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NAACP President Claims Critics of Harvard’s Claudine Gay Are Advancing ‘White Supremacist Agenda’
Gay came under fire for her comments at a congressional hearing on antisemitism and alleged instances of plagiarism in her academic work.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we look at the meager attempts to defend Harvard president Claudine Gay amid dual scandals, look at NBC’s embarrassing coverage of a Senate sex-tape scandal, and cover more media misses.
Claudine Gay Defenders Make It About Race
With Harvard University president Claudine Gay in the hot seat for her comments at a congressional hearing on antisemitism as a well as for the recently reported instances of plagiarism in her scholarly work, it was only a matter of time before her supporters accused her critics of racism.
NAACP president Derrick Johnson recently claimed that attacks against Gay “are nothing more than political theatrics advancing a White supremacist agenda.”
“Enough is enough,” he wrote on X. “Harvard President Claudine Gay is a distinguished scholar and professor with decades of service in higher education. The recent attacks on her leadership are nothing more than political theatrics advancing a White supremacist agenda.”
The controversy began when Gay was asked during a congressional hearing whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the university’s code of conduct. Her reply: It “depends on the context of the situation.”
Representative Elise Stefanik also pressed Gay over chants of “intifada” at student protests. Gay said the calls for violence do not violate the university’s code of conduct and claimed that the university has a strong commitment to free speech and ideological diversity.
Then Gay’s doctoral dissertation failed to stand up to scrutiny from the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo and Karlstack’s Chris Brunet, who discovered multiple examples of plagiarism.
After asking several scholars to review her papers, the Washington Free Beacon found that Gay had “plagiarized numerous academics over the course of her academic career, at times airlifting entire paragraphs and claiming them as her own work.”
The report found that Gay had paraphrased or quoted nearly 20 authors without proper attribution throughout four papers published between 1993 and 2017.
“The Free Beacon worked with nearly a dozen scholars to analyze 29 potential cases of plagiarism,” the report said. “Most of them said that Gay had violated a core principle of academic integrity as well as Harvard’s own anti-plagiarism policies, which state that ‘it’s not enough to change a few words here and there.’”
Gay has published just eleven papers in her career, with at least five containing plagiarized materials. The Harvard board has chosen to stand by Gay, but has acknowledged it found instances of inadequate citation” in the papers she has published.
As Becket Adams wrote for NR:
What’s equally disconcerting, however, is the selective silence of major newsrooms on this matter. Why did we read of Gay’s plagiarism first in the Free Beacon and not in the New York Times or the Washington Post? For that matter, why did we not read of it first in the Boston Globe? It’s in that paper’s own backyard!
The New York Times, Adams noted, has reported only one story headlined “Harvard Clears Its President of ‘Research Misconduct’ After Plagiarism Charges,” while the Boston Globe has published one story titled “Harvard board says review of President Gay’s writings finds no violations of school standards on research misconduct, but instances of ‘inadequate citation,’”
And while backlash was swift to both Gay and the president of the University of Pennsylvania (who ultimately resigned) and the president of MIT, Gay’s defender’s claim that the attacks against her are the result of racism — not outrage over her failure to condemn antisemitism or her history of plagiarism.
Johnson’s post linked to an Essence column accusing billionaire hedge-fundmanager Bill Ackman of racism and misogyny for his own criticisms of the Harvard president: “Bill Ackman’s Comments on Claudine Gay Are an Unabashed, Racist Attack and Clear Misogynoir.”
“Whatever you think about current events, there can be no dispute over her qualifications,” LGBT civil-rights activist and lawyer Alphonso David wrote in the Essence column.
“Why, then, did Ackman and others shift their rhetoric? It’s a very specific kind of microaggression and dog whistle, one that Scholar and Professor Moya Bailey has termed misogynoir — a type of oppression and discrimination uniquely experienced by Black women,” David wrote. “Make no mistake: Ackman’s statement on President Gay and equating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to modern-day McCarthyism have nothing to do with combating antisemitism. Rather, Ackman is choosing to inflame anti-woke culture wars against the most visible Black woman he could target.”
Ackman, a Harvard alumnus, roundly dismissed the claims.
“Now I am a White supremacist apparently. Am I also antisemitic because I suggested that @MIT’s Kornbluth should resign or be fired? Am I anti-Christian because I said @Penn’s Magill should be fired? Why must one be deemed a racist or White supremacist when one raises legitimate criticisms about a leader who comes from a minority community?” he wrote in a post on X.
Headline Fail of the Week
In perhaps one of the most egregious examples of the “Republicans pounce” genre, NBC News reported, “NBC Senate staffer alleged by conservative outlets to have had sex in a hearing room is no longer employed.”
It’s unclear why NBC sought to blame conservatives for the story of a legislative aide to Senator Ben Cardin (D., Md.) filming himself having sex in the Hart Senate Office Building hearing room.
“On Friday, The Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet, published what it said was video showing a congressional staffer having ‘sex with an unknown man in the Senate hearing room.’ It added that the video was shared ‘in a private group for gay men in politics.’”
Media Misses
— Austin Ahlman, a reporter at Open Markets Institute, claimed that the Cardin staffer at the center of the aforementioned video scandal (he has since been fired) was “subjected to revenge porn by conservative media … because he said “free Palestine” to a member of congress who called for genocide…”
not defending what he did (certainly not condemning it either), but we all caught that the reason that poor twink was subjected to revenge porn by conservative media is because he said “free Palestine” to a member of congress who called for genocide, right?
— Austin Ahlman (@austinahlman) December 16, 2023
— NR’s Phil Klein aptly called out the faulty logic behind a viral gun-control ad.
I watched this anti-gun rights ad. It portrays a girl falling in a pool after reaching for a float and people offering “thoughts and prayers” rather than taking action. But to carry along this analogy, the action they want would be to ban pools — or floats kids may reach for. https://t.co/BBNAxfHyNl
— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) December 16, 2023
— This super-viral Trump “quote” was too good to be true:
I knew he’d get to the Panera lemonade at some point. pic.twitter.com/Io5S2Lm0j2
— Keaton Patti (@KeatonPatti) December 15, 2023
— The Associated Press chose not to name the suspect who is accused of murdering Detroit synagogue president Samantha Woll “because it’s unclear if he has a lawyer who can speak on his behalf.” Other outlets, however, including the Daily Beast and NBC, have identified the alleged killer at Michael Manuel Jackson-Bolanos.