A published scholar spoke out Monday after Harvard President Claudine Gay was accused of plagiarizing her work.
Carol Swain, who was previously a professor at Princeton and Vanderbilt, told conservative activist Christopher Rufo that Gay “would probably already be gone” if the Harvard president were a white male, according to the City Journal.
“What is bothering me is not just that there’s passages she didn’t put in quotation marks,” Swain told the City Journal. “When I look at her work, I feel like her whole research agenda, her whole career, was based on my work.”
The Harvard president allegedly plagiarized multiple works from other academics in four of her papers, including her doctoral dissertation, when she failed to properly cite the source material. At times, entire paragraphs were extracted and claimed by Gay as her own work, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Swain, known for her criticism of race-based affirmative action, said she does not believe Gay’s record “warranted tenure,” claiming she “had to meet a much higher standard than [Gay] did,” the outlet reported. The scholar reportedly claimed “something changed in the mid-1990s, [when] we were having a big affirmative action debate.”
“Standards were lower in the mid-1990s, and the elites came together and decided that they were going to defend affirmative action. It’s clear to me that she was a beneficiary of that,” Swain told the City Journal. “I blame her committee, and I blame white progressive equally. She should have known what constitutes plagiarism.” (RELATED: ‘Fraudulent’: Alan Dershowitz Reveals How Claudine Gay Ascended To Harvard’s Presidency)
“White progressives have always rewarded the blacks who supported their ideas,” Swain told the outlet. When asked if Gay should resign, the former professor reportedly said “the board of trustees needs to deal with those issues.”
WATCH-@RepStefanik grills Harvard President Claudine Gay:
“Harvard ranks the lowest when it comes to protecting Jewish students…Your testimony today not being able to answer with moral clarity speaks volumes.” pic.twitter.com/NozRwNInDi
— House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) December 5, 2023
Gay will remain president of Harvard despite the allegations, one of the university’s governing bodies announced Tuesday. Former University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill was the first of three college presidents who testified to Congress about antisemitic protests on campus to resign.