Morning Wire - Anti-Semitism & Plagiarism: Harvard’s Dual Crisis | Saturday Extra

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

One of the academics who was allegedly plagiarized by Harvard President Claudine Gay speaks out about the double standard at the Ivy League school. We speak to Dr. Carol Swain, author of The Adversity of Diversity. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The dual scandals of a double standard for anti-Semitism on campus and academic plagiarism have plagued Harvard this week as the university's board chose not to remove President Claudine Gay. The controversial decision comes despite Gay's widely criticized congressional testimony and evidence that she improperly used other academic scholarship in her publications. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Carol Swain, whose work is among that scholarship used by the Harvard president. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John. Vickley with Georgia Howe. It's Saturday, December 16th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss the Harvard presidential scandal is Dr. Carol Swain, senior fellow for the Institute for

Faith and Culture. Dr. Swain, thanks for coming on. Thank you. Now, you were a tenured professor in the Ivy League, Princeton, and you've been very outspoken on this situation as your own work appears to have been plagiarized here. First, what do you make of the Harvard Board unanimously deciding to support Claudine Gay, after her congressional testimony and now allegations of plagiarism? I see it as a low point for American higher education that Harvard University would try to redefine pleasureism so that it can retain its first ever black president who was clearly promoted based on diversity, equity, and inclusion standards.

And I would argue that her record, even if she had not plagiarized her auto, would not normally have supported tenure in the Ivy League. And I say this as someone who was tenured early at Princeton, and the standard in the Ivy League used to be that you had to have a major path-breaking publication. And the book that she lifted a couple of passages from, Black Faces, Black Interests, The Representation of African Americans in Congress, was a book that won three national prizes, including the highest prize of political scientists can win.

It was cited by many law court decisions and the U.S. Supreme Court, and it was considered the seminal work in the area of minority representation and representation in Congress. And so that's the book that she really lifted passages that were not that significant, but her entire research agenda was on minority representation on Congress. And even though she has one site of me in her bibliography, normally when you draw on the research of a leading scholar in a particular area, you have to engage that work. You have to let people know why you're asking the questions that you are. She didn't do that.

She did not engage my work either to refute it, to affirm it, to acknowledge it. And I would argue that that harmed me in my career, even though I wasn't aware this was taken. place because in academia, your statute depends on how many times you are cited. If someone is in the area where you were the pathbreaker and they are not engaging your ideas, it has long-term consequences. And so her work, in my opinion, is derivative of mine. I believe she got away with it because I was falling out of favor in academia because I was becoming increasingly conservative. Now, you're one of several professors whose work was improperly used in Gay's writings, allegedly. University of Pittsburgh's George Reed Andrews has acknowledged that Gay did borrow a few of my

phrases, as did you Chicago economist Jens Ludwig. Both said they don't think it really rose to the level of plagiarism, but Ann Williamson of Miami University, Ohio, said it does look like plagiarism to me, and she actually said she was shocked by the passages Gay lifted from her work. Have you reviewed these passages under question? I've looked at the sections from my own work and the articles that have pulled out passages and other people's work side by side. And I would argue that it is plagiarism and that a journalist would lose their job over it. And it's particularly troubling because it wasn't just her dissertation. It also included the published works that she presented for tenure. And I would encourage people to look at that

senior thesis, she wrote at Stanford, it won a prize. Her dissertation won a prize. Was the senior thesis pleasureized? That's where they need to look next. The New York Post is now reporting that Harvard actually threatened them legally when a reporter reached out about these allegations back in October, which is surprising. Harvard has issued a statement addressing briefly the plagiarism charges. They said they did their own review and did find some instances that were problematic and are now requesting four corrections in two articles. Is that an adequate response? It's horrible. What they should do is if they want to keep her on their faculty, certainly she should make those corrections. But normally, you don't get a do-over in life. Most people are held accountable. We all make mistakes. She made a

mistake. And I believe that if they want to keep her on the faculty of Harvard, okay, just give her mercy, allow her to make the corrections, but she should not be the president of Harvard University with that record of plagiarism and the equal outcomes, the equity that we associate with neo-Moxysm. And DEI is like affirmative action on steroids. And that is what has advanced her. And I believe what is keeping her in her position is that Harvard doesn't want to embarrass itself by firing its first ever black president, so they would rather hurt their brain than to get rid of a woman that should be fired, and she should have been fired already.

