Can Universities Coexist with Free Speech?
In the wake of the Hamas-Israel conflict and its aftermath, major university presidents have demonstrated a willingness — or notable reticence — to speak out amid the anger expressed by faculty, students, alumni, and donors. The perfect storm of campus unrest has brought forth a new national debate — namely, how can universities support free speech principles during the current turbulent times and beyond?
Renewed interest is being focused on the 1967 Kalven Report at the University of Chicago, which was updated in a 2014 report there by a Committee on Freedom of Expression chaired by Geoffrey R. Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law.
Professor Stone is one the nation’s pre-eminent First Amendment scholars, and also a former university provost. He has a unique vantage point for both the theory and practice of setting workable free speech boundaries on college campuses. In 2021, we discussed critical ideas that now are receiving increased attention. Our conversation is especially useful to consider amid today’s headlines. It can help illuminate a pathway toward restoring free inquiry and free speech throughout higher education — articulating principles that are being tested almost daily as new expressive landmines appear.
Brotman: Let’s talk about free speech in schools, including universities. I know you have been central in shaping thinking in this area obviously, chairing the committee at the University of Chicago, building upon the work of one of your influencers, Harry Kalven, who had authored a major report in this area a few decades earlier. What is your thinking about how the First Amendment does or doesn’t apply in the university context?
Stone: First of all, it’s important to understand that the First Amendment applies only to public institutions. The First Amendment applies to the University of California or the University of Illinois, which are public institutions, but it does not apply to the University of Chicago or Harvard or Stanford, which are private institutions.
The First Amendment has no impact on the decision making or autonomy of a private institution. So it’s important to draw that distinction at the outset. On the other hand, even private universities should aspire to promoting free and open discourse and the questioning and challenging of ideas. This is accepted wisdom for the intellectual life of universities, in much the same way as the values embodied in the First Amendment have come to be understood over time.
That’s not true, by the way, for all entities. Private corporations, for example, don’t have the same values and aspirations as a university.
But at the core of a university is the search for truth. At the core of the university is the mission of seeking knowledge, seeking wisdom, seeking insights that give us a better understanding of our society, of science, and of culture.
In the same way that Justices Holmes and Brandeis argued that virtually unfettered speech helps to achieve truth in the political arena, the best way to achieve truth in the academic arena is not to have censorship but to have a broad and robust freedom of debate and discussion and dis- agreement. So even in private universities, there should be a commitment to free expression that is very similar to what the First Amendment itself imposes on government entities.
What that means is that the institution should not suppress the opportunity for students and faculty and other members of the university community to explore ideas in ways that enable them to advocate for what they see as wisdom, and to challenge what others may believe to be wisdom and truth and facts in order to seek greater knowledge. That’s the absolute core of the mission of a university, and it’s very much at the core of the mission of the University of Chicago in particular, which from its very founding has been a leader in the pursuit of those values.
Brotman: Let’s begin with the Kalven Report.
Stone: In 1967, the president of the University of Chicago, Edward Levi, appointed Harry Kalven to chair a committee to look at the extent to which a university should itself adopt positions on matters of public pol- icy. This was during the height of the Vietnam War, and a large part of the issue was whether universities should weigh in on whether the Vietnam War being a good or bad thing. I must say, at roughly that time, I was arguing as a student in college, and later as a student at the University of Chicago law school, that colleges and universities should take positions opposing the Vietnam War. I was wrong about that but I believed that was true. I was within my rights to advocate for it but it was the wrong position.
Brotman: And now?
Stone: I came to understand the Kalven Report, which was written at that time, took the position that the University of Chicago should not weigh in on matters of public policy, unless those issues directly affect the university itself. But on matters of general public policy, if the university takes positions, it would have a serious chilling effect on the willingness of faculty and students to take positions that are in opposition to what the university has declared to be “the right position.” Therefore, the university should be extremely cautious about taking formal positions on matters of public policy.
