservative influencers have already suggested that the Rufo blueprint should be used to target other left-wing academics, many of whom are also likely hiding past academic misconduct. The Rufo model could also be used to target Democrat politicians, woke corporate entities, and other progressive figures who for years have relished cancelling conservatives on ridiculous pretexts while suffering no consequences for their own errors and misdeeds.

As long as conservatives have the truth on their side and the means to disseminate it, the Gay scandal proves that conservatives have not yet been left for dead in the culture wars—and that with the right foresight, strategy, and resources, 2024 could mark the beginning of a conservative renaissance.

It’s no wonder the left is terrified.

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.