The case of Harvard President Claudine Gay persists. It represents the multifaceted and overdetermined disgrace of Harvard. Today, for example, Ryan Mills and Zach Kessel report at NRO that “Scholars Say They Were Plagiarized by Claudine Gay, Ignored by Harvard Investigation.” It’s an excellent story, though it is behind NRO’s paywall.
Today Jennifer Schuessler delivers the sad news to readers of the New York Times in “Harvard Finds More Instances of ‘Duplicative Language’ in President’s Work.” Showing off the advantages of a Harvard education, Harvard euphemistically dubs it “insufficient citation.”
We all learned the importance of “context” from Gay in her testimony on campus calls for the mass murder of Jews. Now “context” is brought to bear on Gay’s case itself. Schuessler writes: “For some faculty members, and not just liberal ones, the details of the charges and Harvard’s procedures were less important than the context in which the charges were being lobbed.” This is classic:
“It’s part of this extreme right-wing attack on elite institutions,” said Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former solicitor general in the Reagan administration. “The obvious point is to make it look as if there is this ‘woke’ double standard at elite institutions.”
“If it came from some other quarter, I might be granting it some credence,” he said of the accusations. “But not from these people.”
I’m not sure Fried has a firm grasp of the context, but let it be known. Context is king!
Joshua Katz comments on the Gay case in the City Journal column “‘Words Matter,’ Except When They Don’t.” Katz is the former Princeton classicist and current AEI senior fellow. Finding himself in no protected category after speaking out against the mob at Princeton, Katz himself was canceled.
Peter Wood is the president of the National Association of Scholars and former Boston University professor of anthropology, where he also served s deputy provost. He brings his experience with plagiarists and plagiarism to bear in the Spectator columns “Claudine Gay’s way with words” (December 15) and “The perils of Harvard and Claudine Gay” (December 20). Spectator managing editor Matt McDonald has kindly made these columns accessible at our request for the rest of the week, after which they will be returned behind the Spectator paywall. Get them now while the getting’s good.
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