Black conservative professor Harvard president allegedly plagiarized shuts down for racial double standards

When Harvard's governing body announced it was strongly backing its president, a prominent black professor ripped the university for its double standards.

Dr. Carol Swain achieved her greatest achievements as a tenured professor and award-winning political scientist the old-fashioned way: through hard work. So it's no surprise that he's angry at how Harvard has handled the controversy surrounding Claudine Gay, the university's president who clearly has job security.

Swain blasted “white progressives” who “created” Gay and are “protecting” him, he wrote in a post on Tuesday.

After days of silence amid calls for Gay's resignation, members of a key Harvard University oversight board announced Tuesday that they “affirm” and “endorse” the president in her role and will not seek to remove it despite the muted backlash to his refusal to condemn anti-Semitism as campus harassment.

“Calls to genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values. President Gay has apologized for the way she handled her congressional testimony and has pledged to redouble the University's fight against anti-Semitism,” he said the university's governing body in a letter to the school community.

Included in the letter were comments on allegations made against Gay regarding plagiarism in his academic work. Journalists Christopher Rufo and Chris Brunet published examples in X of Gay's works that appeared identical to works by other authors, including Swain.

Gay strongly denied the claims, and Harvard backed her after a review of her work.

“On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed some instances of inappropriate citations,” they wrote, adding that they “found no violations of Harvard's standards for research misconduct” and that Gay “proactively calls for four corrections in two articles.” “.

“At this tumultuous and difficult time, we stand unanimously in support of President Gay,” the colleagues noted in concluding the letter.

That was going too far for many conservatives, including Swain, who responded with a scathing post on social media Tuesday.

“I rarely get angry, but I am angry…right now about the racial double standards that are TEMPORARILY giving #ClaudineGay a chance to resign,” she wrote.

I rarely get angry, but right now I am angry at the racial double standards they are giving TEMPORARILY #ClaudineGay an opportunity to resign. White progressives created it and white progressives protect it. The rest of us had to work the last ones to… pic.twitter.com/5ls2f4PUtB

— Dr. Carol M. Swain (@carolmswain) December 12, 2023

“White progressives created it and white progressives protect it. The rest of us had to work the back ends to achieve success. Some get away with it,” Swain added.

Reports of Gay's alleged plagiarism concerned “portions of four academic papers over 24 years, including his 1997 Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard,” according to The Harvard Crimson.

The Crimson independently reviewed the writings and found some with “minor” problems, others “are more substantial, including some paragraphs and sentences that are nearly identical to other work and without citations.”

“Some appear to violate Harvard's current policies on plagiarism and academic integrity,” the student newspaper reported.

Gay denied any plagiarism in his work, telling The Boston Globe on Monday: “I stand by the integrity of my scholarship. Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure that my scholarship meets the highest academic standards.”

Rufo spoke with Swain, a former professor at Princeton and Vanderbilt.

“When I look at his work, I feel that his entire research agenda, his entire career, was based on my work. It bothers me because I know my work was very important in the early 1990s. And I started falling out of favor in 1995 when I started criticizing affirmative action based on race,” Swain said.

In an exclusive interview, Dr. Carol Swain says Harvard President Claudine Gay plagiarized her groundbreaking work, without giving proper credit. “When I look at his work, I feel like his whole research agenda, his whole career, was built on my work.”https://t.co/WT8wcv6Pm8 pic.twitter.com/FS7EP60KM7

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) December 12, 2023

“She became president of Harvard and got recognition as its first black president. I don't think her record justified her tenure, and I think she was held to a much higher standard than she was,” Swain said. about Gay

“It's clear to me that the standards were lowered in the mid-1990s, and the elites got together and decided they were going to stand up for affirmative action,” he added. “It's clear to me that she was the beneficiary of this. I blame her committee and I blame white progressives equally.”

Swain stated that “white progressives have always rewarded blacks who supported their ideas. Someone more conventional, like me, could never be rewarded in the same way.”

Asked what he thinks would have happened if Harvard's president had been a white person, Gay bluntly replied, “A white man would probably be gone by now.”

Senior Staff Writer
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida, where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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