Harvard President Claudine Gay is facing increased calls for her resignation after her shocking comments during the congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses, as well as the new allegations of plagiarism in her Ph.D. dissertation, and the board that could decide her fate is scheduled to meet on Monday.
Critics are demanding that Harvard be held to its own standards regarding speech in light of Gay’s comments during the congressional hearing. Gay claimed during the hearing that “calling for the genocide of Jews” is only in violation of the “Harvard Code of Conduct” depending on “the context.” She went on to argue that “We embrace free expression” at Harvard.
This could not be further from the truth. According to an annual report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) earlier this year, Harvard was ranked as the worst university in the United States when it comes to the issue of free speech, receiving the lowest score ever recorded — a zero out of 100.
The climate for speech at Harvard was ranked as “abysmal,” with students reporting living in fear of having “open and honest conversation” about numerous issues on campus. Students and faculty members can reportedly face punishments for “fatphobia” and incorrect pronoun usage, as well as violating other woke tenets.
Gay has faced calls for her resignation over her testimony, with critics arguing that it is clear that her claims about “free expression” were an attempt to cover for Harvard’s acceptance of antisemitism on campus.
Meanwhile, the resignation demands increased on Sunday after reports emerged that Gay may have committed plagiarism in her Ph.D. dissertation.
The revelations came in a report from investigative journalists Christopher Rufo and Chris Brunet. Rufo shared the evidence in a thread posted to X, which included images of Gay’s dissertation side-by-side with the papers and books that she allegedly stole material from.
EXCLUSIVE: @RealChrisBrunet and I have obtained documentation demonstrating that Harvard President Claudine Gay plagiarized multiple sections of her Ph.D. thesis, violating Harvard's policies on academic integrity.
This is a bombshell. 🧵
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) December 10, 2023
Several other investigations have since uncovered additional instances of plagiarism by Gay, including a 1997 thesis where “she borrowed a full paragraph from a paper by the scholars Bradley Palmquist, then a political science professor at Harvard, and Stephen Voss, one of Gay’s classmates in her Ph.D. program at Harvard, while making only a couple alterations,” according to a post from Washington Free Beacon reporter Aaron Sibarium.
In her 1997 thesis, for example, she borrowed a full paragraph from a paper by the scholars Bradley Palmquist, then a political science professor at Harvard, and Stephen Voss, one of Gay’s classmates in her Ph.D. program at Harvard, while making only a couple alterations. pic.twitter.com/bD8jZdL6AV
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) December 11, 2023
In light of all of this new evidence, many are speculating that the Harvard Corporation’s scheduled meeting on Monday will end with either Gay’s resignation or her firing. The board will reportedly hear arguments both in favor and against her continuance as the president of the Ivy League university during the meeting, which has been scheduled months in advance and was not put on the calendar specifically to address her scandals.
