The Associated Press Beclowns Itself

The Claudine Gay saga at Harvard University has come to an end, and the usual suspects are making the usual defenses. As Noah Rothman notes in his Corner post from earlier today, the racial hucksters are at it again, claiming that any setback for a black woman — never mind how earned that setback may be — is a function of America’s white-supremacist superstructure. We expect grifters and cranks like Ibram Kendi and Jemele Hill to make those arguments. It would be out of character if they didn’t. 

But take a look at how the Associated Press framed the story.

The article itself is no less an exercise in journalistic malpractice. Allegations of plagiarism, the AP says, “came not from her academic peers but her political foes, led by conservatives who sought to oust Gay and put her career under intense scrutiny in hopes of finding a fatal flaw.”

It’s true that the first people to note Gay’s plagiarism were conservative, or at least associated with conservative outlets like the Washington Free Beacon. But that doesn’t mean they were wrong. The AP noted that “many academics were troubled with how the plagiarism came to light: as part of a coordinated campaign to discredit Gay and force her from office, in part because of her involvement in efforts for racial justice on campus.” 

So now it’s not just a project by conservatives to oust a university president but one motivated by Gay’s pursuit of racial justice. And to demonstrate how racist the aims of those who uncovered Gay’s plagiarism were, the AP notes that Christopher Rufo, who initially broke the story, “wrote ‘SCALPED,’ as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans.” 

If you click on the article now, though, you’ll see something amazing: The AP stealth-edited its story to admit that scalping was a Native American practice, not an inherently racist act of violence the mention of which shows that Rufo is a racist himself. It’s fun to imagine how much pain it caused the reporters to have to acknowledge that, even though — in true mainstream fashion — the AP didn’t affix a note.

But more than that, what we’ve learned is that the story here isn’t that Gay plagiarized myriad other scholars for her notably thin roster of published works, but that plagiarism itself is an illusion, a distraction waved in front of the public’s face while evil conservative activists work behind the scenes to enact racist fantasies.

It’s also, apparently, an attack against academic freedom, according to Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors. “It’ll chill the climate for academic freedom,” she said, “and it may make university presidents less likely to speak out against this inappropriate interference for fear of losing their jobs or being targeted.”

Or, maybe, Occam’s Razor can apply. Claudine Gay was the president of arguably the most prestigious university in the world. Her résumé was strikingly threadbare even before it came to light that she didn’t have many of her own ideas, and as time went on and the evidence against her academic integrity mounted, it simply became too much for Harvard to bear.

But the AP can’t see it that way, not because it wants to frame the argument as one of Republicans pouncing but because it lacks the ability to view the world through any other lens. I recall my time in journalism school, from which many of my classmates and fellow students would go on to work in elite mainstream newsrooms. A common theme in my reporting classes was the trepidation many felt at the prospect that their reporting could undercut progressive aims; the Daily Northwestern itself apologized when student activists took issue with its reporting on an effort to shut down a campus event featuring Jeff Sessions as speaker.

I doubt the reporters who wrote the AP’s story even know they’re doing the bidding of those who seek to make politically charged excuses for Gay’s behavior. Just as she is a creation of the education-industrial complex, they are creations of the mainstream-media ecosystem. They know no other way.