Harvard President Claudine Gay has resigned after getting caught with a number of plagiarism accusations regarding about half of her scholarly papers.
Gay originally denied the claims, and in her resignation statement continued to abstain from taking responsibility, instead calling out those who exposed her as racists.
“My deep sense of connection to Harvard and its people has made it all the more painful to witness the tensions and divisions that have riven our community in recent months, weakening the bonds of trust and reciprocity that should be our sources of strength and support in times of crisis,” she said.
“Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” she added.
Over the past few weeks, Gay was exposed to have allegedly plagiarized dozens of papers in-part by Chris Brunet of The American Conservative and Christopher Rufo of City Journal.
Included in the allegations of plagiarism were Gay’s near identical paragraphs as earlier works by other scholars. Several side-by-side comparisons with previous works by other academics showed Gay writing nearly identical paragraphs, often with only minor semantic tweaks without using quotations or even citations.
Harvard’s reputation took a massive hit
While denying the claims, more evidence of plagiarism continued to come out, pressuring Harvard to fire gay.
Gay was the university’s 30th president. Her presidency was the most short-lived of them all, having assumed the role on July 1, 2023.
Just prior to getting exposed for plagiarizing multiple papers, the uber-woke Gay went viral in the worst of ways during her congressional testimony on December 5.
While being questioned about the rabid antisemitism festering on her campus, Gay refused to say that calling for genocide of Jews would be a violation of the university’s hate speech policy.