I chaired the University of Chicago committee on free speech fifty years later. It had to do with the fact that at that time, at colleges and universities across the nation, it was increasingly the case that students and faculty members were demanding that universities disinvite speakers, or that speakers who had been invited should be silenced because the views that they would express would be opposed by the students or faculty as wrongheaded, inappropriate, and offensive. The challenge for universities was (and still is) to figure out whether certain speakers should or should not be invited, or invited and then silenced because members of the community oppose their views.
Brotman: What were the Stone Report’s conclusions?
Stone: The University of Chicago adopted a statement that is three pages long. The first half of it discussed the history of the University of Chicago and gave examples of its own commitment to a robust protection of free speech.
Then the second part of it articulated an approach to free speech that basically says that free and open discourse is essential to the values and aspirations of a university and that a university therefore should not prohibit members of the community from inviting speakers who express views that others may find offensive.
Indeed, the report explained, it is the responsibility of the university affirmatively to protect the rights of students and faculty and other com- munity members to speak themselves, or to invite speakers who would express views that others might find offensive. It should encourage students to listen to those views and to respond to the merits, to debate and to challenge those views if they disagree with them, but not to try to silence them, not to try to disrupt them or to prevent them from having their say.
Brotman: How has this been received?
Stone: Interestingly, we wrote that report specifically for the University of Chicago. But several universities, beginning with Princeton, recognized that they could lop off the first half of the report, which talked about the history of the University of Chicago, and then adopt the second half of the report, which discussed about the central principles. There now are some eighty colleges and universities across the country that have adopted what has come to be called the Chicago Principles. This is the standard that many institutions of higher education now embrace.
Brotman: And public universities?
Stone: Public universities have a different situation, because they are governed by the First Amendment. They do not have the freedom that a private university has, in theory, to reject those principles. So public universities have to conform strictly to what the First Amendment demands of them.
For the most part, that’s what the Chicago Principles articulate: a public university, under the First Amendment, is responsible for allowing the expression by students, by faculty, and by visitors who are invited of views that may be disturbing or offensive to other members of the community, because they are subject to the basic principles of the First Amendment.
Brotman: How might this be limited in practice?
Stone: The commitment to free expression doesn’t mean that in the classroom in, say, a mathematics course, a student can start giving a speech about politics. There are constraints on the time, place, and manner of speech, which are permissible even, as illustrated by my example, on the content of speech in narrow circumstances, like the classroom.
Similarly, a commitment to free expression doesn’t mean that professors cannot grade student papers or exams, based upon what the professor views as the wisdom or the excellence of the ideas that are being expressed.
The academic mission has within it a responsibility to teach and to evaluate scholarship. In so doing, one tries not to be ideological or political, but obviously the university and its faculty have to make judgments about who to hire, who to promote, which students get A’s and which students get B’s, and so on.
But in the realm of public discourse in the university, the notion that the university, or its students or faculty, should have the authority to silence
others because they don’t like the views being expressed is incompatible with the First Amendment in a public university and incompatible with the core values and aspirations of a private university as well.
Brotman: California treats public and private universities the same, right?
Stone: The state of California has apparently said there’s no real distinction between a public university and a private university in this respect. Private universities have to act in accordance with the same standards that would apply in a public university.
Now this raises an interesting problem, because the private university has First Amendment rights to decide for itself what speech it wants or doesn’t want to allow. A private university that seeks to achieve the goals and aspirations that I believe are essential to a true, well-functioning academic institution would itself choose to aspire to the same values that the First Amendment would apply to it.
But they don’t have to do that. They have a First Amendment right to decide for themselves who they are. So I think government laws that try to impose on private institutions obligations to comport with what the First Amendment would impose upon public institutions are making very difficult and delicate judgments about the academic freedom of a private institution.
Brotman: You seem firmly committed to the principle that universities should be silent when necessary.
Stone: Yes, I think the Kalven Report notion that universities themselves should not take official positions on political or other debates on public issues that do not directly affect the university is the proper stance. Because once a university goes down that road, it’s very hard to say when to stop. Universities that declare certain ideas to be right or wrong will deter students and faculty members from challenging those ideas in a way that they should be free to do. It is simply not the business of a university to declare that abortion is wrong or that Trump was a bad president or that the war in Vietnam was a mistake. It is simply not the role of the university to take such positions except when such issues are directly related to the core functioning of the university itself.
