“The issue was never plagiarism”: Right-wingers “signaled their intentions” before Harvard scandal

The recent resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay has stirred concern among academics across the country about the inconsistent application of standards — but it has also elevated a new threat for academic leaders: conservatives are now employing plagiarism as a tool to further their crusade to reshape higher education.

The plagiarism allegations surfaced as part of a coordinated campaign aimed at discrediting Gay, Harvard’s first Black president whose six-month tenure is the shortest of any president in the institution’s history. Her resignation came after weekslong calls for her ouster from prominent conservatives including Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard donor Bill Ackman and conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who popularized critical race theory as a conservative rallying cry.

These efforts are part of a larger initiative to suppress pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, told Democracy Now.

“This is a terrible moment for higher education,” Muhammad said in the interview. “Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania are just the beginning.”

Last month, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill was also forced to resign amid widespread backlash resulting from her testimony at the congressional hearing led by Stefanik – a prominent Trump supporter and Harvard alumna. Magill struggled to provide a clear answer to a question on whether calls for genocide against Jewish people would violate Penn’s code of conduct. Four days later she stepped down from her position. 

The viral video of questioning by the New York Republican and the resulting uproar leading to Magill's ouster ignited discussions regarding the extent to which educational institutions can or should limit free speech.

But in conservative circles, the departures of Gay and Magill have turned into a cause for celebration. Rufo, who led the campaign for Gay's resignation, wrote “SCAPLED” on X, formerly Twitter, soon after her exit.

Rufo and journalist Christopher Brunet initially levied plagiarism accusations against Gay in a Substack post, The Harvard Crimson reported. The conservative website the Washington Free Beacon published additional plagiarism accusations following their post.

One of the allegations included Rufo accusing Gay of plagiarizing her thesis adviser, Gary King, who has rejected the claims, telling The Daily Beast, "There’s not a conceivable case that this is plagiarism.” Gay’s work underwent extensive review, he told the outlet.

Even as Harvard's initial examination of Gay's work identified instances of "duplicative language," it did not rise to the level of misconduct. The university issued a statement saying that “Gay has acknowledged missteps and has taken responsibility for them” and has “shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks,” manifesting in the form of offensive and even racially charged vitriol directed at her through emails and phone calls.

But the accusations of plagiarism continued, leading Gay to end her term as Harvard president – a move that academics warn has dangerous implications suggesting to powerful individuals that they can sway universities in making important decisions about their institutions as a result of repeated backlash. Gay's supporters argue that these specific accusations were made in bad faith and had racist roots too.

“The issue was never plagiarism, it was always her personhood,” Davarian Baldwin, a historian at Trinity College who writes about race and higher education, told Salon. “She was called DEI hire from the very start… We all know that Gay was a top scholar in her field when recruited from Stanford and there have been many white men to hold the presidencies that were mediocre scholars at best. So, the price of admission changes depending on who wears the crown, and this attack wouldn't have been possible without the silence of our so-called liberal allies.”

Rufo as well as others “signaled their intentions” from the very beginning, Baldwin said. They have been "very transparent" about using this “plagiarism charge” as a way to take greater control over higher education and what they see as the “dominance of DEI, anti-racist principles, caricatured as Woke and CRT.” 

“If this text mining is going to be the approach for verifying excellence, then let's deploy it not just in academia, but in all work sectors with the same criteria,” he said. 

This confirms that the evidence of “duplicative language and improper quoting” are at best, things that can be found in the writing documents of all specialized fields and at worse a mistake that should have been adjudicated within the bounds of higher education, Baldwin continued. But this plagiarism charge was never about integrity. 

“If the plagiarism accusations didn't stick, they would’ve dropped them and moved on to something else,” Irene Mulvey, President of the American Association of University Professors, told Salon. 

There's something “illegitimate” about these accusations, mainly because of the way they were entered into the “public sphere,” she added. The unfairness of what happened to Gay is visible for everyone to see, but faculty of color have always navigated extra challenges in academia.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the co-founder of the 1619 Project, faced similar scrutiny and racism while undergoing a rigorous tenure process at the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism. Hannah-Jones was offered a five-year, nontenured appointment following public and private pressure from conservatives, which she ultimately turned down. 

In addition to that, Hannah-Jones has remained a “victim” of similar campaigns akin to what Gay faced, the journalist shared on X.

“Groups with no respect in the field and no real standing but with very official sounding names can make accusations that all of a sudden seem legitimate or at least sow doubt," Hannah-Jones wrote. "This is how propaganda works. This is what we’re seeing now.”

The accusations made against Gay were made by “anonymous actors,” published by right-wing media, amplified on right-wing social media platforms leaving the public sphere filled with “disparaging and misinformed comments,” Mulvey said.

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The irony here is that Gay was very minimally an ally or advocate for the kinds of politics for which conservatives assigned her, Baldwin explained. 

“She failed to protect pro-Palestinian students from doxing, harassment, and even one student's eviction from housing,” Baldwin said. “She advocated for outlawing, even criminalizing the language of ‘river to the sea’ even though we all know that it is not a call for Jewish genocide but a call for the freedom of Palestine from colonial control, ‘from the river to the see.’ In short, she was actually an administrative tool for Zionism in Black face.”

However, the “larger and more pervasive” issue here is the white conservative anxiety around a Black woman's presence in the leadership position as such a “so-called esteemed institution,” Baldwin said. 

“We all know that there are presidents in Harvard's recent past that didn't even hold Ph.D.s. We know that once someone moves on the administrative track their primary focus is on fundraising and vision planning,” Baldwin added. “And yet they focused on Gay, as a scholar to suggest, to explicitly say, that she was ‘unqualified’ and that as a Black woman, ‘this is what happens when you make Affirmative Action hire or prioritize race over merit.’”

These attacks on higher education are driven by "authoritarianism" as it is perceived as an "engine of social mobility," Mulvey said. She expanded on the idea, highlighting that higher education serves as "a ladder into the middle class," and "a driver of our economy." Despite contributing to progress in "every aspect of human experience," the right wing seeks to convince its base that higher education is the "enemy."

Conservatives who led the campaign against Gay were able to “capitalize” on the fact that most people don't understand how higher education works, Baldwin explained. When opponents didn't get rid of Gay after the hearings, they amplified the plagiarism charge. 

He added that while Gay made mistakes, there was “no nefarious intent," but the "tail is wagging the dog." Because conservatives don't want her in this position, the evidence of duplicative language, something that could be found in many dissertations, is the “smoking gun” for pushing her out of a position that does not even require scholarship.

“I think the big picture here is that American higher education is the envy of the world as a result of the bedrock principles of academic freedom and shared governance on which it's built, ” Mulvey said. “And I feel like that's where we should begin. Why is a system that is globally preeminent and the envy of the world being attacked?”