NY Times Blasts Harvard’s Gay In Detailed Plagiarism Review As Scandal Spirals Out Of Control

The New York Times has come out with a scathing article, analyzing five instances of plagiarism committed by Harvard President Claudine Gay.

To review, Gay has been credibly accused of more than 40 acts of plagiarism during her tenure at Harvard – which the university secretly investigated, threatened journalists over, and ultimately concluded was no big deal – clearing her of breaching Harvard’s “standards for research misconduct.”

Not so fast…

The Times, looking at just five examples of Gay’s plagiarism, wrote: “her papers sometimes lift passages verbatim from other scholars and at other times make minor adjustments, like changing the word “adage” to “popular saying” or “Black male children” to “young black athletes.””

In one lengthy section, Dr. Gay discusses the formation of a coalition called the Unified Movement Against Racial Discrimination.

She describes the “expulsion of four young black athletes from the volleyball team of the Tiete Yacht Club because of their color.”

Three years earlier, David Covin, then a professor at California State University, Sacramento, wrote about “the dismissal of four Black male children from the volleyball team of the Tiete Yacht Club in May, 1978, because of their color.” His paper, “Afrocentricity in O Movimento Negro Unificado,” appeared in the Journal of Black Studies.

Dr. Gay’s paper does not attribute the passage about the athletes to Dr. Covin, who died this year, nor to a source whom Dr. Covin credited in his paper. Dr. Covin’s name does not appear in the suggested further reading at the end of the paper. –NY Times

Gay even plagiarized an acknowledgements section!

I couldn’t believe it when I first saw it, but it appears Claudine Gay might have plagiarized two lines in the acknowledgements section of her dissertation:.

Who does that?! https://t.co/epjQ54qxPQ pic.twitter.com/Nf32mgnqCD

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) December 19, 2023

And yet, now she’s ‘correcting’ a few things. So kids, if you get caught plagiarizing (and you’re a in a protected class), you get a do-over, or five.

New standards just dropped:

Unlimited do-overs for plagiarism!!*

* Applies only to President of Harvard, not you, college freshmen. https://t.co/YdH3OTYOhI

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) December 21, 2023

“It’s troubling to see the standards we apply to undergrads seem to differ the standards we apply to faculty,” Harvard professor of government and longtime liberal stalwart, Theda Skocpol, told the Times on Wednesday.

Meanwhile… it’s just getting worse and worse for Harvard and Gay.

Front page of the Boston Globe. pic.twitter.com/LQSUa5YY5R

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) December 21, 2023

https://t.co/1m9r1DK7LK pic.twitter.com/9EKHMCxpDo

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) December 21, 2023

The president of USC resigned in 2021 for plagiarizing the end of a commencement speech.

As someone said at the time, “He’s brought a lot of negative attention to the university…. We are the laughingstock of the nation. Perhaps it’s time to cut our losses.”

cc: @Harvard pic.twitter.com/7V4Ju8DMyo

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) December 20, 2023

“It is amazing how the faculty are trying to portray themselves as the defenders of academic freedom against their boards, when over the last few decades they have been the primary enemies of academic freedom (along with staff, and sometimes students).”https://t.co/8H0wGkzjG1…

— Clifford Asness (@CliffordAsness) December 21, 2023

When does the scandal factor exceed wokeness quotient?