Some people say refusing to remove gay was Harvard's way of sort of thumbing their nose at the Supreme Court's recent affirmative action decision against Harvard. What do you think about that? Absolutely. And I was born in 1954, the year of the Brown versus Board school desegregation case where the Supreme Court ordered integration of public education in all deliberate speed. And the response in many places was massive resistance. And they resisted up until the late 1960s in Bedford County, Virginia, where I went to school. So I see the same thing happening is that just like the elites resisted the Brown versus Board of Education desegregation case, the elites at these institutions have decided that they're going to resist the Supreme Court's decision to end race-based discrimination.

And so I believe that we need to hold them accountable that white people, Asian people, Christians, any group that's being disfavored in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause, they need to document what is taking place. they need to file lawsuits, and we need to shut it down. It shouldn't take 10 years or 20 years of them continuing to discriminate against people or finding proxies to continue doing what they're doing. Now, one question about the other issue at hand here, the double standard for anti-Semitism on campus. Is there a double standard? If the protests and chance against Jews and Israel were taking place against blacks

or even LGBT people, would Harvard and some of these other Ivy League schools have pointed to context as necessary to determine whether or not that was problematic? If the Jewish students were black, it wouldn't just be Harvard and the Ivy League, but all of America, every institution, the Biden administration, every government would have shut it down immediately. The police would have shut it down if it had been black students being harassed and being threatened by white students. And that is the double standard. and I, myself, I'm just shocked at how Jewish Americans are being treated in America today and the hatred towards Israel. And to me, if there's a civil lining, it is that the Jewish

people on the college campuses, some of them are awakening to the fact that the progressives are not their friends. You've been an advocate for viewpoint diversity in higher education. In fact, you just published a book that addresses this issue. the adversity of diversity, how the Supreme Court's decision to remove race from college admissions criteria will doom diversity programs. What are your thoughts on how having more representation across the political spectrum could have helped Harvard avoid this controversy? I can tell you that I'm an advocate of education. I spent 28 years in academia, I took early retirement from Vanderbilt in 2017. He pretty much in the heat of a controversy because of an

opinion piece that I published criticizing Islam, created a firestorm, and I left academia. But I saw the changes taking place, and it started right after President Obama was elected. I saw the critical race theory that had been mostly confined to certain departments of the university, that it started rapidly infecting every department. And I saw changes that made academia very uncomfortable for, people like me, and I saw the decline of education to the point that they did not even give lip service to universities being marketplaces of ideas, where you would have divergent voices allowed to speak. All of that started to die at American colleges and universities, and as a

consequence, these institutions have allowed themselves to become indoctrination centers. And if we want to educate young people, if we want strong leaders, if we want people that are qualified to take positions of responsibility in society, we have to expose them to divergent ideas. You cannot develop critical thinking skills unless you are sort of made uncomfortable, unless you hear new ideas. That's not taking place in the indoctrination centers we have today. And I also know that if you are conservative on a university campus, if you are, deeply orthodox, whether it's Christian, Jewish. It's set up in such a way that if you don't fit in, the universities are very uncomfortable places. And so there are students who live in fear.

There's no way you're going to get a quality education. If you're so afraid, you're going to offend someone, you can't ask questions. That's not what higher education should be about. And so I believe that we have to make changes. And I also believe that changes are already happening. I've spoken this year at several universities. And I believe that universities are realizing that the value of the product that they're producing has declined to the point that many young people are deciding that they don't necessarily need or want a college education. And I have met parents who are very wealthy and grandparents who are telling me that the money they say, saved up for their offspring's education that they're giving them an option. They can take the money

and start a business or they can go to college. And so universities, higher education, these institutions are suffering because right now they're not offering a quality product. Well, there's no doubt that the perception of universities has been shifting dramatically in recent years. Dr. Swain, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. That was Dr. Carol Swain, author of The Adversity of diversity and this has been an extra edition of MorningWire.