The immediate and sudden resignation of Claudine Gay, the former Harvard president who left her position after allegations surfaced of her plagiarizing pieces of her academic work and criticism over her congressional testimony about campus antisemitism, has still struck a chord for some academic pundits.
For Fred Williams, a professor who represents the Men’s Minority Network, his frustration stems from his belief that controversy was birthed from institutional racism.
In an op-ed penned for the Columbia Missourian, he writes: “My initial suspicion was that this was a witch-hunt to discredit a Black professional in a prestigious role, but, like any good scientist, I needed to see some evidence.”
He continued: “Dr. Gay was sloppy and lazy in her dissertation writing. I was disappointed. She knew what was at stake here. She needed to do better. No, she isn’t completely ripping other people off. To be honest, writing professional research papers is a world of drudgery. She read a lot of things and didn’t properly annotate when she was paraphrasing. Wrong? Yes. Easy to do? Absolutely, yes. Are a lot of us probably guilty of it at one point or another? For sure, but my initial estimation wasn’t completely off.
He cited that on December 10, conservative activist Christopher Rufo and The American Conservative contributing editor Christopher Brunet posted allegations on Substack, accusing Gay of plagiarizing parts of her political science dissertation during her doctoral studies at Harvard in the 1990s. Rufo further amplified the claims on the social media platform X, stating that he and Brunet had been investigating the matter and “waiting for the precise moment of maximum impact” before publishing their story, stating that “there are rumors that the plagiarism scandal could be the final nail in Gay’s coffin.”
“Her associates knew about this alleged behavior but sat on that for over a week to deliver ‘maximum impact?’ What is that? If you think someone did something wrong, then just say so. If your issue is academic integrity, then what is this political posturing? Stinks of racism. And it is exasperating.”
He concluded that while Gay is not innocent, the punishment does not fit the crime. “She didn’t publish a book written by her intern, another colleague or anything like that. The double standard for all marginalized people, to be vigilant for every mistake, each misstep to guard against some malcontent who doesn’t think we belong in a position for one reason or another. That is an aspect of institutional racism that I don’t think people really understand.”
