Maga loonies take another scalp: Harvard president resigns

[jserraglio]

NYT BREAKING NEWS

Faced with a new round of accusations over plagiarism in her scholarly work, Harvard’s president Claudine Gay announced her resignation on Tuesday, becoming the second Ivy League leader to lose her job in recent weeks amid a firestorm intensified by their widely derided congressional testimony regarding antisemitism on campus.

The resignation of Dr. Gay marked an abrupt end to a turbulent tenure that began in July. Her stint was the shortest of any president in the history of Harvard since its founding in 1636. She was the institution’s first Black president, and the second woman to lead the university.

“It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president,” Dr. Gay wrote in a letter to the Harvard community.

Over the last month, plagiarism accusations had surfaced against Dr. Gay, the president of Harvard, signaling that the attacks on her qualifications to lead the Ivy League university are continuing, and miring the university deeper in debate over whether Harvard holds its president and its students to the same standard.

[lennygoran]

Joseph so sad how she gave that scalp to Stefanik-she could have handled her answers so much better. Regards, Len

[barney]

I fear I don't share your grief, though I entirely accept that her persecutors are deeply unpleasant.

I found her testimony contemptible, but that wasn't what led to her downfall as I think you know. She had Harvard support after that. But she could not sustain her reputation in view of repeated plagiarism and an extremely light academic record that led to charges that hers was a purely political appointment.

Universities don't seem to me to stand for much by way of education these days, but they MUST provide at least lip service to the idea that plagiarism is a Bad Thing and your work should be your own.

[Belle]

Say it: this was a diversity pick. I'd say plagiarism is the least of their worries, if you listen to Drs. Loury and McWhorter.

Same as our indigenous Director of Public Prosecutions in Canberra who undermined the rule of law in the recent infamous rape case and who was the subject of a post-trial inquiry and found to be reckless. Let's hear it for incompetent diversity picks who are given a leg-up because of their colour, gender or victimhood status.

The Left will always eat its own:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEVaao8wzYc

[jserraglio]

Say it: this was a diversity pick.

Say it: This smells like a fresh road apple.

Claudine Gay served successfully as Harvard‘a Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. You don’t get and keep that job unless you’ve got a helluva lot on the ball.

Claudine Gay: What Just Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me

Comment: Dr. Gay answers the skanks on the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Caucus) and the hacks on the hard-Right who stalked & hunted her down and issues a warning to those who are seduced by the siren song of Maga loony agitprop.

Jan. 3, 2024
5:00 p.m. ET
The New York Times
Guest Opinion Essay
By Claudine Gay

Dr. Gay is a former president of Harvard University, where she is a professor of government and of African and African American studies.

On Tuesday, I made the wrenching but necessary decision to resign as Harvard’s president. For weeks, both I and the institution to which I’ve devoted my professional life have been under attack. My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.

My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.

As I depart, I must offer a few words of warning. The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there. Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.

Yes, I made mistakes. In my initial response to the atrocities of Oct. 7, I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know: Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state. And at a congressional hearing last month, I fell into a well-laid trap. I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate.

Most recently, the attacks have focused on my scholarship. My critics found instances in my academic writings where some material duplicated other scholars’ language, without proper attribution. I believe all scholars deserve full and appropriate credit for their work. When I learned of these errors, I promptly requested corrections from the journals in which the flagged articles were published, consistent with how I have seen similar faculty cases handled at Harvard.

I have never misrepresented my research findings, nor have I ever claimed credit for the research of others. Moreover, the citation errors should not obscure a fundamental truth: I proudly stand by my work and its impact on the field.

Despite the obsessive scrutiny of my peer-reviewed writings, few have commented on the substance of my scholarship, which focuses on the significance of minority office holding in American politics. My research marshaled concrete evidence to show that when historically marginalized communities gain a meaningful voice in the halls of power, it signals an open door where before many saw only barriers. And that, in turn, strengthens our democracy.

Throughout this work, I asked questions that had not been asked, used then-cutting-edge quantitative research methods and established a new understanding of representation in American politics. This work was published in the nation’s top political science journals and spawned important research by other scholars.

Never did I imagine needing to defend decades-old and broadly respected research, but the past several weeks have laid waste to truth. Those who had relentlessly campaigned to oust me since the fall often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument. They recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament. They pushed a false narrative of indifference and incompetence.

