Left-leaning media outlets claimed that conservatives weaponized plagiarism allegations in an attempt to “trap” former Harvard University President Claudine Gay.
Gay resigned as president of the Ivy League institution on Tuesday following allegations of plagiarism as well as concerns over her testimony to Congress during a hearing on anti-Semitism.
Following her resignation, leftwing outlets placed the blame on conservatives for using plagiarism as a “weapon.”
“Harvard president’s resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism,” read a headline from the Associated Press.
GIORDANO: DR. GAY– THE EPITOME OF A PROBLEMATIC HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM
The Associated Press story claimed that conservatives “ put her career under intense scrutiny in hopes of finding a fatal flaw.”
The article specifically references conservative activist Christopher Rufo, claiming that he “helped orchestrate the effort” in Gay’s resignation.
While Gay didn’t specifically reference the allegations, she addressed her commitment to “upholding scholarly rigor.”
“Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” Gay wrote.
The Associated Press was hardly the only outlet to blame conservatives for Gay’s departure.
[RELATED: Harvard president Claudine Gay resigns]
“Claudine Gay Had to Resign, But She Was Right About the Big Things,” read an opinion piece by the New York Magazine.
“But then the right-wing activist Christopher Rufo and conservative journalist Aaron Sibarium discovered evidence that papers by Gay had violated academic rules of attribution on multiple occasions. Plagiarism is the shorthand for this offense; it is a term that describes a wide array of errors and crimes of vastly different scales. The word generally conjures the notion of intellectual theft — one person makes an original discovery, and another steals it and passes off the work as their own,” Jonathan Chait wrote in the opinion article.
Chait said that Gay’s offenses were “more minor.”
“She sloppily failed to employ correct citations and quotes for her citations. Those errors were not necessary for her advancement. She could have fixed them easily,” he wrote.
Rufo responded to the criticism on X, writing “It’s time for another ‘conservatives pounce’ news cycle.”
“After this, we can refocus on the substance of Claudine Gay’s disastrous presidency and the crisis of university DEI. But be gentle: the libs must first pass through the stage of grief and denial,” Rufo wrote.
Originally published by Campus Reform. Republished with permission.
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