Harvard University lawyers said plagiarism allegations against the university's president were “demonstrably false” before an investigation into her work had even begun, it emerged – while academics at Harvard said Claudine Gay's actions were “repugnant.”
Tom Clare, founder of the Virginia-based law firm Clare Locke, which specializes in “defending clients against high-profile reputational attacks in print, broadcast and online media,” responded to questions about Gay's work in late October.
Gay, who became Harvard's president on July 1, has faced intense scrutiny since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel and was condemned for failing to immediately condemn students who justified Hamas' actions.
Adding fuel to the fire on December 5, she testified before Congress about anti-Semitism on campus and equivocated about whether calling for genocide against Jews was hate speech.
Gay noted that her academic performance was failing, and on December 10, conservative activist Christopher Rufo published allegations in his newsletter that she had plagiarized portions of her work.
On Friday it emerged that Harvard had been questioned by the New York Post on October 24 about allegations of plagiarism.
Claudine Gay, pictured lighting a menorah on December 13, was cleared of plagiarism by the university on December 12. But the allegations cannot be refuted
Tom Clare, a Harvard University lawyer, said in late October that the allegations against Gay were “demonstrably false” – even though the investigation was only launched in November
Clare responded to the newspaper on behalf of the university on October 27 saying the plagiarism claims were “demonstrably false”.
He told the New York Post that they would sue for “immense” damages.
The newspaper told Harvard that it found plagiarism in three different works: They pointed out 27 possible examples of plagiarism in two peer-reviewed journals and one academic journal.
The work was published back in 1993, when Gay was still a doctoral student, and as recently as 2017, when she was dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences.
Clare wrote: “The excerpts provided do not support a finding of plagiarism – and the conclusion it presents is based on a wholly flawed understanding of what is and is not 'plagiarism' in academic papers published in academic journals and institutions.”
Clare made no mention of an investigation initiated by Harvard, and its existence was not made public until December 12, when the university said it had been declassified and would make two changes to her published work.
The university said the investigation was launched on November 2 – meaning Clare had insisted she was innocent before an investigation was even launched.
Harvard was rocked by students blaming Israel for the October 7 attack; pro-Palestine rallies; and hunting down Jewish students on campus
Protesters can be seen at Harvard on October 14th. Gay has been criticized for being slow to condemn students' justification for Hamas' terrorist attacks
Harvard President Claudine Gay at the Dec. 5 congressional hearing on anti-Semitism on campus
Clare also quoted in his letter the response of two people she was accused of plagiarizing, saying they shrugged off the allegations.
D. Stephen Voss, who now teaches at the University of Kentucky, told The Crimson that while Gay was “technically” plagiarizing, it was “minor to inconsequential.”
He said: “That doesn't seem sneaky at all.” “It looks like maybe she just had no sense of what we normally tell students to do and not do.”
Harvard professor Lawrence Lobo, another man alleged to have been plagiarized by Gay, also told the Boston Globe: “These allegations do not concern me because our work has been explicitly acknowledged.”
But in recent weeks, a third person whose work Gay is said to have copied – Dr. Carol Swain – that she was outraged by the revelation.
On Thursday, Swain, a political scientist who formerly taught at Vanderbilt University, called on Harvard to fire Gay.
Swain claims Gay did not cite portions of her 1993 book, “Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress,” as well as her 1997 article titled “Women and Blacks in Congress: 1870-1996.”
She wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “Harvard cannot condemn Ms. Gay because she is the product of an elite system that holds high-pedigree minorities to lower standards.” “This harms all of science and demeans Americans of all races who work for everything had to get what they deserved.”
Dr. Carol Swain claims Harvard will not condemn President Claudine Gay because she is “the product of an elite system that holds high-pedigree minorities to lower standards.” On Thursday, she called for Gay to be fired
Swain, a right-wing political commentator, reached out to other authors who were allegedly plagiarized by Gay but stopped short of condemning them, describing the lack of attribution to a few innocuous, inadequate quotes.
'MS. Gay had no problem following in the footsteps of people whose works she used without proper attribution. Many of those whose work she stole are not as outraged as I am. “They are elites who have benefited from a system that protects their own,” said the political scientist.
And two current Harvard academics said Friday they were unhappy with Gay's actions.
They noted that students were not allowed to get away with Gay's behavior.
“There are few things more disgusting than when a top official gets and accepts a pass for something for which he punishes his subordinates,” said Richard Parker, a professor at Harvard Law School.
He told the Boston Globe that the handling of the allegations was “irregular” and “opaque,” saying it was a departure from a typical plagiarism investigation.
“The contrast exudes contempt for our students and faculty, as well as for Harvard itself,” he said.
Others said Gay received special treatment.
“I think there is a clear double standard,” said Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard doctoral student who has sharply criticized Gay’s response to the Oct. 7 attack.
He told the Globe that students are sometimes suspended for plagiarism, he said.
But in Gay's case, he said, “not only is there no discipline, but on the contrary, the board has unanimously expressed its approval and confidence in her.”
Brendan Case, associate director of research at Harvard University's Human Flourishing Program, which studies human well-being, told The Globe that the allegations against Gay were “very serious.”
Case said he was embarrassed by the response from the Harvard Corporation, which runs the university, because it appeared to undermine academic integrity.
“Speaking only from my own corner of Harvard, there is no question for me [that] “If we discovered this pattern of academic dishonesty among any of our researchers, including myself, they would be fired immediately,” Case said.
“It seems inevitable to me that many people inside and outside of Harvard will conclude that they don’t take something like this seriously.”
Trucks calling for Gay's firing have appeared outside Harvard's campus
Gay was accused of copying two paragraphs from papers by then-Harvard scholars D. Stephen Voss and Bradley Palmquist. A paragraph is almost identical except for a few words
However, Gay did not use quotation marks or quotations in the text – Voss and Palmquist are not quoted anywhere in their dissertation
Some academics at the university have supported Gay, pointing out that Harvard has long been under attack from conservative critics who view the university as too liberal.
“As scholars, we must do our best to adhere to the practices that we are clearly asked to communicate to our students,” said Edward Hall, director of undergraduate courses in Harvard University's philosophy department.
But, he told the Boston Globe, the “noise…” . . “The opinions of political actors outside our walls make it more difficult to have the right conversation about it.”
He told the newspaper he questioned the motives of politicians attacking Gay.
“There is little reason to believe that prominent people in the Republican Party are currently pushing this issue because they care deeply about the quality of scholarship at Harvard and other universities,” he said.