It was inevitable that the brain trusts at the Associated Press and CNN would come rushing to the defense of ex-Harvard President Claudine Gay. Like many defense attorneys who know that their client is guilty, they had to invent a defense.
In Gay’s case, her problems began when she and two other major university presidents from MIT and UPenn refused to answer a simple straightforward question at a Congressional hearing. At the hearing, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked each president “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [MIT’s, UPenn’s, Harvard’s] rules or code of conduct? Yes, or no?”
Amazingly, all three of them danced around, stumbled, and bumbled through the question, and none of them answered it. The reaction was swift. People were outraged that three presidents of what were considered to be prestigious universities refused to answer such a simple, direct question that had a more than obvious answer.
Within days, Liz Magill, the UPenn president, resigned over the furor. Gay offered an apology, but it was too late; her testimony at the hearing would not be drowned out. Then in early December, allegations arose that Gay had plagiarized the work of others in her 1997 doctoral thesis, as well as four other published documents between 1993 and 2017 that did not include proper attribution.
In late December, the New York Post reported that Harvard University’s embattled president Claudine Gay was the focus of a complaint alleging more than 40 instances of her plagiarizing others' work. The 37-page document compiles dozens of cases in which Gay, a political scientist, either paraphrased or quoted authors without proper attribution.
This lack of acknowledgment is against Harvard’s rules, as was pointed out in a document that the Washington Free Beacon obtained.
One of those infuriated with Gay is Carol Swain, a former political science professor at Vanderbilt University. Swain claims Gay copied sections of her 1993 book, “Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress,” as well as an article she published in 1997 titled, “Women and Blacks in Congress: 1870-1996.”
In an essay that she wrote for the Wall Street Journal, Swain stated:
Ms. Gay had no problem riding on the coattails of people whose work she used without proper attribution. Many of those whose work she pilfered aren’t as incensed as I am. They are elites who have benefited from a system that protects its own.
As the dust was slowly settling on Gay’s fiasco, The Post revealed how Harvard covered up a weeks-long investigation into whether Gay had used other researchers’ work without crediting it and even hired a prestigious law firm to help cover it up.
With nowhere to hide, Gay finally announced her resignation on Tuesday. While many celebrated, the AP came to her defense using one of the left’s oldest projectionist twists. It is trying to sell the idea that Gay’s departure serves as proof that conservatives will use plagiarism to attack higher education.
“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,” AP reporters Collin Binkley and Moriah Balingit wrote.
“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.”
However, AP’s racist post directing people to the article was corrected with a “community note” that stated,
Plagiarism is a breach of rules for Harvard University. Claudine Gay was ultimately forced to resign for a series of breaches of this policy. Plagiarism – or application of the rules around plagiarism – therefore cannot be considered a “weapon.”
Harvard president's resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism https://t.co/GiVkT3LgUo
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 3, 2024
In early December, Gay’s alleged plagiarism first came to light thanks to Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, who outlined what he indicated to be three instances of Gay plagiarizing, according to Harvard standards, in her dissertation. Since then, Gay has been hit with nearly 50 allegations of plagiarism affecting eight of her 17 published works.
The AP wasn’t finished making a fool of itself. After defending Gay, it once again attempted to deflect the conversation by focusing on a word that Rufo used after Gay’s resignation. The AP claimed that his use of the word “scalped” in a social media post “invoked a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans.” Scalping was a common practice used by American Indian warriors — both in intertribal conflicts and clashes with European settlers — to achieve honor and to showcase their victims’ scalps as a trophy.
You’d think nothing in the article could top the headline, but then you see @AP’s definition of scalping. https://t.co/BaC9cJaBjs pic.twitter.com/WORZ2IqISp
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) January 3, 2024
Perhaps someone should ask the AP to explain how the word scalping “invoked a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans.” That’s tough to do when you’re the ones being scalped. Apparently, the AP believes that early white colonists thought they could “eradicate” Native Americans by offering up their hair and scalp.
This defense of Gay is another example of the left going back to an old well. Instead of acknowledging that Gay was wrong, leftists deflect and project blame. The left doesn’t want the American public to focus on the real issue, which is that Gay was antisemitic and plagiarized material. Instead, it wants people to believe that calling Gay out for what she did was the crime. The left believes that it never does anything wrong. In the minds of leftists, catching them in their lies is the crime.
Then there’s the CNN version of truth. The network's attempt to defend Gay revolves around literally attempting to change the definition of the word plagiarism. Matt Egan, a reporter for the Communist News Network, tried to assure his audience that what Gay did was not plagiarism. He then went on to describe what she did, which perfectly encapsulates what plagiarism is. Here is Egan's explanation of Gay’s actions:
We should note that Claudine Gay has not been accused of stealing anyone's ideas in any of her writings. She has been accused of sort of more like copying other people’s writings without attribution. So, it's been more sloppy attribution than stealing anyone's ideas.
Bonkers explanation from CNN reporter Matt Egan on the Harvard plagiarism scandal:
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 2, 2024
"We should note that Claudine Gay has not been accused of stealing anyone's ideas in any of her writings. She has been accused of sort of more like copying other peoples writings without… pic.twitter.com/ONArO75NLE
Right, OK then. I’m not ending the column here, I just stopped writing.
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