We have witnessed something like a core implosion of the liberal elite.
I have some sympathy for the news watchers who are out there wondering why the story of former Harvard president Claudine Gay being fired for academic plagiarism is such a big story, taking up so much space in the A section of the New York Times over the past several weeks. The Ukraine war has taken an ugly turn. The freedom of the seas is imperiled by the Houthi pirate state. We have seen an unprecedented shift in the politics about Israel in several countries, for the worse in the United States, but for the better, perhaps, in France and throughout Europe.
Those news watchers are right that this should have been a short news cycle. Upon the surfacing of so much borrowed work in her meager academic product, President Gay should have been quietly let go, immediately. The reason this is a drawn-out story is that she wasn’t, which means something is going on at Harvard besides upholding the high academic standards on which its reputation depends.
Instead, we witnessed something like a core implosion of the liberal elite. Hundreds of liberal-minded academics took the opportunity to downplay or dismiss real instances of plagiarism, because the accusations came from conservative journalists and staffers at a conservative think tank. That is, they were willing to surrender the most basic academic standards the minute doing so became politically embarrassing. This who-whom message only further highlighted the strange career trajectory of Claudine Gay, who, like many beneficiaries of America’s search for diversity, is not a descendant of American slavery but an existing member of the American elite, just with parents from Haiti.
The horror expressed at her resignation, I take to be genuine. Academics exist in a highly politicized profession of favor-trading, one in which conservatives have been almost entirely excluded. The opaque and never-quite-specified-in-writing (outside the guidance for admissions officers) hierarchies of race, gender, star power, publishing history, and social pedigree are understood by members of academia, and ultimately accepted by them. Everyone pays tribute to this system in some way by existing in it, until they get tenure, and often well beyond that point. The reality is that this system is designed to perpetrate fraud. There are entire fields that depend upon fraud of one kind or another. Making the replicability crisis in social sciences worse, day by day, is really just part of the academic mandate at this point. Whole departments depend upon continuing this project.
The accusation of simple plagiarism, made by outsiders — really, outlaws — such as Aaron Sibarium of the Washington Free Beacon and Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan institute, hits academics like a splash of acid in the face. It can only be received as a life-altering, society-threatening act of terror. It exposes what’s just underneath the skin of modern academia.
“You mean that old rule? You mean academic integrity? I mean, c’mon. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like in here. Sure, some people have to keep their noses clean. Israeli professors, for instance. But, not like people who have had best-sellers. Or prized diversity hires. What are you doing to us? I feel attacked.”
I believe they really do feel that way.