Claudine Gay, the black woman who was President of Harvard University for slightly more than six months, resigned and has returned to her previous position on the faculty in her field, government. Her resignation followed her testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and revelations of plagiarism in her dissertation and other scholarly publications.
During the Committee’s hearing on antisemitic demonstrations at some leading universities, Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) asked Gay whether statements calling for the elimination of Jewish people amounted to bullying or harassment under campus policies. Gay’s answer, that such statements had to be evaluated in context with regard to free speech, was, I assume—I have not read Harvard’s policies—, technically correct. It was also—I have to consider a widespread response—emotionally, morally, or politically incorrect because it was insensitive to antisemitism and the feelings of Jewish students. In the aftermath of her testimony, Gay found herself defended and attacked for her response, the adequacy of which was debated by friend and foe.
Scrutinized after her answer, Gay became the target of allegations of plagiarism in her dissertation and later scholarly papers. Her response to the first disclosures was to admit to carelessness and to offer corrections. These disclosures were followed by later instances of plagiarism. All instances were documented but, though numerous, are trivial and, indeed, odd; none seems important to her work. They consist of passages quoted nearly verbatim—in most cases, with a few words removed, added, or changed—without any indication of scholarly indebtedness by punctuation, supernumerary citation, or page-and-phrasing reference in the endnotes.
The ensuing controversies reflected sides taken: Republicans deplored Gay’s legalistic answer and her plagiarism; Democrats defended her lawyerly answer as accurate and dismissed her plagiarism as insignificant. Some major donors pledged to withdraw or withhold gifts to Harvard. Although the Harvard Corporation, a Harvard governing body, stood by her, she resigned in the best interests of the university. A debate now rages about whether she was right to resign or was hounded from office.
This summary of the basic facts hardly does justice to the complexity of the issues, central or peripheral, raised by them. In a blog, I can hardly mention, much less discuss them all. So I shall address only a few salient points.
First, it is not obvious that the Committee had a proper legislative justification for its investigation into campus policy on campus speech or, more broadly, on the educational environment and codes of conduct at three leading universities. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” So a hearing on antisemitic speech in relation to a campus code of student conduct seems beyond the reach of a proper legislative purpose.
Second, it is not apparent that the three universities—Harvard, Pennsylvania, and MIT—are legally obliged even to have codes of conduct respecting speech. All three are private, not public, institutions, which, as such, are not constitutionally required either to ensure or to regulate free speech.
Third, although antisemitic speech is repugnant, speech which is repugnant, offensive, even intimidating, is constitutionally protected. In a relevant ruling in 1978,
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidate[d] a city law passed in Skokie, Ill., home to 5,000 Holocaust survivors, to prevent a neo-Nazi group from holding a march there. The Court rule[d] in Collin v. Smith that the group should be permitted to march in their uniforms, distribute anti-Semitic leaflets and display swastikas. The court [did] not deny the group’s symbols are offensive to many observers, but conclude[d] that “public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers.” The U.S. Supreme Court [refused] to review the case. (edited for tense; Annenberg Classroom)
Regrettably, Gay’s answer addressed none of these considerations. Gay might have done better to question the propriety of the hearing, to assert the right of campuses to have or not have policies on speech, and to defend all speech, offensive or otherwise, in campus debates, with a personal statement of abhorrence at antisemitic expression and of sympathy for those offended or intimidated. Ultimately, she seemed to lack convictions pertinent and persuasive at the hearing as well as the competency and decisiveness required by her position. Gay failed the leadership test.
About Gay’s plagiarism, there is much more to reprove than regret. Gay has no excuse, none whatsoever, for plagiarism. I do not know the details of her education, but I am sure that she received instruction about plagiarism in her high school and college English classes, and in a methods course in graduate school. It is not a difficult concept: it is the unacknowledged use of the ideas or words of another. All writers know when they are using others’ ideas or copying others’ words. It is a significant concept because it implies the debt to others for the knowledge or insight on the basis of which one advances one’s own work. Some of her defenders suggest that she was just careless in omitting some quotation marks or citation references, but they do not explain her changes from the original texts. Worse, from a scholarly perspective, they offer up a shabby excuse for sloppy work, academic theft, and undeserved credit.
A final word. The motives of Gay’s defenders or detractors do not matter; her race and gender do not matter. Gay cannot be excused or accused because she is a black woman (e.g., a DEI appointee). (If you are not for diversity, equity, and inclusion, are you for homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion?) Only what she did or did not do matters. Yet Gay can be regarded, as I regard her, as a person deserving sympathy. She is a smart, capable black woman whose great sin may have been trying too hard to make it too fast in a challenging, if not hostile, environment, as academic environments often are. If so, she may have done so because of “the talk” in her home, that, as a black and a woman, she had to be better than those not black or not female. Sadly, she has likely made it more difficult for the next smart, capable black woman to ascend to the highest levels in academe.
No comments:
Post a Comment