It’s not that I don’t think there are right or wrong positions. But I don’t think universities should take them, because they produce a chilling effect on the willingness of their students and their faculty to take counter positions. That’s a dangerous thing in terms of the larger aspirations of a university community.
Stuart N. Brotman is the Alvin and Sally Professor of Media Law, Enterprise, and Leadership at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The conversation excerpt with Professor Geoffrey R. Stone is from Stuart N. Brotman, The First Amendment Lives On (University of Missouri Press, 2022).
Image: Pezibear via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
Jewish Students Sue Harvard for Antisemitism
A group of Jewish students sued Harvard University for antisemitism on Wednesday, alleging that it is violating Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act by allowing Jewish students to be subjected to bullying and harassment amid a storm of anti-Israel hostility.
The suit has been brought by Harvard Divinity School student Alexander Kestenbaum and Students Against Antisemitism.
The complaint states (paragraph numbers removed):
Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment. Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered, tortured, raped, burned, and mutilated 1,200 people—including infants, children, and the elderly—antisemitism at Harvard has been particularly severe and pervasive. Mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty have marched by the hundreds through Harvard’s campus, shouting vile antisemitic slogans and calling for death to Jews and Israel. Those mobs have occupied buildings, classrooms, libraries, student lounges, plazas, and study halls, often for days or weeks at a time, promoting violence against Jews and harassing and assaulting them on campus. Jewish students have been attacked on social media, and Harvard faculty members have promulgated antisemitism in their courses and dismissed and intimidated students who object. What is most striking about all of this is Harvard’s abject failure and refusal to lift a finger to stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and penalize the students and faculty who perpetrate it.
…
Subjected to intense anti-Jewish vitriol, including from their own professors and Harvard administrators, Kestenbaum and other Jewish students, including SAA members, have been deprived of the ability and opportunity to fully participate in Harvard’s educational and other programs and have been placed at severe emotional and physical risk. Moreover, over the past ten years, Harvard has instituted admissions policies that have severely reduced—by as much as sixty percent—the number of Jewish students, an enormous decline that evinces an intentional effort, much like Harvard’s quotas one hundred years ago, to exclude Jews. The severe and pervasive hostile environment for Jews on campus leaves Harvard’s remaining Jewish population even more isolated and unsafe against their abusers.
Harvard’s deliberate indifference to, and indeed enabling of, antisemitism on its campus constitutes an egregious violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Harvard must now be compelled to implement institutional, far-reaching, and concrete remedial measures, including, among other things: (i) disciplinary measures, including the termination of, deans, administrators, professors, and other employees responsible for antisemitic discrimination and abuse, whether because they engage in it or permit it; (ii) disciplinary measures, including suspension or expulsion, against students who engage in such conduct; (iii) declining and returning donations, whether from foreign countries or elsewhere, implicitly or explicitly conditioned on the hiring or promotion of professors who espouse antisemitism or the inclusion of antisemitic coursework or curricula; (iv) adding required antisemitism training for Harvard community members; and (v) payment of appropriate damages for lost or diminished educational opportunities, among other things.
Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned in early January, in part over controversy relating to her mishandling of the antisemitism issue, as well as over mounting concerns over a pattern of plagiarism in her sparse academic publications.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
I expect that, at some future time when Barack Obama loses his sacral quality, historians will take great interest in his childhood religious affiliation. They will wonder how, in the information-heavy, politically-riven, and celebrity-mad culture of early twenty-first century United States, so gigantic a biographical inconvenience could be successfully hidden and rendered taboo. They will study how, in a modern democratic society, a determined candidate can suppress even the most important and relevant information.
