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December 19, 2023

Dr. Claudine, current President of Harvard University, is one lucky woman or, as she might describe herself a “a lucky woman of color.” She first survived her dreadful testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, where she refused to unambiguously denounce calls from Harvard students and faculty to kill all Israeli Jews. It was an embarrassing performance filled with weasel words and amorphous defenses such as “it all depends on context” as if genocide might be legitimate in some circumstances.

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Gay’s second lucky break was to survive clear-cut evidence that she was a career plagiarist, and this scholarly dishonesty far exceeded inadvertent sloppiness. Side-by-side comparisons of Gay’s writings with the published work of others displayed smoking-gun proof, and the official Harvard definition of “plagiarism” offered zero wiggle room due to substituting a new word or two for the original. No student or faculty member of Harvard could possibly accept Gay’s excuses and,  ironically, as a Harvard dean Gay had presided over the expulsion of 27 undergraduates for plagiarism. Predictably, she denied everything: “I stand by the integrity of my scholarship,” she wrote. “Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards.” Keep in mind the former Harvard president Larry Summers suffered defenestration for merely opining that men and woman differed in mathematical abilities.

But, once again, luck was with her. The Harvard Corporation, Harvard’s governing body, praised her work (blatant plagiarism was referred to as “a few instances of inadequate citations), 700 faculty members signed a letter of support, and a group of former Harvard presidents proclaimed, “As former Presidents of Harvard University, we offer our strong support for Claudine Gay as she leads Harvard into the future. We look forward to supporting President Gay in whatever ways we can as Harvard faces this challenging moment for higher education and the wider world.”

Harvard’s malfeasance runs deeper, namely how did Claudine Gay become Dr. Claudine Gay, Ph.D., and this tale goes to the very core of Harvard’s intellectual integrity.

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Schools like Harvard depend on admitting graduate students to perform vital “grunt work” such as grading undergraduate papers or teaching sections of large classes. They are vital to the university and are attracted to Ph.D. programs in the hope of eventually becoming a professor but unfortunately, in today’s diversity-obsessed market, many will fail to find academic jobs or be underemployed part-time teachers.

By contrast, recruiting Blacks, especially Black women, into a Ph.D. program is highly tempting, even if their academic records are less than stellar. A Black woman will undoubtedly receive full financial support, and if she eventually receives the Ph.D. will find a decent job, and this placement will reflect well on the school awarding her the doctorate. In short, Claudine Gay was a prize recruit for Harvard’s Department of Government where she earned her Ph.D. in 1998.

It is also an open secret among academics that faculty enjoy enormous leeway in shepherding graduate students toward the degree. The Ph.D. formally signifies an ability to conduct independent research but how this “independent work” is executed can vary. In some instances, graduate students assist their supervisor’s research, and receive their degrees as rewards for their contribution. Elsewhere professors may provide considerable help in choosing topics, securing funding, directing them toward the relevant literature, resolving research quandaries, even helping to draft the final product, so the final dissertation heavily reflects the professor’s contribution. All this is academically acceptable, often commendable, but the process can resemble sausage making — the Ph.D. label itself can never fully certify how the product was manufactured.

Technically, every dissertation is subject to scrutiny by the graduate student’s main advisor and their dissertation committee bur again, variations exist. Dissertation defenses can consist entirely of softball questions or be gruesome inquisitions. Much leeway exists and a friendly committee can easily assume that the data were not faked, interviews were not invented, and works cited were read, and so on. Everything depends on trust, and it is often the case that only the most egregious stupid errors will be caught, but even then, corrections can save the day and the degree awarded.

When experienced academics see how Claudine Gay got away with multiple plagiarisms they can only conclude, to use the lingo of boxing, that the fix was in. Her dissertation committee and top administrators took a dive. I personally suspect that her dissertation was just skimmed, not carefully read.

To be blunt, here was a Black woman in a discipline (“Government” at Harvard) in high demand thanks to her Harvard Ph.D., so her ascent to academic stardom was assured. No matter that her scholarship was almost exclusively about Black politics, and not particularly original while hewing to the radical orthodoxy on Black politics. She was a trophy, so in today’s political environment, few might risk putting her scholarship under a microscope to find fault. Why ruin a good thing?