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Notes -
*ding* *ding* *ding*
Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, is out. Yep, it's true, absolutely not Fake and
Gay. No Gay here, no siree......
Even the Harvard Crimson, which is about as institutional-woke aligned as you can get pulls no punches in its article. She really seems to have completely fallen from the graces of the powers that be in academia. The plagierism allegations aren't new either, they've been going around for a year at this point, but it looks like they only really started to matter when she put a mark on herself and the sharks smelled blood.
Before that point they were just ignored and the general fishiness around her dates back to the early 2000s. This means that Harvard did not care about the allegations when they were appointing her to the presidency (just 6 months ago, when these allegations were all out there), but only started to care once she became a personal liability to Harvard rather than merely an academic one. Alternatively they did care but their vetting process is so bad something so open and shut as her plagierism passed through undetected. Either way it looks really bad. A pox on Harvard!
On a more cynical note I admit to being personally surprised by this, of all three presidents she was the one I expected the least to get deposed even though Sally Kornbluth, the MIT president came across as by far the most consistent and reasonable person at the hearing (she didn't do that well either, but it wasn't a car crash at least).
One thing I’ve found interesting is a couple of responses in the "mainstream media." First, this AP piece, which was introduced on Twitter with:
(I once again thank Elon for the gift that is community notes)
From the piece itself:
That same “Republicans pounce” tone carries throughout. Little to no concern as to whether the accusations are true — even as they do note it is the sort of thing that would absolutely not be tolerated from an undergrad:
Instead, who is making the accusation is treated as what really matters. It’s very tribalist.
Another paragraph that stood out:
Note the historically backwards framing at the end there, in service of a tortured guilt-by-association-to-metaphor.
Also, an “everybody does it” defense, combined with a further assertion that accusations shouldn’t count if they come from The Wrong People™ who think “everybody does it”:
Next:
Would an undergrad get away with plagiarism if it was “an honest mistake”? Well, I went to Caltech, not Harvard, but the way the “honor code” was enforced vis-a-vis plagiarism and proper citations when I was there two decades ago, the answer was no.
I’m trying not to be “boo outgroup” here about mainstream “journalism,” but this all seems pretty partisan for something from an institution like the Associated Press that purports to be reporting rather than editorializing.
The other is this Forbes piece: “Claudine Gay Resigns From Harvard: Why Black Excellence Is Never Enough.” Exactly what “black excellence” Dr. Gay displayed, beyond being “Harvard University’s first Black president” is left unsaid. The author’s other two examples for comparison are Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Nikole Hannah-Jones. The fourth paragraph is what I’d like to highlight, particularly its end:
Note the “harms” Gay, Hannah-Jones, and Jackson suffered: Gay had to step down from being president of Harvard, but still works there in a highly-paid position; UNC initially denied Hannah-Jones tenure… before eventually granting it; and Justice Jackson… received criticism during her Senate confirmation hearing. That last is particularly notable — Jackson was confirmed. She’s on the Supreme Court.
The author, Janice Gassam Asare, seems to be offended that these women received pushback and criticism at all, and that these women — all quite well off and protected and very safe compared to most Americans of any color — aren’t even better off is proof that “misogynoir is never too far away.”
Again, the substance of the issue is waved away, in favor of making it about “the first Black woman [X].” Where in the first piece, truth comes second to partisan affinities, here truth is second to identities. In both, the focus is shifted away from Dr. Gay’s questionable scholarship, in favor of painting the outgroup as horrible for daring to point it out. How are things supposed to work, in a media environment like this?
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