“Harvard president’s resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism.”
Wow. That’s astounding.
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It must be very uncomfortable for her defenders to take a position that plagiarism is OK, or just a minor issue, or can be retroactively repaired. I find it most humorous when they devise multi-word phrases to redefine “Plagiarism” in a kinder more gentler way…
I do hope other colleges are closely watching. Gay’s intersectionality chart was very attractive - until the union with the plagiarism set became visible.
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I’m surprised to learn that a Dean at Harvard is paid $900K per year (Gay’s former salary that reportedly she will retain). That’s a big incentive to stay, but I would have thought that keeping her head down might then be a good idea.
However, she probably won’t have any teaching responsibilities (not least to avoid conflicts over plagiarism) and a return to academic scholarship seems equally tricky. So I guess that means she’s most likely to spend her time writing newspaper articles and ultimately a book about how she believes she was mistreated. And presumably continue fighting against Ackman’s attempts to redirect Harvard away from DEI.
Reminder: If your goal is to discuss politics and attack a group of people, please use the Politics Forum for that. Don’t do it here. Posts will be edited or removed as necessary.
The title of Dean at Harvard is like the title of VP at Bank of America - every other person has the title. All deans do not make $900K
To be clear, I’m surprised that any Dean at Harvard is paid that much.
“Prior to being named president just six months ago, Gay earned $879,079 as a faculty of arts and sciences dean in 2021 and $824,068 in 2020, according to records published by the university.”
Every sentient human being will be able to imagine the agony she has experienced. It must have been profound. Tragedy may be too big a word for it, but her downfall did have the classic tragic elements - a rapid ascension to greatness followed by a precipitous fall, as brought about by a tragic flaw in herself. Something like that has happened to many who aspire to greatness, without any racial dimension whatever. Indeed, many of us ordinary folks have had a taste of it in our own lives. That’s why the spectacle of it both fascinates and appals us, generates pity and fear, as Aristotle figured out a long time ago. Dr. Gay may not quite have been Alexander the Great, but she too conquered a world and fell in battle. Someone will write the story of it some day.
In the meantime I’m inclined to give her the initial shot in the telling of her story. She tells it not without dignity, and I say, cut her some slack. I don’t doubt that she was actuated by a sincere vision of a different sort of Harvard and believed she was opening up a “storied institution” in novel and exciting ways. However, the piece also reveals her fatal flaw - inability to accept the good faith of any other vision than her own, to see opposition as anything but racism, as “anxiety about the demographic and generational changes unfolding on American campuses” and the fact of “a Black Woman selected to lead a storied institution.”
No, it was about ideas, not identities. She still has not understood this.
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Thank you for this. Regardless of how someone interprets Gay’s departure from Harvard, this was NOT on her 2024 Bingo card when she became president.
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It’s OK: they’ll all be given the opportunity to publish a self-serving op-ed in the NYT to justify their actions and complain about their accusers. 
Good question! I was surprised to see this, especially so quickly after her resignation. I can’t imagine that anybody involved in damage control/PR for Harvard would have approved it—it strikes me as tone-deaf and dismissive of the real problems at hand with her actions/responses.
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“Ascension to Greatness” on the backs of other peoples ideas. Not great… just plain old deception.
This isn’t the book I imagined her writing
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Techie - well played. 
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She made a series of mistakes and errors that qualifying as plagiarism under Harvard’s definition. People disagree on whether this technical plagiarism was grounds to get rid of her, and I won’t revisit that discussion. It is now mute anyway.
But she did not ‘ascend to greatness’ on the backs of other peoples ideas. Her success had nothing to do with the substance of anything offered as evidence of plagiarism. She did not claim their significant contributions as her own.
If I am wrong, please identify these profound ideas she stole that you claim made her career?
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Plagiarism is plagiarism.
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And truisms are truisms.
By Harvard’s definition, “plagiarism” can be intentional or unintentional. But the moral culpability associated with unintentional mistakes vs. intentional theft is not equivalent. While both technically qualify as plagiarism, stealing someone else’s manuscript and putting your own name on it to take credit for their work is not the same thing and putting a citation in the wrong place.
This is true even if both are defined as plagiarism.
Read this post. 73 words.
Still comes down to: Plagiarism is plagiarism.
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“People disagree on whether this technical plagiarism was grounds to get rid of her, and I won’t revisit that discussion. It is now mute anyway.”
It’s not moot because the uproar is just beginning.
As an observer with no dog in the race… I will say that this very sad episode reminds me of how hard it is to parent a school age child (and no, I am not comparing Gay to a child). On the one hand, you want to teach honesty, owning up to mistakes, coming clean IMMEDIATELY since the cover-up is ALWAYS worse than the crime so to speak. On the other hand, you want to teach that telling great-aunt Millie that her birthday presents stink, or telling grandpa that the pancakes he makes you when you sleep over taste like sawdust, isn’t nice, appropriate, or “what we do”.
So how to handle? No parent admits to teaching their kid “it’s ok to lie”, and no parent wants to reveal the secret that sometimes waiting to fess up to something is the way to go (because either the mistake goes undetected, or something else happens to blunt the impact). But there is a gray area.
Gay fell into the gray area- very tragically. Either because she got terrible, lawyerly advice and misread the situation, or because she assumed the mantle of power would protect her, or she was- in fact- too ashamed to admit her long ago mistakes and allow everyone to move past this.
But imagine how different the outcome would have been with “I’m so ashamed that I inadvertently cited- without appropriate documentation-- the work of a colleague/colleagues. I admire their scholarship so much and appreciate that I stand on the shoulders of giants” IF delivered the day after the first allegation came to light. The very next day. Not giving the story oxygen, not allowing the narrative to become bigger than what it was. And then on the flight back to Boston the very day of the DC hearing another “humble pie” statement-- "upon reflection, I am appalled that I allowed the adversarial tone in the hearing room to overcome my ethical standards. I am ashamed and embarrassed that my answers to Ms. Stefanik somehow suggested, implied, or actually stated that I believe that genocidal threats are in ANY way dependent on context. I take full responsibility for my conduct today and apologize to the Harvard community, members of Congress, and the citizens of this country.
Different outcome IMHO.
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She plagiarized numerous passages and responded to questions at a congressional hearing in a legalistic way when a more nuanced response was appropriate.
She has stepped down after intense scrutiny and suffered irreparable damage to her reputation.
I am not suggesting she is a victim but at some point we owe one another a degree of sympathy as every human has flaws.
I was highly critical of her on this thread and loudly called for her resignation but find dancing on her grave to be distasteful.
If this really was about fairness, she has now lost her job which is fair. She is neither villain or victim in my opinion.
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I agree with you 100%.
I would have agreed with you had she not doubled down in the Times article. It appears that she wants to stay in the spotlight - and many will accommodate her wishes.
“If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”
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