Harvard University can’t fire President Claudine Gay, widely accused of plagiarism and antisemitism, because it would stand accused of racism for holding her to the same standards as her peers.
Harvard is not holding Gay accountable in a matter comparable to the University of Pennsylvania’s treatment of its former President Liz Magill, Jason Riley wrote Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.
Magill resigned as Penn president after also being accused of antisemitism after testifying before Congress that calling for the genocide of the Jews does not violate campus harassment policies, as The College Fix reported.
However, “anyone suggesting that Ms. Gay deserves the same treatment as Ms. Magill stands accused of racism by liberal elites who maintain that all black people not named Clarence Thomas are off-limits to criticism,” Riley (pictured) wrote.
Gay deserves scrutiny and discipline at the level of Magill at least, due to her inferior academic record and the plagiarism accusations that have called her integrity into question.
“Ms. Gay wasn’t hired for her academic chops, and her problematic publishing record has become an additional embarrassment,” according to Riley.
He continued:
Harvard has been forced to acknowledge multiple instances of “inadequate citation,” which is more commonly known as plagiarism. By some counts, close to half of Ms. Gay’s academic output contains instances of copying word-for-word from another source without using quotation marks.
Harvard’s dilemma illustrates a broader practical problem with racial-preference policies. Once you lower standards for hiring administrators or admitting students, you are forced to lower standards for evaluating their conduct and performance. For purposes of window dressing, people who have no business running elite institutions such as Harvard have been put in charge of people who have no business teaching or matriculating there. What could go wrong?
Harvard hired Gay in part to advance its DEI agenda, and it can’t fire her without running the risk of repudiating that agenda, according to Riley.
Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal.
MORE: Harvard President Claudine Gay accused of plagiarism
IMAGE: @jasonrileywsj/X
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