DANIEL PIPES
PROOF Obama's Birth Certificate is Fake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOP5Y9OUJyk
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation (TWO GAMER LAWYERS - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS) (WHAT ABOUT THE CHINA BIDEN PENN CENTER?) and the Obama (TWO GAMER LAWYERS - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS) book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family (FOUR GAMER LAWYERS - JOE, HUNTER, JAMES, FRANK - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS AND LARRY FINK OF BLACKROCK) corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the Warren (GAMER LAWYER) and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS (WANTS TO BE OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS) AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, LAWYER CHUCK SCHUMER, OWNED BY LARRY FINK OF BLACKROCK WHO OWNS A BIG PIECE OF THE ‘BIG GUY’ JOE, AND GEORGE SOROS’ RENT BOY (GAMER LAWYER) TONY BLINKEN, AS WELL AS CON MAN (GAMER LAWYER) ADAM SHIFF) AND HIS CORRUPTNESS (GAMER LAWYER) BOB MENENDEZ STILL EVADING PRISON.
BRIAN C JOONDEPH
How Obama’s Muslim Childhood Became a Taboo Topic
https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-obamas-muslim-childhood-became-a-taboo-
Reflections on when a gigantic biographical inconvenience was successfully hidden and denied.
How Obama’s Muslim Childhood Became a Taboo Topic
Reflections on when a gigantic biographical inconvenience was successfully hidden and denied.
[Order Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Americans have an abiding fascination with their presidents, especially with their foibles and secrets. Who lied? Who ordered illegal operations? Who had mistresses?
Thus was the country transfixed by Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and the tawdry drip-drip of their liaison. When newly declassified documents revealed hitherto unknown CIA connections to Lee Harvey Oswald, this made a media splash, with Tucker Carlson asking: “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy?”
But that fascination dies when it comes to Barack Obama, the Left’s quasi-sacred figure. About him, no curiosity, please, no gossip, and no hint of impropriety. When he falsely claimed in 1991 to have been born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii, blame fell on a sloppy literary agent. When Stanley Kurtz proved that Obama lied about not being a member of Chicago’s socialist New Party and a candidate for it, the Obama P.R. machine smeared Kurtz and the story disappeared.
When clear evidence showed that Obama had lied about having been born and raised a Muslim, the researcher who made the case was reviled, his investigation scorned, and his argument vaporized.
I should know, as I was that researcher. I wrote five times on this topic in 2007-08, during Obama’s first presidential campaign (three of those times in FrontPageMag.com) and then aggregated all this information, plus new details, in a long and (so far) definitive September 2012 article, “Obama’s Muslim Childhood,” serialized in the Washington Times.
All those writings emphasized that Obama was now a Christian. The first one began with:
“If I were a Muslim I would let you know,” Barack Obama has said, and I believe him. In fact, he is a practicing Christian, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ. He is not now a Muslim. But was he ever a Muslim or seen by others as a Muslim?
I answered in the affirmative and showed how contradictory evidence concerning Obama’s religious background – from Obama’s father and name, from years in Indonesia, from his family, and most of all from himself – conclusively points to his being born and raised a Muslim.
Throughout, I emphasized not the Islam issue but the character issue; if Obama lies about something so fundamental, how can he be trusted? His other lies, such as Kenyan birth and socialist party non-membership, confirm this problem.
Responses came fast and hard. Ben Rhodes’ “echo chamber” nearly fainted at the impudence of my lèse majesté. Like Kurtz, I was slandered without the facts I presented ever addressed. Here’s a small sampling of the deluge:
- Ben Smith in Politico derided my analysis as “the template for a faux-legitimate assault on Obama’s religion.”
- The Spectator called mine the “the worst article on the presidential election” and also deemed it “mad” and “despicable.”
- Martin Peretz in the New Republic said I had “simply gone bonkers … and malicious.”
- Vice ran an article “Would You Care If Obama Were Muslim?” that responded to my carefully-crafted argument with “BLARGHA BLARGHA BLARGH REPEAL OBAMA BIN HUSSEIN’S GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER OF OUR JOBS.”
The Atlantic published no less than three attacks on the article and me. Mark Ambinder rued “the false notion that Obama is or was ever Muslim.” Andrew Sullivan dismissed my work as “toxins.” Matthew Yglesias ridiculed my saying that I believe Obama is not now a Muslim with “I, for one, believe Daniel Pipes when he says he’s not a child molester.”
