How Events Are Conspiring to Obscure That Claudine Gay Got Pushed Out For Plagiarism

Donors will now think Penn's Liz Magill's firing was no one-off. It was, in fact a one-off, but both Gay and Harvard invite you to think it wasn't.

Last month I resoundingly defended Harvard President Claudine Gay against hedge fund gazillionaire Bill Ackman’s attempts to get her fired over her handling of student protests surrounding the October 7 Hamas attacks and subsequent war in Gaza. Today I posted a piece saying Gay had to go for the entirely unrelated reason that she turns out to be a serial plagiarist.

What’s driving me batty is that events are conspiring to allow Ackman and Rep. Elise Stefanik and various others who were after Gay’s scalp for political reasons to do a victory lap. They are getting nothing but encouragement from Gay and Harvard to do so because the alternative is to advertise a snowballing plagiarism scandal that’s deeply embarrassing to them both. That’s the subject of my New Republic piece. You can read it here.