Lawyers for Harvard said that accusations of plagiarism against the university’s president were ‘demonstrably false’, before an investigation into her work had even begun, it has emerged – as academics within Harvard said Claudine Gay’s actions were ‘repellant’.
Tom Clare, a 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 in late October to questions about Gay’s work.
Gay, who became president of Harvard on July 1, has faced intense scrutiny since the October 7 terror attack in Israel, and condemnation for her failure to immediately condemn students who justified Hamas’ actions.
Fuel was poured on the fire on December 5, when she testified before Congress about antisemitism on campus, and equivocated on whether calling for the genocide of Jews was hate speech.
Gay has found her academic record pored over, and on December 10, conservative activist Christopher Rufo published on his newsletter allegations that she had plagiarized portions of her work.
On Friday, it emerged that Harvard had been asked by The New York Post on October 24 about accusations of plagiarism.
Claudine Gay, pictured at a menorah lighting on December 13, was cleared by the university of plagiarism on December 12. But the allegations refuse to go away
Tom Clare, a lawyer representing Harvard, said in late October that the accusations against Gay were ‘demonstrably false’ – despite the inquiry not being launched until November
Richard Parker, a Harvard law professor, condemned Gay’s alleged plagiarism, saying: ‘There are few things more repellent than a top official getting and taking a pass for something they punish underlings for doing’
Clare, on behalf of the university, replied to the paper on October 27, saying that the claims of plagiarism were ‘demonstrably false’.
He told The New York Post they would sue for ‘immense’ damages.
The paper told Harvard that they had found plagiarism in three different works: they pointed to 27 possible examples of plagiarism in two peer-reviewed journals and an academic magazine.
The work was published as early as 1993, when Gay was a graduate student, and as late 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 she proffers rests on a fatally flawed understanding of what ‘plagiarism’ is and is not in scholarly work performed in academic journals and settings.’
Clare made no mention of an investigation launched by Harvard, and its existence was not made public until December 12, when the university said she had been cleared and would make two amendments to her published work.
The university said the inquiry was launched on November 2 – meaning that Clare had insisted she was innocent, before an inquiry was even launched.
Harvard has been rocked by students blaming Israel for the October 7 attack; pro-Palestine rallies; and hounding of Jewish students on campus
Demonstrators are seen in Harvard on October 14. Gay was criticized for being slow to condemn student justification of Hamas’ terror attacks
Harvard President Claudine Gay at the congressional hearing on December 5, on antisemitism on campus
Clare in his letter also cited the response of two of the people she was accused of plagiarizing, and said they had shrugged off the allegations.
D. Stephen Voss, who now teaches at the University of Kentucky, told The Crimson that while Gay ‘technically plagiarized,’ it is ‘minor-to-inconsequential.’
He said: ‘This doesn’t at all look sneaky. It looks like maybe she just didn’t have a sense of what we normally tell students they’re supposed to do and not do.’
Harvard professor Lawrence Lobo, another of those allegedly plagiarized by Gay, similarly told the Boston Globe: ‘I find myself unconcerned about these claims as our work was explicitly acknowledged.’
Yet in recent weeks, a third person whose work Gay is accused of copying – Dr Carol Swain – said that she is outraged by the revelation.
On Thursday, Swain, a political scientist who formerly taught at Vanderbilt University, called for Harvard to fire Gay.
Swain claims Gay failed to credit parts 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 can’t condemn Ms. Gay because she is the product of an elite system that holds minorities of high pedigree to a lower standard. This harms academia as a whole, and it demeans Americans, of all races, who had to work for everything they earned.’
Dr. Carol Swain claims Harvard won’t condemn president Claudine Gay because she ‘is the product of an elite system that holds minorities of high pedigree to a lower standard’. On Thursday she called for Gay to be fired
Swain, a right-wing political commentator, addressed other authors who were allegedly plagiarized by Gay, but failed to condemn her, describing the missed sourcing to a few harmless inadequate citations.
‘Ms. Gay had no problem riding on the coattails of people whose work she used without proper attribution. Many of those whose work she pilfered aren’t as incensed as I am. They are elites who have benefited from a system that protects its own,’ the political scientist said.
And two current Harvard academics on Friday said they were uncomfortable with Gay’s actions.
They noted that students would not be allowed to get away with the behavior Gay exhibited.
‘There are few things more repellent than a top official getting and taking a pass for something they punish underlings for doing,’ said Richard Parker, a Harvard Law School professor.
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 and for Harvard itself,’ he said.
Others said Gay was being given special treatment.
‘I think there’s a clear double standard,’ said Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard graduate student who has strongly criticized Gay’s response to the October 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 unanimously expressed their approval and confidence in her.’
Brendan Case, associate director of research at Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, which researches human well-being, told The Globe that the allegations against Gay seemed ‘very serious’.
Case said he has been embarrassed by the response from the Harvard Corporation – which runs the university – because it gives the appearance of undermining academic integrity.
‘Just speaking from my own corner of Harvard, there is no question in my mind [that] if we uncovered that pattern of academic dishonesty in any of our researchers, including myself, they would be dismissed immediately,’ Case said.
‘It seems unavoidable to me that many people within and outside Harvard will infer they don’t take this kind of thing seriously.’
Trucks calling for Gay to be fired have appeared outside Harvard’s campus
Gay was accused of copying two paragraphs from work by then-Harvard scholars D. Stephen Voss and Bradley Palmquist. One paragraph is nearly identical except for a few words
However, Gay did not use any quotation marks or in-text citations – Voss and Palmquist are not cited anywhere in her dissertation
Some academics at the university have backed Gay, and pointed out that Harvard has long been assailed by conservative critics who see the university as too liberal.
‘As scholars we need to do our absolute utmost to adhere to the practices that we very clearly tell our students they are to follow,’ said Edward Hall, director of undergraduate studies of Harvard’s philosophy department.
But, he told The Boston Globe, the ‘noise . . . from political actors outside our walls makes it harder to have the right conversation about it.’
He told the paper he questioned the motives of politicians attacking Gay.
‘There is very little reason to think that prominent people in the Republican Party right now are pushing this issue because they care deeply about the quality of scholarship at Harvard and other universities,’ he said.