Why does disgraced plagiarist, now former president of Harvard Claudine Gay still have a job?
The AP says that pointing out plagiarism is a right-wing attack tool?
Last night I was watching TV with my wife when I clicked over to the YouTube news section. There was a report on Claudine Gay’s forced resignation. Though it was her alleged (looks pretty clear) plagiarism that took her down the ABC correspondent framed it as if Ms. Gay was being forced out because of her position on the harassment of Jewish students at Harvard. Though many would argue that the former Harvard president’s statements at the now famous congressional hearing were repugnant, this is not what ended her presidency. It was academic fraud that ended her presidency so spectacularly. She did it to herself. She failed. She was exposed. She was dishonest. She stole ideas in a scholarly setting. She engaged in behavior that has sent many a former Harvard student packing. Yet she still has a job paying $900,000/year at the university. How is this possible?
First, there are many people at Harvard and in the old media who see her as a champion of intersectionalism, what some people call “wokeism”, so even if she is “honesty challenged” that is of little consequence to them. One needs to break a few ethical eggs to make an intersectionalist omelet they might say.
Second, the people who took her down are sworn enemies of intersectionalism, conservatives and libertarians who dug and pulled back the layers of scholarly fraud and hypocrisy at Harvard. So by virtue of this there is an effort to help Ms. Gay save at least some face for fear that the removal of Gay may reflect and feed the growing move in much of society, particularly since the emergence from Covid interestingly, toward mertism and away from the top down effort to impose intersectionalist policies at universities, in the workplace, and in other places. If this new movement were to gain even more momentum it could be potentially catastrophic for those who have gone all in on intersectionalism, wokism, identity politics, etc.
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