Education
Claudine Gay – next target
After Liz Magill resigned as President of Penn, Claudine Gay has come under serious academic accusations. Is she a target?
Claudine Gay, PhD, President of Harvard University, seems to have made herself a target with her December 5 testimony. The same was true of Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, until she resigned over the weekend. Now that Magill has resigned, Claudine Gay is receiving unwanted attention from several quarters. This actually creates a mystery – because Sally Kornbluth, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has not come in for such attention, this although she used the same weasel words that Gay and Magill used. Nevertheless, certain allegations against Dr. Gay, if true, cast doubt on her qualifications to be President of anything.
Latest allegations against Claudine Gay
Recall that Sally Kornbluth, Liz Magill, and Claudine Gay all gave disastrous testimony to the House Education and Workforce Committee. That evening, Bill Ackman, co-trustee of the Pershing Square Fund, shared three and a half minutes of embedded video of the questioning of the three by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), and his own scathing critique of all three.
In sum, he said all three should resign in disgrace.
But on Thursday morning (December 7) he seemed to target Claudine Gay specifically. At 12:25 a.m. EST he shared this post, alleging that Claudine Gay became President of Harvard for one reason only. And that is: she’s a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion hire.
He also suggested that was true for “other elite universities” looking for presidents, department heads, etc. at the same time. Dr. Gay became president of Harvard in January of 2023.
But that’s hardly the worst allegation now. Christopher Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, yesterday afternoon accused Dr. Gay of the worst academic sin: plagiarism.
This thread details the most flagrant violations in academic integrity imaginable – for which Harvard itself would expel any student. If these examples hold, then Claudine Gay is not qualified even to teach, much less to be a university president. Those reacting to Rufo’s thread know it, and have said so.
(CNAV has not been able to confirm that last allegation independently.)
Dr. Carol M. Swain weighs in
Benjamin Wetmore at The Gateway Pundit took time to reach, or at least find a post by, Dr. Carol Swain. In reply, she said:
Dr. Swain has a point. Why didn’t the Harvard presidential search committee nor any reviewer or colleague catch this when it happened?
Indeed Dr. Swain did have more to say about Claudine Gay – and not her alone.
Maybe because the politics of these other scholars is opposite hers. And more:
Worth noting (as Dr. Swain herself noticed) is that some Harvard alumni are already calling on Dr. Gay to resign – and on Harvard’s Trustees to hire Dr. Swain in her place.
Also worth noting is that Dr. Swain has begun her own investigation, this although, as a professor emerita, she no longer has the free-of-charge access to “social science databases” she once enjoyed. She has asked for help,
and help seems to be on its way.
This is probably the best single thing Dr. Swain has said in the last eighteen hours:
Case in point: Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Return of the billboard trucks
Last night David Greyson at The Gateway Pundit reported that the infamous Billboard Trucks, probably the same ones who “doxxed” the members of the 31 student organizations at Harvard who signed a statement blaming Israel entirely for the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, now are featuring billboards calling on Claudine Gay to resign. Greyson cited Fox News, who also reported that an airplane would shortly tow a banner over Cambridge, Massachusetts, saying, “Harvard, stop Jew hatred!” Interestingly, Greyson said similar “billboard trucks” drove around the Penn campus before its President resigned.
All of which raises more questions. The questions concern, not whether Claudine Gay deserves the opprobrium she is now receiving. Plagiarism is, quite simply, unpardonable in academic circles – and her answers to Rep. Stefanik’s questions last week were indeed disgraceful. But where is this attention coming from? Christopher Rufo said he and his colleague “obtained documents” suggesting the plagiarism charge. Where did they get them? Who is organizing the billboard trucks?
Should the country expect Sally Kornbluth at MIT to come in for the same treatment? Oddly enough, Dr. Kornbluth is Jewish herself. That raises the question of why she has not been more forceful in dealing with antisemitic incidents on her own campus. Victor Davis Hanson described one case – at MIT – in which authorities told Jewish students to stay away from certain areas of campus. Contributor Darrell L. Castle called that the worst example to date of antisemitism on campus.
Claudine Gay is not the only one
So how could Dr. Kornbluth permit spectacles of this kind on her watch? And why has she not, thus far, come under the same attack as have Liz Magill and Claudine Gay? Or might the world expect her to come under such attack in the near future? If this does not happen, then someone is selectively applying outrage. Justice should apply to all offenders, and not be a respecter of persons.
Bookmark this site, and watch for further developments.
Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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