Carol Swain & Claudine Gay: Harvard’s President’s Embarrassing History of Plagiarism

The president of Harvard University has had a terrible, awful, no good, very bad month! Claudine Gay’s polarizing congressional testimony kicked off what has become weeks of embarrassment for the most elite university in the world. 

People are questioning the Harvard brand (and that of many other elite institutions) in the weeks since Hamas’ brutal attack against innocent Jews. The Claudine Gays of this world have been exposed for their hypocrisy about racial justice in the face of blatant antisemitism. Her inability or unwillingness to defend the safety of Jewish students against violent rhetoric was a colossal failure and demonstration of poor leadership. 

I’d like to believe that there are more academics and thought leaders with a moral compass and the moral competence to meet the moment. One such individual is former Princeton and Vanderbilt professor Dr. Carol Swain. Ironically, Swain is one of Gay’s victims in another burgeoning scandal.

Plagiarising the work of others and passing it off as one’s own is a common error, but it’s neither excusable nor acceptable. When diving into Gay’s academic work, Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo and others unearthed evidence of plagiarism. We know now that her career is littered with examples of bad judgment at moments when it counts. 

The university swatted down the allegations as just “a few instances of inadequate citation.” However, as of January 1st, the number of plagiarized passages in Claudine Gay’s academic work is approaching 50!

Even the bastions of liberal intellectualism—The Atlantic, Washington Post, New York Times—have abandoned her:

Damage from Gay’s past plagiarism is not just limited to Harvard’s brand but to the work of those she ripped off.

Dr. Carol Swain, now a senior fellow at the Institute for Faith and Culture and a co-author of “The Adversity of Diversity: How the Supreme Court’s Decision to Remove Race from College Admissions Criteria will Doom Diversity Programs,” but formerly a tenured professor at elite colleges, has a tremendous personal story. Her extensive and lauded work on race was a victim of Gay’s plagiarism as she lifted whole passages without attribution.

As Swain wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently,

Ms. Gay’s damage to me is aggravated because her early work was in the area where my research is considered seminal. Her scholarship on black congressional representation, electoral districting and descriptive representation builds on terrain where I plowed the ground.

… Ms. Gay ignored the substantive importance of my research, which she should have acknowledged and engaged. A single citation or two wouldn’t usually be considered intellectually honest.

When scholars aren’t cited adequately or their work is ignored, it harms them because academic stature is determined by how often other researchers cite your work. Ms. Gay had no problem riding on the coattails of people whose work she used without proper attribution…

Dr. Swain wasn’t the only one. 

Gay’s behavior didn’t just stop at plagiarism. Harvard Law School alumnus and form law professor, W. F. Twyman, Jr., wrote in Newsweek, 

Did you know that Claudine Gay during her Harvard career has repeatedly targeted and disrupted the careers of prominent Black male professors?

As he laid out two prominent cases of her destroying the careers of black academics at Harvard, it’s apparent that she does.

Gay is a product of some of what’s wrong with academia today: relaxed standards, lowered expectations, a lack of moral clarity, and no accountability for wrongdoing. 

Tune in as we talk live with Dr. Carol Swain about the race-driven rot in higher ed on Tuesday, Feb 6, 2024. Register Here.