(Eli Pacheco, Headline USA) As the scandal surrounding Harvard University President Claudine Gay continues to grow, news broke Friday that former President Barack Obama had secretly intervened to bail out embattled the embattled diversity hire, Fox News reported.
After conservative watchdog Christopher Rufo first revealed evidence of plagiarism involving Gay’s past work, an internal investigation by the school turned up at least 40 instances of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution,” prompting even the far-left New York Times to turn against her.
Claudine Gay has done more to undermine support for DEI in academia than every right-wing think-tank in Washington.
— Pratik Chougule (@pjchougule) December 21, 2023
Despite the growing outrage from academia and bipartisan calls from Washington for her resignation, Harvard reaffirmed on Thursday that it still stood behind Gay, the Wall Street Journal reported.
That, undoubtedly, left many scratching their heads, until it became clear that Gay’s powerful champion was none other than Obama, who privately lobbied on her behalf after congressional testimony led to accusations of anti-Semitism after declined to condemn calls for Jewish genocide.
“It sounded like people were being asked to close ranks to keep the broader administration stable—including its composition,” a source told the Jewish Insider of Obama’s involvement.
Obama, a Harvard Law grad, conveyed his wishes through his former Commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker, who now sits on the school’s board of directors.
Pritzker—a well-known Democrat donor, sister to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and scion to the Hyatt hotel fortune—made news most recently after President Joe Biden selected her to oversee the economic development in Ukraine, which is being spearheaded by BlackRock and JP Morgan Chase.
It was unclear whether Obama’s position had shifted in light of the plagiarism scandal that has since engulfed Gay or whether he was continuing to lobby the board. However, Harvard seemed to have taken the message to heart.
Gay, whose 1997 doctoral dissertation and other papers have come under fire, said she will correct three “instances of inadequate citations” in her dissertation. The school’s subcommittee cleared Gay of research misconduct the school announced on Wednesday night.
Two more instances in papers from 1993 to 2017 during Gay’s professional academic career also required correction. The New York Post reported that a detailed complaint contains more than 40 allegations of plagiarism.
The complainant is an anonymous professor from another institution, the Post reported.
Harvard has strict rules regarding proper attribution.
The filing called into question Harvard’s quick review of Gay’s work, calling it “impossible that your office has already reviewed the entire of these materials, as many … have not been previously reported or submitted.”
According to the New York Post, Harvard employed an expensive law firm to threaten the newspaper as it also probed the plagiarism charges.
The Washington Free Beacon first reported the plagiarism on Dec. 11 following Rufo’s public allegations on a Substack blog and Twitter thread.
EXCLUSIVE: @RealChrisBrunet and I have obtained documentation demonstrating that Harvard President Claudine Gay plagiarized multiple sections of her Ph.D. thesis, violating Harvard's policies on academic integrity.
This is a bombshell. 🧵
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) December 10, 2023
A former Vanderbilt University political science professor, Carol Swain, said Gay copied her work—from a book published in 1993 and an article from 1997.
Some donors have pulled support for Harvard amid the controversies. The latest: billionaire Len Blavatnik said he’ll pause financial gifts, according to Bloomberg News.
Liz Magill, former University of Pennsylvania president, resigned last weekend under pressure for similarly refusing to condemn anti-Semitic rhetoric on her campus.
