The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education.
Claudine Gay’s resignation Tuesday followed weeks of mounting accusations that she lifted language from other scholars in her doctoral dissertation and journal articles. The allegations surfaced amid backlash over her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus.
The plagiarism allegations 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. Her detractors charged that Gay — who has a Ph.D. in government, was a professor at Harvard and Stanford and headed Harvard’s largest division before being promoted — got the top job in large part because she is a Black woman.
Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the effort, celebrated her departure as a win in his campaign against elite institutions of higher education. On X, formerly Twitter, he 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.
“Tomorrow, we get back to the fight,” he said on X, describing a “playbook” against institutions deemed too liberal by conservatives. His latest target: efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in education and business.
She stepped down because she refused to denounce calls on her campus for genocide of Jews. No one at Harvard cared about her bad citations, and she was investigated by them and found that her dissertation did not rise to the level of punishable content.
The entire reason she is stepping down is that there is violent rhetoric going around on her campus that she is not only doing nothing about, but rather went before Congress and wouldn’t condemn.
It’s also worth noting that no one is forcing her resignation. She thinks it will be the best thing for the school to put these events in the rear view mirror.
This article is incredibly misleading. Here’s a much more factual one
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/claudine-gay-resigns-harvard-university-president-letter/
this is what I thought as well. this is the first time I see an article saying pressure for resignation came from plagiarism.