And so it went, howling with outrage at the very thought of Obama as a Muslim, mocking and taunting me with ad hominem attacks, speculating about my motives. So relentless was the onslaught, even the conservative press overwhelmingly shied away from the topic. The McCain and Romney campaigns both treated the topic like Kryptonite. The issue of Obama’s lies had no impact on either presidential campaign, both of which – of course – Obama won.
I expect that, at some future time when Barack Obama loses his sacral quality, historians will take great interest in his childhood religious affiliation. They will wonder how, in the information-heavy, politically-riven, and celebrity-mad culture of early twenty-first century United States, so gigantic a biographical inconvenience could be successfully hidden and rendered taboo. They will study how, in a modern democratic society, a determined candidate can suppress even the most important and relevant information.
I look forward to the vindication.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2023 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Reader Interactions
Obama in the running for Harvard president?
Now that Claudine Gay is out as president at Harvard after a plagiarism scandal, will Barack Obama become the university's next president?
Here's what's being bruited about in the media, according to the Daily Mail:
Barack Obama has been touted as a contender for the next president of Harvard after the resignation by Claudine Gay due to an anti-Semitism and plagiarism scandal.
The former president, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991, may be a candidate for the position - and he wouldn't be the first ex-POTUS to take charge of an elite college.
Alan M. Garber is currently the interim president of Harvard, but the institution is understood to still be weighing up its options for a permanent replacement for Gay.
Harvard University - who has not named any candidates yet - said the search for a new leader 'will include broad engagement and consultation with the Harvard community in the time ahead.'
Discussions over who should take over Gay have swirled on social media, with names such as Deval Patrick, Danielle Allen, and Barack Obama's popping up, according to the Boston Globe.
The Boston Globe article they cited had this:
On social media, a few suggestions have begun circulating, including Deval Patrick, a former two-term Massachusetts governor, and Danielle Allen, a former Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate and a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy at Harvard. Barack Obama’s name has come up, too.
Gay’s interim replacement, Alan Garber, a Harvard physician and economist, could be considered as well, due to his experience as the college’s provost for the past 12 years.
...and...
Obama and Garber did not respond to requests for comment. Putnam, who knows Obama, said he doubted the former president would take the job.
It seems a little tenuous, given that the Boston Globe cited experts who emphasized that holding the post is hard work, and we all know what Obama's work ethic was like as president. That clearly carried over from Obama college days. Obama's academic output while at Harvard was about nil, and even while holding the prestigious post as editor of the Harvard Law Review, he has no articles to his name, which many legal observers found highly unusual when the news of it came out.
In short, he'd bring glitz to Harvard, but probably wouldn't do much to change the negative trajectory of the university. Billionaire vacays, adoring speeches, and lots of money flowing would probably be the next thing up for the university, but no restoration of merit over DEI nor any changes to the faculty lounge culture at the school that could wave people like Claudine Gay right through on her doctorate and her presidency of the school with no scrutiny of her obvious plagiarism.
Obama lobbied hard for Gay to stay, and the university powers that be ruled against him in the end,. so he lost that battle. Obama himself is a firm supporter of affirmative action over merit-based admission and hiring, and has stated in the past that he never felt that his easy ride upward as an affirmative action admission to all the prestigious schools he went to ever resulted in anyone looking in askance at his credentials. He'd keep the bad course the school is on, where DEI overrides academic freedom on every front.
The Boston Globe does note some other characters up for consideration, all of them by the wildest coincidence black candidates, except for the plodding Garber with all his unglamourous administrative experience, which rather suggests that the board making the selection doesn't want to get ragged on by the DEI crowd with claims of a racist firing of a black woman.
The name Deval Patrick is brought up, a classic leftist political hack, comparable to Obama. Yawn.
