‘I’ll be brutally honest: I would welcome almost any course of events that culminated in the public humiliation & resignation of a pseudointellectual like Claudine Gay…spent years under the thumb of

the diversitarians & my experiences taught me that they are enemies who will exploit every last shred of high-mindedness & forbearance to stab you in the back; don’t belong anywhere near a university’
‘And I’ll be brutally honest: I would welcome almost any course of events that culminated in the public humiliation and resignation of a pseudointellectual like Claudine Gay. I spent years under the thumb of the diversitarians, and my experiences taught me that they are enemies who will exploit every last shred of high-mindedness and forbearance to stab you in the back later. All of them are to a one terrible scholars and personally obnoxious people who don’t belong anywhere near a university.’

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eugyppius: a plague chronicle

On academic standards, fair play and Claudine Gay, or: Why principled liberal opposition is the wrong response to unprincipled malicious problem glasses-wearing charlatans

Following a full day of withering mockery, the Associated Press have tucked in their tail and announced that their plagiarism-as-conservative-weapon headline was “not up to standards” (h/t SCA). The article now proclaims, with rather more banality, that “Plagiarism charges downed Harvard’s president” …
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9 days ago · 59 likes · 7 comments · eugyppius

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‘On academic standards, fair play and Claudine Gay, or: Why principled liberal opposition is the wrong response to unprincipled malicious problem glasses-wearing charlatans

‘Following a full day of withering mockery, the Associated Press have tucked in their tail and announced that their plagiarism-as-conservative-weapon headline was “not up to standards” (h/t SCA). The article now proclaims, with rather more banality, that “Plagiarism charges downed Harvard’s president” …

… but their core argument, which the original headline accurately reflected, remains just as ridiculous.
Some valued readers and also friend-of-the-blog Igor Chudov have voiced unease about Gay’s downfall. They find it unsavoury that her resignation followed the antisemitism controversy that erupted at Harvard and other elite American schools after the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel. They note that calls for Gay’s resignation were first prompted by her clumsy answers to Elise Stefanik’s questions about whether Harvard’s code of student conduct prohibited “calling for the genocide of Jews.” They also point out that allegations of impropriety have been levelled against Gay since 2022, but they didn’t become a problem for her until she drew fire from wealthy benefactors in the course of these controversies.
I take a somewhat different view. To begin with, it’s important that Gay survived the initial wave of controversy. The Harvard Corporation professed support for Gay’s presidency on 12 December, brushing aside the early plagiarism accusations as mere “instances of inadequate citation” that represented “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.” This was a fairly transparent effort by the university to assert independence from the influence of donors like Bill Ackman. Not until the Washington Free Beacon uncovered much more serious evidence of plagiarism after 11 December did Gay’s position become untenable. It’s absolutely true that the antisemitism fracas prompted closer scrutiny of Gay’s work, but it’s equally true that she would’ve survived if she were a minimally competent scholar. I also find it very hard to believe that Gay could’ve remained in office following the Free Beacon revelations even had 5 December never happened.
For me, this endows Gay’s resignation with broader significance. Her presidency was hailed as a victory for the enterprise of diversity in American higher education, and so her demise becomes an important defeat for this den of thieves and malicious charlatans. And I’ll be brutally honest: I would welcome almost any course of events that culminated in the public humiliation and resignation of a pseudointellectual like Claudine Gay. I spent years under the thumb of the diversitarians, and my experiences taught me that they are enemies who will exploit every last shred of high-mindedness and forbearance to stab you in the back later. All of them are to a one terrible scholars and personally obnoxious people who don’t belong anywhere near a university.’

Alexander COVID News-Dr. Paul Elias Alexander’s substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Author: Dr. Paul Alexander