Harvard President Claudine Gay may be in real trouble now.
Even CNN now appears to be calling her out on the plagiarism charges.
Jake Tapper's lead story tonight: "Is Harvard university really holding its president, Dr. Claudine Gay, to the same standards when it comes to plagiarism that it would for students committing the same offense?" pic.twitter.com/UVX1FvA9h0
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) December 21, 2023
"Is Harvard University holding its president, Claudine Gay, Dr. Claudine Gay, to the same standards when it comes to plagiarism that it would assail for students committing the same offense?" Tapper asked.
Tapper noted the failure of Gay and the two other Ivy League presidents to explicitly say that the calling for the genocide of Jews on their campuses would be against their codes of conduct. While he accurately noted that, he had to get in a shot at the right wing, saying it earned her many right-wing enemies who then found out about her plagiarism problem. "But despite the provenance," what if the charges are true, he asked.
Having a problem with what the presidents said was not "right-wing." It should have bothered anyone who thinks that behavior is unacceptable on campus. And if Tapper has a question about the provenance, perhaps he should question why it's the conservative media that has to break such stories and not CNN. Maybe someone is failing to do their job? However, welcome to the party now, as he finally is forced to follow up on the questions conservative media forced into the open.
Tapper explained how Harvard did an investigation and said that while they found inadequate citations, they didn't find any violations of standards for research misconduct. But they did it without telling anyone and it didn't come out until after it was exposed after her Congressional testimony. I wonder if they ever would have said anything if not for the furor after the testimony.
Tapper opined that critics of Dr. Gay and Harvard claim the university is employing a double standard here by not holding Gay accountable.
CNN then had reporter Matt Egan go into greater detail about the facts.
“Gay submitted corrections to two papers that she wrote as a professional academic in 2001 and 2017 ,” Egan said. But there were other examples of plagiarism in the 1990s, including when she was studying for her Ph.D. at Harvard and allegedly lifted a whole paragraph of someone else's work without citation and had another incident in a 1993 essay.
“These instances of plagiarism were first reported by The Washington Free Beacon and CNN’s analysis confirmed some of the main allegations in that reporting,” Egan said.
He added that Harvard is facing two major criticisms: “One is the lightning-fast speed that Harvard pulled off this independent review. These types of plagiarism reviews, they can take anywhere from six months to two years, and this one wasn’t even two months. Another criticism is that there’s a double standard; one set of rules for the students and another for the president of the university.”
Tapper noted the problems that they would likely have now in taking action against students who are accused of plagiarism when they appear to have given Gay a pass.
As my colleague Brad Slager wrote earlier, it's much more involved even than CNN states, with many more examples of plagiarism being alleged and a legal team being sent after the NY Post when they started looking into the issue.
Scholars Find Dozens More Examples of Plagiarism by Harvard President Claudine Gay
Unfortunately, Harvard hasn't taken the issue regarding Gay seriously yet. They should have taken it sincerely before and been upfront about the investigation.
But CNN now raising the question may push Harvard a bit more to finally take action, as they have to justify their response or lack thereof to more people.
Related:
REPORT: Harvard President Claudine Gay Plagiarized Portions of Her Ph.D. Dissertation
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