Harvard Weighs in on Claudine Gay's Job and Plagiarism, and Their Response Is Truly Shameless

Harvard is now weighing in on whether Harvard President Claudine Gay will be keeping her job after she and two other Ivy League presidents made disastrous comments about the handling of antisemitism at their schools. The presidents including Gay said that calling for genocide wouldn't necessarily be against the code of conduct and that it would depend on the context when questioned by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). This is in the context of anti-Israel protests and "From the river to the sea!" calls on college campuses for the elimination of the Jewish state.

That caused a huge backlash with calls for the three presidents to get the boot. UPenn President Liz Magill resigned after losing a donor who pulled out $100 million.

READ: UPenn President Liz Magill Steps Down After Outrageous Statements on Antisemitism

But it looks like Harvard is shameless and is standing by Gay, at least for now. After meeting all night with Gay and university leaders, the Harvard Corporation governing body told the Harvard Crimson that she would be staying.

“As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University. Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the group said in a statement.
It acknowledged that the university should have released an “immediate, direct and unequivocal condemnation” of Hamas’ terror attack on Oct. 7, noting “Calls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values” — in apparent contrast to Gay’s testimony last week.
“President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the university’s fight against antisemitism,” the group wrote.

If that wasn't shameless enough, they're doing that knowing about at least some of the plagiarism accusations on which we've also reported, which violates their academic integrity policies, As we reported, there were dozens of examples according to the report.

The Free Beacon worked with nearly a dozen scholars to analyze 29 potential cases of plagiarism. Most of them said that Gay had violated a core principle of academic integrity as well as Harvard’s own anti-plagiarism policies, which state that "it's not enough to change a few words here and there."

The Harvard Corporation said they had looked into the charges and dismissed it as a "few instances of inadequate citation."

Harvard Board emails all alumni and says President Gay’s plagiarism isn’t a violation of Harvard standards.

Whoa! 🚨🚨🚨

“On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation. While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s…
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) December 12, 2023

JUST IN - Harvard board "unanimously stand in support" of Claudine Gay. pic.twitter.com/J7R5OdGrpt
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) December 12, 2023

“While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”
Still, the fellows said, “In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay.

“President Gay is the right leader to guide the University during this challenging time,” they said. They also described her as "thoughtful and kind." They said that her apology for her Congressional testimony was "a powerful demonstration of her integrity, determination and courage.”

I'm not sure that that's how many people would consider it.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman who has been leading a charge against antisemitism at colleges, said he was told by two reporters that the decision was in part because they didn't want to appear to kowtow to him. “So much for ‘Veritas,’” he said, referring to the Latin word for “truth” that is part of Harvard’s motto.

Ackman said he was aware of the $1 billion that Harvard has already lost because of this incident from donors. But that seemingly isn't enough yet to make Harvard do the right thing.