December 20, 2023
Opinion: Carol Swain Joins The Chorus Of Conservatives Critical Of Claudine Gay
The Republican fervor around Gay and the rest of the college presidents they have in their witch hunt revolves around their hatred of liberal ideals and scholarship.
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Black conservative political scientist and legal scholar Carol M. Swain levied many of the same criticisms against Harvard University President Claudine Gay as other conservative voices have over her alleged plagiarism and her place at the university.
Swain writes, “Even aside from the documented instances of plagiarism, Ms. Gay’s work wouldn’t normally have earned tenure in the Ivy League. Tenure at a top-tier institution normally demands ground-breaking originality; her work displays none. In a world where the privilege of diversity is king, Ms. Gay was able to parlay mediocre research into tenure and administrative advancement at what was once considered a world-class university.”
Swain has also been vocal on her X, formerly known as Twitter, account, often posting derogatory takes about Gay and her work, using Gay as a proxy for Swain’s disdain of progressive thought. In a Dec. 12 post, Swain described the support Gay received from Harvard as a double standard, writing,g “I rarely get angry, but I am angry right now about the racial double standards that are TEMPORARILY giving Claudine Gay an opportunity to resign. White progressives created her and white progressives are protecting her. The rest of us have had to work our rear ends off to achieve success. Some get it handed to them.”
Swain also says that her seminal work Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African-Americans In Congress was foundational to the area of Gay’s scholarly work and that the book got her branded a conservative. However, examining Swain’s views on social media makes it very clear that she is a staunch conservative. As part of a series of posts Swain posted on Dec. 16, she says that Gay should have engaged her work, writing, “‘Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans’ in Congress had this reception in the world (1993, 1995, 2006). Gay’s work should have acknowledged and engaged the work.” It is also worth noting here that one of Gay’s 2001 academic papers, “The Effect of Minority Districts and Minority Representation on Political Participation in California,” lists Swain’s book in the references section.
Bill Ackman, a billionaire Harvard donor, has also called for Gay to resign, partly over concerns about plagiarism. Still, most of his ire has been fueled by his perception that Gay is nothing more than Harvard’s diversity hire. In a Dec. 6 post to X, Ackman claimed that someone told him that Gay was a diversity hire, writing, “I learned from someone with first person knowledge of the Harvard president search that the committee would not consider a candidate who did not meet the DEI office’s criteria.”
Ackman continued, “Shrinking the pool of candidates based on required race, gender, and/or sexual orientation criteria is not the right approach to identifying the best leaders for our most prestigious universities.”
Finally, Ackman concluded, saying, “I don’t think it will be long before we look back on the last few years of free speech suppression and the repeated career-ending accusations of racist for those who questioned the DEI movement.”
In truth, these sentiments are likely more deeply connected to the conservative pushback against diversity, equity, and inclusion that have become more pronounced since the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional. Even though Ackman typically donates to Democrats, he has said that he is more open to Republicans, and he has found Republican allies in his crusade against Gay.
Rep. Ellie Stefanik, a New York congresswoman, has been calling for Gay’s job for a different reason, but she has been just as loud, if not louder, than Ackman. Her line of questioning for Gay, which went viral, entailed her asking Gay a series of questions about antisemitism, to which there was no “yes” or “no” answer. Still, Stefanik demanded a “yes” or “no” answer anyway.
As The New Republic posited, the Republican fervor around Gay and the rest of the college presidents they brought out for their witch hunt revolves around their hatred of liberal ideals and scholarship.
“Just like the hearing at which Stefanik put on such a passionately convincing performance of umbrage, the ‘plagiarism’ issue is really about reinforcing the right-wing contempt for universities, one of the key institutions Republicans use as a foil and a target. To Republicans, Gay is just one more professor who should be held up as evidence that the left hates you and everything you believe in.”
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