Claudine Gay Had To Go

I’ve refrained from opining on the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay - in part because so many others have done so.  The opinions range from “This is just another racist hit job” to “She was an unqualified exemplar of affirmative action run amok” and most everything in between.

As often the case there is some truth all along the opinion spectrum.

It is a shame that despicable right wing operatives like Chris Rufo and Elise Stefanik played a role in her demise.  But focusing on the agents provocateur obscures an uncomfortable truth.  She probably should not have been appointed and she definitely needed to go.  The ease with which one can dismiss one’s critics as malicious does not negate the criticism itself.  Like a broken clock that shows the time with inerrant accuracy twice a day, even partisan hitmen sometimes have a point.

The fact that it concerns Harvard is also a distraction.  Somehow, in our prestige-besotted culture, Harvard and other “elite” schools are held in stratospheric regard when skepticism might be more called for.  That assertion could merit an entire post - or book - but suffice it to say that the reputations of these places are more hat than cattle.  They are bloated and self-satisfied, riding a wave of supposed superiority which derives from enticing 10s of thousands of earnest and highly stressed kids to apply and then celebrating the vast numbers of fragile hearts they break.  I, and countless other educators, believe a better undergraduate education is available at scores of other colleges.

A momentary, albeit germane, digression.

I recently wrote my last column for a small New England newspaper, the Valley News in the upper Connecticut River valley.  I wrote my first column in 1997 and, by rough calculation, I’ve put nearly a million words into print.  I’ve also penned about 200 pieces for Huffington Post, scores of other education articles, and one book, which is exactly one book more than Claudine Gay has authored, unless you count her slim, 114 page volume published by a think tank.  

My book, First Do No Harm: Progressive Education in a Time of Existential Risk, clocks in at a still modest 266 pages, and has 89 footnotes/references.  I am not comparing my scholarship to that of Claudine Gay, although her output is, er, less than formidable. 

But the digression introduces a salient - perhaps only - point.  Gay is inarguably guilty of plagiarism and that disqualifies her from the position she held.  It should disqualify her from the tenured position she continues to enjoy with all attendant benefits.  That she is a Black woman compounds the tragedy but does not - cannot - mitigate the violations.  There are many who would assert that a Black woman has to be better than white peers, and there is surely ample evidence of this historic truth.   But it does an enormous disservice to academia and society to allow the reality of racism to hold her or any other person of color to a lower standard.  

Among my million words of newspaper columns and other writings I have never paraphrased or quoted without attribution.  My book editors at the small, wonderful, Garn Press, held my feet (fingers) to the fire, going so far as to check all of my sources to make sure my attributed information was accurate.  

My response to her malfeasance is not because I’m an elitist academic scold.  I’m none of those three words.  It is, of course, about academic integrity.  But it is even more about character.  It matters not a whit that her paraphrases or other violations did not constitute stealing another’s original thoughts.  Claiming “no harm, no foul” is like, well, Donald Trump claiming innocence of fraud because his bankers didn’t lose money.  His acts were illegal whether or not any particular party was damaged.  

I can’t speak for all writers of course, and I don’t claim any saintly qualities, but borrowing anything,  however trivial, for my prose without attribution would cause an anxious little worm to burrow into my brain.  

That Claudine Gay did so more than 40 times without feeling that corrective anxiety is the most troubling to me.   It is too bad that all the (understandable) racial and political dynamics obscure this simple failure.