Harvard Board Announces Decision on President Amid Anti-Semitism and Plagiarism Scandals
Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University after the school’s governing board announced Tuesday that it was resisting calls for her to be fired.
Gay has been accused of sloughing off virulent anti-Semitism at the elite university following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. She also is facing accusations of plagiarism over her 1997 dissertation.
“As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University. Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the board said in a statement.
Claudine Gay has a career full of plagiarism, race baiting, and false accusations against men for harassment.
She should be fired on the basis of being terrible at her job. Once a prestigious school, Harvard is now considered a joke under her tenure. pic.twitter.com/iUBgypL17S
— Kasey Lynae ?? (@Kaseylynae) December 12, 2023
“So many people have suffered tremendous damage and pain because of Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, and the University’s initial statement should have been an immediate, direct, and unequivocal condemnation,” the board said. “Calls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values.
“President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the University’s fight against antisemitism.”
The board’s statement said allegations of plagiarism amounted to “a few instances of inadequate citation.”
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“While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications,” it said.
Claudine Gay’s job might be “safe” for now, but this this isn’t due to a commitment by Harvard to her. It’s a commitment by Harvard to DEI orthodoxy. The moment Harvard can inconspicuously drop her they will. She’s impacting Harvard’s money and she will continue to do so.
— Yosef Hirsch ben Ya’akov Hacohen (@bigkehuna613) December 12, 2023
“In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay. At Harvard, we champion open discourse and academic freedom, and we are united in our strong belief that calls for violence against our students and disruptions of the classroom experience will not be tolerated,” the board said.
Gay has been accused of lifting parts of her 1997 dissertation from previous works, according to the New York Post.
This isn’t lightweight plagiarism. This example is full blown. An entire paragraph lifted and the original never cited at all. Any respectable doctoral committee would have refused her a PhD over this. This had to be fully intentional. https://t.co/jInIoEDh8X
— Matt Lieberman (@social_brains) December 12, 2023
There have been absolutely no updates to @Harvard’s code of conduct to condemn the calls for genocide of Jews and protect Jewish students on campus.
The only update to Harvard’s code of conduct is to allow plagiarists as president.
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) December 12, 2023
Last week, Gay and Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York crossed swords over whether anti-Semitic conduct was harmful.
“Anti-Semitic speech, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct and we do take action,” Gay said at the hearing by the House Education and Workforce Committee into the rise of anti-Semitism on college campuses, according to The Harvard Crimson.
Gay said that whether anti-Semitic speech qualifies as harassment at Harvard “depends on the context.”
“It does not depend on the context — the answer is yes,” Stefanik told her.
“This is why you should resign,” the congresswoman said then. “These are unacceptable answers across the board.”
At today’s hearing, Harvard’s President shamefully refused to say whether the calling for the mass violence and genocide of the Jewish people is considered harassment or bullying according to Harvard’s own code of conduct.
Claudine Gay should resign immediately. pic.twitter.com/gjzmTHUcec
— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) December 5, 2023
University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth also testified at the hearing, with the backlash from their comments leading Magill to resign Saturday after days of calls for her to step down.
Every single concerned citizen should WATCH and SHARE this video because radical woke “educators” like Claudine Gay are not limited to institutions like Harvard.
This is the type of garbage being peddled all across our country! pic.twitter.com/rTpGBi27mF
— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) December 11, 2023
Pushback in support of Gay came from within Harvard, with more than 700 faculty members opposing calls for her to step down.
“One thing we all agreed on was we didn’t think that politicians should be forcing university presidents to resign or to say certain things, or something like that. And also, billionaire alumni on Twitter shouldn’t be doing that either,” Harvard government professor Ryan Enos said, according to WBZ-TV in Boston.
“I think there’s things that she should have done differently, and I’ve told her that,” Enos said.
The Harvard Alumni Association Executive Committee also supported Gay.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
