On the menu today: Adios, Harvard president Claudine Gay. Unfortunately, Gay and the Harvard Fellows who accepted her resignation are attempting to fool everyone into believing that this overdue move is an unfortunate response to terrible racism, instead of a concession to the fact that the country’s most prestigious university, with a $50 billion endowment, could not continue with a serial plagiarist running it, while simultaneously punishing students for plagiarism.
Serial Plagiarist Leaves Harvard
From the resignation letter of Claudine Gay, the now-departing president of Harvard Corporation,* which, as far as we know, she wrote herself:
Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.
In her letter, Gay offers no expression of regret or remorse for any of her actions. There’s no admission of wrongdoing. There’s only the briefest and vaguest allusion to the nearly 50 cases of alleged plagiarism. She does, however, offer a direct characterization of her critics as “fueled by racial animus.”
The statement from the Fellows of Harvard College offers similar sentiments:
In the face of escalating controversy and conflict, President Gay and the Fellows have sought to be guided by the best interests of the institution whose future progress and well-being we are together committed to uphold. Her own message conveying her intention to step down eloquently underscores what those who have worked with her have long known — her commitment to the institution and its mission is deep and selfless. It is with that overarching consideration in mind that we have accepted her resignation.
We do so with sorrow. While President Gay has acknowledged missteps and has taken responsibility for them, it is also true that she has shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks. While some of this has played out in the public domain, much of it has taken the form of repugnant and in some cases racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls. We condemn such attacks in the strongest possible terms.
Saying that “President Gay has acknowledged missteps and has taken responsibility for them” is presumably a reference to her admitting that, when she told Congress that calling for the genocide of Jews might violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment depending upon the context, she didn’t handle that question well:
“I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” Gay said in the interview. “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged.”
“Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth,” Gay added.
Hey, who among us hasn’t gotten caught up in the moment and argued that calling for the genocide of Jews might be okay in certain contexts? Some of us might say that if you can stumble into telling Congress that, in certain circumstances, calling for genocide is acceptable, you really shouldn’t be running anything, much less the most prestigious university in the country. “Is calling for genocide a form of harassment?” should be the sort of question they ask when they are trying to assess if you’ve had a concussion.
Here’s the thing: If you’ve done nothing wrong, are being falsely accused of rampant plagiarism, and all of your critics are racists or are gushing “racist vitriol” . . . why are you resigning? Why are the Harvard Fellows accepting your resignation?
The contention of Gay and the Harvard Fellows is that Gay did nothing seriously wrong, certainly nothing that warrants her resignation, but she’s resigning anyway, because a bunch of racists are demanding it.
I was reminded of the contention of Nina Jankowicz, back in 2022, that the Biden administration and the Department of Homeland Security shut down the Disinformation Governance Board because of intense criticism from “the right-wing Internet apparatus.” As I wrote at the time, that explanation didn’t make sense:
As much as I would love to believe that conservative voices on the Internet have awesome and far-reaching power that makes cabinet secretaries quake in their boots, that is not the way the world has ever worked, that is not the way the world works now, and that is not the way the world will likely ever work. Federal agencies don’t shut down projects just because they’ve gotten a lot of critical coverage in the media, particularly conservative media.
If intense criticism from the Internet could get a federal agency to stop doing something, very few federal agencies would ever do anything. If intense criticism from the Internet could get a federal official to resign, then Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Antony Blinken, Alejandro Mayorkas, Merrick Garland, Janet Yellen and just about the entire Biden administration would all be cleaning out their desks.
A few months later, we learned the real explanation, one that was much less flattering to Jankowicz:
Earlier this week, DHS formally announced that, “In accordance with the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s prior recommendation, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas has terminated the Disinformation Governance Board and rescinded its charter effective today, August 24, 2022.”
That HSAC study reviewed the various ways that the federal agencies under DHS, such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, dispel inaccurate information, and the final report released this week concluded that, “There is no need for a separate Disinformation Governance Board.” The interim report published in July offered the same conclusion.
Why did DHS shut down Nina Jankowicz’s operation? Because someone decided to form it before examining whether the department needed it. Once a panel of experts did take a look — including Jamie Gorelick, the Forrest Gump of American misfortune in the past three decades — they concluded the DHS already had enough offices in enough agencies focused on rebutting disinformation, including disinformation coming from foreign governments. The Disinformation Governance Board was superfluous.
DHS didn’t need what Jankowicz planned to do, and the Mary Poppins-singing Biden donor who campaigned for Hillary Clinton and whose previous research was disputed as inaccurate, was undoubtedly turning into a public-relations nightmare for the department.
Claudine Gay did not resign as president of Harvard because the pressure from racists had grown too much for the university. With its $50.7 billion endowment and far-reaching ties into the worlds of politics, law, media, and corporate America, Harvard ranks among the most powerful institutions in the country. The institution has powerful friends in just about every conceivable corner of American life. Harvard graduates include two of the past four presidents; Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and John Roberts; roughly 40 members of the U.S. House and Senate; and around 40 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Harvard graduates make an impact wherever they go — think of Henry Kissinger, Steve Bannon, Theodore Kaczynski, and Ryan Fitzpatrick.
No, Claudine Gay resigned because the combination of her “oopsie” testimony, her plagiarism, and her previous thin record of scholarship made her a walking declaration that those who are powerful and who check the right boxes are protected from the consequences of their actions. The elite and powerful will close ranks and make excuses.
Keeping Gay would require hand-waving away her cases of plagiarism while disciplining students for the same offenses. A voting member of the Harvard College Honor Council pointed out in the Harvard Crimson:
“By definition, Gay’s corrections were not proactive but reactive — she only made them after she was caught. And that the Corporation considers her corrections an adequate response is not fair to undergraduates, who cannot simply submit corrections to avoid penalties. There is one standard for me and my peers and another, much lower standard for our University’s president. The Corporation should resolve the double standard by demanding her resignation.”
An institution as powerful as Harvard can withstand a certain amount of embarrassing hypocrisy, but not that much. With each day that she remained, Gay further damaged the “brand” of an institution that not only takes great pride in its prestige — some would say insufferable pride in its prestige — but needs to convince families that nearly $80,000 per year in tuition, housing, and food is worthwhile.
*Up until about a week ago, everybody called it Harvard University, but if Harvard is going to call itself a corporation despite its tax-exempt status, perhaps the rest of us ought to do the same.
ADDENDUM: Our Dominic Pino notices that the national debt just surpassed $34 trillion. “The federal government ran a deficit of $2 trillion last year for no apparent reason.” No pandemic, no recession — at least not officially — and no ongoing foreign war. (Don’t blame Ukraine aid; as of December 27, the U.S. government has provided approximately $44.2 billion in military assistance since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022.)