Claudine Gay And The Infuriating Double Standards Of “Antiracism”
Plagiarism is copying plus power.
June 16th, 2020. In response to accusations that he wasn’t taking their concerns seriously, James Brooks, the CEO of Lincoln Students’ Union, issued a heartfelt apology to black and minority students:
As chief executive of the students’ union and senior staff member, it is not common for me to make statements — it is your elected student leaders that rightfully make our student statements. But I find myself in a unique position where, after reading the experiences of black students’ involvement with the students’ union, I need to publicly speak to our black students.
I recognise that the [Student Union] has failed you… I can reflect, and acknowledge that black students have raised their voices, but they have, on the whole, been ignored.
Brooks followed up with a five-point plan for how the university would do better in future. So problem solved, right?
Not quite.
In the hours after it went online, several students noticed that his apology bore a striking resemblance to this one, posted four days earlier, by the CEO of Essex Students’ Union:
As chief executive of the students’ union, it is not common for me to make statements — our amazing student leaders are usually, and rightly, the voice of the [Student Union]. But today, I find myself in a unique position where, after reading the experiences of black students’ involvement with the students’ union, I need to publicly speak to our black students.
I have failed you…we have a strong history of Black student leaders and Black student officers who have […] pushed the Students’ Union and the University to change. If we are honest with ourselves, we have not always done enough to make that change happen.
All told Brooks plagiarised almost 60% of his apology. And the parts he didn’t plagiarise only deepened suspicions about his sincerity (note that one of Brooks’ only changes shifted blame from himself to the student union).
So two days later, in response to accusations that he hadn’t taken the first apology seriously, Brooks issued a second, even more heartfelt apology.
And yet, even though Brooks faced well-deserved criticism, not a single person accused his critics of racism.
For the past month, Claudine Gay, the now-former president of Harvard, has faced a similar crisis of credibility.
After a disastrous congressional hearing raised doubts about her competence, professional culture warrior, Christopher Rufo, pointed out that parts of her doctoral thesis bore a striking resemblance to the work of other scholars.
The inevitable scrutiny led to Gay’s inevitable resignation. But unlike Brooks, there was also Ibram X Kendi’s inevitable claim that Gay’s downfall was due to racism:
When a racist mob attacks a Black person, it finds a seemingly legitimate reason for the attack […] The seemingly legitimate reason, in this latest case at Harvard, is primarily academic misconduct or plagiarism.
The question to assess whether this was a racist attack isn’t whether Dr. Gay engaged in any misconduct. The question is whether all these people would have investigated, surveilled, harassed, written about, and attacked her in the same way if the Harvard president in this case would have been White.
I. Think. Not.
It’s worth noting that Kendi was extremely interetsted in academic misconduct and plagiarism when George Washington University’s Jessica Krug outed herself as a white, Jewish woman LARPing as a black (and later Latina) woman.
But the question is still worth asking: would Rufo and Co. have investigated, surveilled, harassed, written about, and attacked Gay in the same way if she were white?
After all, this isn’t the first time Harvard faculty, both black and white, have been accused of plagiarism. And Harvard’s response, generally speaking, has been to claim it was all an innocent mistake and move along. That’s what they initially did with Gay.
But Rufo wasn’t ready to let it go. He even laid out his evil plan on Twitter:
We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right. The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.
And while I’m not sure any “smuggling” or “squeezing” was required, that’s pretty much how it played out.
The New York Times picked up the story, highlighting five instances of plagiarism, CNN noted that Gay’s hurried corrections failed to address the most egregious cases, and Harvard faced the unenviable choice of admitting Gay was guilty after weeks of proclaiming her innocence, or continuing to defend her as the evidence became undeniable.
To add insult to injury, it turns out Rufo didn’t care which option they chose:
I have a win-win. Whether she stays or goes is irrelevant to the fact that we scored a victory. Same as with Disney — exposing corruption and changing public perception is the goal; the personnel is incidental.
Rufo doesn’t care who gets to be president of Harvard any more than Kendi does. He isn’t motivated by anything as high-minded as plagiarism or corruption. He’s perfectly happy to go after white people if it feeds the endless culture war that he profits from and funds.
But, of course, if the president of Harvard were white, and committed plagiarism fifty times in eight publications, would Kendi be asking why Rufo had investigated, surveilled, harassed, written about, and attacked her?
I. Think. Not.
At this point, you might be wondering why I care who gets to be president of Harvard. And to be honest, I don’t. I’m just tired of this infantilising idea that it’s racist to notice when a black person does something wrong.
Because every time someone makes this argument, it undermines genuine cases of discrimination. It makes life harder for every person of colour dealing with the suspicion that they’re a “diversity hire.” Suspicion that’s never levelled at their white colleagues, no matter how incompetent or underqualified they are.
I mean, do you remember the outcry when Liz Magill resigned over the same disastrous testimony that put Gay in the spotlight? Or when Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Stanford’s former president, was fired for falsifying research data? How about when Amherst College anthropologist Carleen Basler was forced to step down after her tenure review uncovered several instances of plagiarism?
No, you don’t.
Because when a white professor loses their job over gross misconduct, nobody feels the need to initiate a struggle session about whether their misconduct is “the relevant question.”
Instead, we all agree that cheating is wrong, that competence and integrity matter, and that it’s not surprising when someone who lacks those qualities loses their job. Especially if they’re the president of Harvard.
Pretending Gay’s downfall is about racism is an insult to everybody who’s ever been judged by the colour of their skin. Because Claudine Gay was judged by the content of her character.
The kind of character that would steal other people’s work and pass it off as her own. The kind of character that would smirk and dissemble as antisemitism thrived on her campus. The kind of character that would hold students to standards she repeatedly chose to ignore.
I don’t know about you, but if she ever decides to offer an apology for this, I‘ll be running it through a plagiarism checker.
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