Gracious goodness. The beat goes on and I will bet they were hoping by now the drumhead had split.

Yesterday, John covered CNN’s awakening to Harvard President Claudine Gay’s transgressions against scholarship and integrity (with a bonus Chronicle of Higher Education report).

Then, yesterday afternoon, the Grey Lady felt compelled to enter the fray. They stepped into the Harvard plagiarism mess with all of their august leftist presence and gravitas on full display.

The intention may have been – and I’m projecting here – to present a dispassionate, clinical assessment of an alleged scholarly “cheating” scandal – less defense and more news story. CNN did a pretty straightforward, balanced job, so it can be done. But the reporters at the New York Times just can’t resist the temptation to do a little shivving of their favorite foes if there’s half an opening to do so. Sadly, it doesn’t take long for that mask to slip and the advocacy to slither out. Couched, of course, in the elevated, slightly sneering parlance their fellow nobs identify with and routinely employ themselves.

Depends on the context

— The Archie Accords (@ArchieAccords) December 21, 2023

Common people “plagiar… OMG. I can’t even say that word. And only common people would point out that it might, in some extreme sense, be applicable here. But not really.

See how I did that? Is this ever a lesson in wordcraft and perception massage.

Harvard University, in the face of mounting questions over possible plagiarism in the scholarly work of its president, Claudine Gay, said on Wednesday that it had found two additional instances of insufficient citation in her work.

The issues were found in Dr. Gay’s 1997 doctoral dissertation, in which Harvard said it had found two examples of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.”

No worries, said Harvard. Dr Gay is going to correct and update, so everything’s hunky dunky. The school also announced they’d previously engaged an anonymous outside trio “of scholars” to take a peeksy at Dr Gay’s works in a review (extensive they’re not), so there could be no complaints about bias. Which is important considering who’s responsible for all these complaints in the first place, capiche?

…On Wednesday, Harvard said that the inquiry into Dr. Gay’s work was not handled by the research integrity office of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which would normally investigate plagiarism charges against a member of that faculty. Instead the Corporation, a 12-member board that has been criticized for its insularity, appointed a panel of outside scholars to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, because the head of the research integrity office ultimately reports to the president.

The allegations of plagiarism against Dr. Gay have been driven by conservative media, and on Dec. 10 surfaced publicly when the activist Christopher Rufo published a newsletter piece headlined, “Is Claudine Gay a Plagiarist?” That article, which highlighted issues with Dr. Gay’s dissertation, appeared the night before the board met to decide if she would remain as Harvard’s president.

That should set minds at ease. Poor Dr Gay being targeted by these dreadful conservatives as if she’d done something wrong…although, the Times concedes, there might be a little something to it.

…Altogether, the allegations accuse Dr. Gay, a political scientist, of using material from other sources without proper attribution in her dissertation and about half of the 11 journal articles listed on her résumé.

…As allegations mounted last week, faculty members at Harvard and scholars elsewhere offered varying assessments of the severity of the infractions, with some seeing a disturbing pattern, and others calling them minor or dismissing them as a partisan hit job.

But to some, the issue is plain: Dr. Gay committed plagiarism — a word which does not actually appear in the Harvard board’s initial statement on Dec. 12 — and Harvard should admit it.

…The left-leaning Boston Globe editorial board was also scathing about Harvard’s initial statement on the plagiarism allegations, which it called “confusing.”

“If Gay didn’t violate any standards of research, why would she need to correct anything?” it asked.

And if she did, is she catching a break? Arguments are proffered that the Harvard president is and the NYT does a fair job in presenting them.

But wowsahs – in the challengers’ corner, the answer to that question is?

Well, actually, no. St Claudine du Gay is being purposefully martyred – immolated on a pyre of broke WOKE fuel in the public square – to appease right-wing anti-woke crusaders.

…For some faculty members, and not just liberal ones, the details of the charges and Harvard’s procedures were less important than the context in which the charges were being lobbed.

This is so damning – pic.twitter.com/dYgp67xnJr

— Eliana Johnson (@elianayjohnson) December 21, 2023

See here, says the Harvard law (!) professor. The only evidence I’m interested in is that which my jaundiced eyes perceive – the vicious, despicable right-wing attacking.

Fried reportedly retired the 28th of November, but he must still be hanging around when they need quotes.

One brave professor did speak up and allowed them to use her name. That took some gumption.

Unlike the contemptible Charles Fried, who I am embarrassed to say was my faculty advisor when I was at Harvard: https://t.co/tuqtqAXX54

— Hans_Bader (@HansFBader) December 21, 2023

Pish posh, said other fellow faculty members – quantitative scholars don’t need no stinking attributions anyway.

…Steven Levitsky, a government professor and the organizer of a faculty petition this month urging the Corporation to “resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom,” said the passages highlighted seemed to mostly be “mild sloppiness.”

Many, he said, appeared to occur in sections of the papers dealing not with Gay’s core claims, but with summaries of methodologies and of previous scholarship.

“She’s a quantitative scholar,” he said. “She cares about the data. These guys don’t spend time fussing about their literature reviews.”

How creepy Harvard is always referred to as “The Corporation.” I suppose when you are a socialist trending institution bulwarked by an endowment of tens of billions of dollars, you lean that way. Collective, corporation, people’s republic…same-same.

The authors point out other luminaries at Harvard have been under the plagiarism accusation gun before – with corresponding double-standard cries – and were allowed to apologize. Both instances seem confined to passages in individual books written by the gentlemen, as opposed to the sum total of her miniscule output being in question, as it is in Dr Gay’s case.

Lawrence Tribe and Charles Ogletree’s transgressions appeared to be one-offs in something called “managed books” – in other words, written with assistants. It doesn’t relieve them of responsibility, but it does add nuance.

Tribe is still teaching at Harvard after his mea culpa.

…At the time, a fellow legal scholar told The Times that for professors whose infractions became public, the humiliation was the true cost: “The discovery is the punishment.”

So on one hand, alright – a consequences comparison. On the other hand, I believe we have pattern of behavior being established in the Harvard president’s skimpy catalog of works.

So skimpy, in fact, that this laser focus on it might well be the reason Harvard and others are so doggedly circling the wagons around her.

Professionally, Gay’s as paper thin as her published work implies.

…Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright has pointed out Gay’s “h-index (a widely used metric that measures a scholar’s productivity and impact) is 10.” (Her predecessor Lawrence Bacow has an h-index of 13 but has been cited more than 2,500 times. Gay has been cited only 171 times).

Purely academic achievements are not enough to be a university president – soft skills like negotiation and communication are also important. But Gay, who graduated with her doctorate from Harvard in 1998, is clearly not a scholar.

The h-index “captures research output based on the total number of publications and the total number of citations to those works, providing a focused snapshot of an individual’s research performance,” according to the University of Waterloo.

By comparison, professors in political science at less prestigious universities have higher scores than Gay. One professor at nearby Northeastern University, who only obtained her doctorate in 2017, has an h-index of 16.

There’s a “how” Harvard chose this woman as their president which is running wildly for cover at this moment, any way and anywhere it can find it.

It has been unmasked and exposed to the world for the fraudulent, divisive, and damaging ideology it is, and Claudine Gay is not a martyr.

She’s its poster child.