It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution. Someone who views diversity as a source of institutional strength and dynamism. Someone who has advocated a modern curriculum that spans from the frontier of quantum science to the long-neglected history of Asian Americans. Someone who believes that a daughter of Haitian immigrants has something to offer to the nation’s oldest university.

I still believe that. As I return to teaching and scholarship, I will continue to champion access and opportunity, and I will bring to my work the virtue I discussed in the speech I delivered at my presidential inauguration: courage. Because it is courage that has buoyed me throughout my career and it is courage that is needed to stand up to those who seek to undermine what makes universities unique in American life.

Having now seen how quickly the truth can become a casualty amid controversy, I’d urge a broader caution: At tense moments, every one of us must be more skeptical than ever of the loudest and most extreme voices in our culture, however well organized or well connected they might be. Too often they are pursuing self-serving agendas that should be met with more questions and less credulity.

College campuses in our country must remain places where students can learn, share and grow together, not spaces where proxy battles and political grandstanding take root. Universities must remain independent venues where courage and reason unite to advance truth, no matter what forces set against them.

[david johnson]

If she was a plagiarist she should not have the job, or maybe just put judicious footnotes in her academic works

[jserraglio]

If she was a plagiarist she should not have the job, or maybe just put judicious footnotes in her academic works

Baloney.

The modern-day version of the silly old “Battle of the Books” is this absurd “Furor Over the Footnotes”.

Or rather, this “Tempest in a Tea Party Pot”.

Gay is a quantitative social scientist but she is only human and can make mistakes. Those sanctimonious charges of flagrant plagiarism shook out as multiple citation errors that occurred in peripheral summaries of past scholarship. No one, least of all the talentless Maga shills hounding her in Congress, was able to dispute the substance of her research or show it to be dishonest.

Given the hard Right’s stated agenda — to undermine elite universities — its social media Munchkins have an affinity for masking their bigotry and misogyny with a Johnny-come-lately fervor for academic integrity. Unable to dispute Gay’s accomplishments, they resort to getting her on a technicality.

[barney]

Well, Joe, I'm not sure that a belated and face-saving discovery of the fact that calling for slaughtering of Jews is a bad thing, and that universities should not endorse it, is a mere technicality. What a pity she couldn't say it when it counted. I gravely doubt her sincerity. By that, I don't mean that I think she wants Jews slaughtered, but that it is a highly peripheral issue for her. She now says she should do everything possible to prevent that kind of hatred, but the fact is she did absolutely nothing at the time.

And I'm not sure why you take such a benign view of this particular plagiarism. My suspicion is it is not the facts you object to but the source of the accusations - but you should be concerned about the facts or how do you differ from the accusers?

[jserraglio]

Well Barney, hasn’t your outrage over Gay’s equivocations regarding student sympathizers with Hamas gotten all mixed up with and tainted your judgment on the plagiarism issue? And haven’t you impugned the sincerity of her apology? On what basis? Can you read her mind and heart?

True, my contempt for Dr. Gay’s accusers can be expressed only with obscenities that should never ever pass my lips but all too often do. I am a vulgar man, yet despite my bias against Maga shills . . .

The facts are pretty clear. If a student of mine had done what Gay did, I would point it out to him and correct him but would never accuse him of plagiarism. I have had to take just that kind of gentle corrective action more times than I could count over 50 years in the classroom.

I do know plagiarism when I see it, however, and I’ve had to deal with blatant academic dishonesty in research papers several times over the years. I think it’s accurate to say I came down hard on it, making the life of the youthful cheater pretty damn miserable.

In my view, Claudine Gay’s footnote peccadillos do not warrant such harsh treatment. Her dissertation adviser agrees with me. That dissertation, by the way, judged on its substance not technicalities, won Harvard's Toppan Prize for the best dissertation in political science (Wikipedia).

And by the way, if there did happen to be a set of accusers with an axe to grind against a student as is the case with Ms. Gay, of course I would take their motives into account, as any adjudicator would do.

[lennygoran]

Yes, I made mistakes. In my initial response to the atrocities of Oct. 7, I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know: Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state. And at a congressional hearing last month, I fell into a well-laid trap. I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate.

Joseph thanks for posting this-those mistakes were painful for me to watch since to say I despise Stefanik would be an understatement. Regards, Len