Claudine Gay to keep $900k Harvard salary despite plagiarism scandal
Embattled former Harvard President Claudine Gay could retain a nearly $900,000 salary as she returns to “scholarship” on Harvard’s faculty amid an unresolved plagiarism scandal.
Gay’s return to the elite private school’s rank and file was announced in two Tuesday letters to the Harvard community from both Gay and the Harvard Corporation.
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The university delivered a full defense of Gay and did not address any of the most recent plagiarism allegations as it announced her resignation and new role on the faculty.
Some critics said the school’s decision to allow her to return unscathed to the faculty is part of the diversity, equity, and inclusion framework Harvard has embraced.
“It’s very difficult for Harvard to just fire her,” Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner. “Just as her appointment was symbolic, her departure is symbolic. I think the country can learn a lesson that hiring and promotion should be done on merit and merit only.”
According to the Harvard Crimson, Gay earned $879,079 as Faculty Arts and Sciences dean in 2021, preceded by a 2020 salary of $824,068 for that position. Lawrence Bacow, who served as university president before Gay, had an outgoing salary of over $1.3 million.
Gonzalez went on to argue that Gay’s promotion to the Harvard presidency was more about her being a black woman — the first black president in the school’s history — and less about her academic prowess.
Gay authored only 11 peer-reviewed articles during her more than two decades as an academic, many of which have been caught in the plagiarism scandal, and wrote no books. Her topics of discussion often revolved around race in politics.
“This is something that now we have become very accustomed to hearing in the news, especially since 2020, when the country entered some kind of trance on race,” Gonzalez said. “What your race is or what your ethnicity is now trumps your accomplishments.”
University officials continued to defend Gay’s academic accomplishments on Tuesday even as Gay resigned amid scrutiny of them.
“She has devoted her career to an institution whose ideals and priorities she has worked tirelessly to advance, and we are grateful for the extraordinary contributions she has made — and will continue to make — as a leader, a teacher, a scholar, a mentor, and an inspiration to many,” the Harvard Corporation said.
But Gay’s anemic academic record prior to her short stint as Harvard president has focused attention on why the university allowed her to return to its ranks of scholars.
Frederick M. Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, recalled from his time studying alongside Gay in Harvard’s doctoral program years ago that Gay did not seem at the time to be an ideological crusader.
“I tend to suspect that, like so many others, Gay embraced higher ed’s DEI groupthink mostly as a means of personal advancement,” Hess wrote on Wednesday.
“Gay has spent most of her time at Harvard as a bureaucrat, not a scholar,” Hess noted. “In 2022, when charged with implementing a Faculty of Arts and Sciences anti-racism initiative, Gay sent an email to the faculty seeking ‘requests for denaming’ of campus buildings or programs.”
Harvard’s promotion and protection of Gay is part of the broader, decadeslong push by the ideological Left to take over academia and control public discourse, Gonzalez said.
“This whole thing is about what the future generations are taught: Who gets a say about what truth is, who determines what history is?” he added. “The Left is keenly aware of this.”
Still, many academics and journalists came out in defense of Gay this week, downplaying the seriousness of plagiarism findings.
The Associated Press on Wednesday dubbed plagiarism as the “new conservative weapon” in an article characterizing Gay’s resignation as a warning sign of future tactics from the Right.
1619 Project creator and journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones said Gay’s ouster is evidence that “academic freedom is under attack.”
“Racial justice programs are under attack. Black women will be made to pay,” Hannah-Jones said.
Ibram X. Kendi, a professor and prominent purveyor of critical race theory, blamed the “racist mob” who found in plagiarism a “seemingly legitimate reason for the attack” but is being used as a pretext for the underlying purpose of the criticism: “Because the person is black.”
“The seemingly legitimate reason, in this latest case at Harvard, is primarily academic misconduct or plagiarism,” Kendi added. “The question to assess whether this was a racist attack isn’t whether Dr. Gay engaged in any misconduct.”
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The Washington Examiner reached out to Harvard for a request for comment.
The controversy surrounding Claudine Gay’s return to Harvard’s faculty raises questions about the balance between merit-based appointments and diversity, equity, and inclusion measures in academia. How do elite institutions navigate these complexities
The controversial return of former Harvard President Claudine Gay to the university’s faculty, amid an unresolved plagiarism scandal, has sparked a debate about diversity, equity, and inclusion at the prestigious institution. Despite the allegations of plagiarism, Gay is set to retain her nearly $900,000 salary as she transitions back to a role in “scholarship” at Harvard.
The announcement of Gay’s return was made in two letters to the Harvard community, one from Gay herself and another from the Harvard Corporation. However, the university did not address the recent plagiarism allegations in its defense of Gay. Critics argue that the decision to allow her to return unscathed is part of Harvard’s commitment to diversity and inclusivity.
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, expressed his view that it would be difficult for Harvard to terminate Gay’s position. He suggested that her original appointment as president was symbolic and that her departure would also carry symbolic weight. Gonzalez believes that hiring and promotion should be based solely on merit, rather than considerations of race or gender.
According to the Harvard Crimson, Gay earned $879,079 as the Faculty Arts and Sciences dean in 2021, with a previous salary of $824,068 in 2020. In contrast, Harvard’s former president, Lawrence Bacow, had an outgoing salary of over $1.3 million. These figures have added fuel to the debate surrounding Gay’s appointment and her compensation.
Critics, like Gonzalez, argue that Gay’s promotion to the Harvard presidency was not primarily based on her academic prowess but rather on her identity as a black woman. They point out that Gay authored just 11 peer-reviewed articles during her academic career and has been implicated in the plagiarism scandal for several of them. Her research primarily focuses on race in politics.
Gonzalez sees this as a reflection of a broader trend wherein an individual’s race or ethnicity appears to outweigh their accomplishments. He argues that this emphasis on identity rather than merit is a troubling development in society.
Despite the controversy surrounding Gay, university officials continue to defend her academic accomplishments. The Harvard Corporation stated that Gay has made extraordinary contributions to the institution and will continue to do so in her new roles.
While there are defenders of Gay’s appointment, critics question why the university allowed her to return to its ranks of scholars, particularly given her limited academic record prior to her presidency. Frederick M. Hess, a senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, recalls his time studying alongside Gay and suggests that she may have embraced higher education’s diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology as a means of personal advancement.
The controversy surrounding Claudine Gay’s return to Harvard’s faculty highlights the increasing importance of diversity and inclusion at elite institutions. The debate raises questions about the balance between merit-based appointments and measures to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia. As institutions grapple with these issues, it remains to be seen how they will navigate the complexities of balancing diversity with academic excellence.
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