But the name Danielle Allen is also brought up, and she may be a credible possibility -- a look at a Harvard Magazine profile of her shows she's classically educated in Greek and Latin, not wokester studies, which is major cred right there. Her Wikipedia bio indicates she went to the University of Chicago, which until recently, was pretty academically neutral and rigorous, it was when she was there. She also has won tons of big awards -- MacArthur Fellowships and Marshall Scholarships and the like -- and done significant papers as a researcher. Her father, a black political scientist, was actually known as a 'conservative' and served as chair of President Reagan's Civil Rights Commission, following the estimable Clarence Pendleton. She sounds pretty progressive in most of her statements but on substantial things, she does have academic and political chops as normal people would recognize them. For one thing, has spoken out against Harvard's version of DEI as failing to address political diversity, which kind of draws one's attention. She's also condemned campus antisemitism back when plenty of the others were cheering it. She's probably a leftist like the rest of them but not be a cookie-cutter faculty-lounge leftist, getting along to go along. She could be a decent president of Harvard addressing the actual problems of censorship and merit that have made the university go downhill.
All of that may be good as we recognize good, but in light of the schools resistance to fixing its problems, they may be strikes against her.
She has downplayed the prospect, but not outright declared she doesn't want the job.
They'd all have to pass plagiarism tests, of course. Could Obama do that? Well, with no academic papers to speak of, he probably could, but then, he knows how to employ ghostwriters for all he needs to do.
Still, I'm skeptical generally, given Obama's general laziness. He may not even want the job which would distract from his political medding nationally, but the Harvard faculty, which fought so hard to keep Gay in place, is capable of anything. Plus, in Obama's world, being president of Harvard University is much more prestigious than being president of the United States, given all its deplorables. Would the board that chooses the president go for Obama? Maybe not so much.
Image: Logo/shields, Harvard University // fair use
As Harvard Dean, Claudine Gay Weakened Faculty Plagiarism Policy. The Corporation Leaned on That Policy To Try To Save Her Job.
Gay approved new rules in 2019 raising the bar for academic misconduct
Before she became the shortest-serving president in Harvard’s history, Claudine Gay watered down the school’s policy on research misconduct, making it more difficult to sanction faculty members for plagiarism—and greenlighting the very rules the school invoked in a last-ditch effort to save her job.
The new policy, which Gay approved in 2019 as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, redefined research misconduct to exclude accidental infractions. Professors, it said, could be sanctioned only if they plagiarized "knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly." It is precisely that clause that the Harvard Corporation leaned on as it sought to exonerate Gay from mounting allegations of plagiarism, which ultimately claimed her job.
In mid-December, after the board issued a statement indicating its unanimous support for Gay, the members said that an "independent review" of her work found several cases of "inadequate citation" but no research misconduct, since her transgressions were not "intentional or reckless." She has nonetheless requested corrections to three articles, including her dissertation.
Gay, who remains a tenured faculty member making $900,000 a year, resigned as president last week after she was hit with nearly 50 allegations of plagiarism spanning half of her published work. Neither Gay nor Harvard have conceded that she plagiarized or responded to requests for comment.
The Washington Free Beacon contacted Harvard about the 2019 policy change on December 27, the same day Gay privately agreed to resign, according to the New York Times.
The policy change, which has not been previously reported, adds a new twist to the scandal that ended Gay’s presidency and has amplified calls for the resignation of Penny Pritzker—the head of the Harvard Corporation who led the search for Gay—as the school continues to face blowback for its handling of the plagiarism charges.
The old policy for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Gay’s division of the university, did not include a carve-out for unintentional infractions, according to an archived webpage reviewed by the Free Beacon. But in 2019, one year into Gay’s deanship, she signed off on the more forgiving rules.
The 2019 policy applies only to faculty. Harvard’s guide to using sources, which is written for incoming students, defines plagiarism as "the act of either intentionally OR unintentionally submitting work that was written by someone else," and says that even accidental plagiarism can have "daunting" consequences.
Rumors of Gay’s plagiarism did not begin percolating until January 2023, and there is no evidence that she approved the 2019 policy, which tracks federal research guidelines, to preempt a probe and shield herself from consequences.
But the new rule underscores how Harvard’s top brass have exempted themselves from standards they apply to their own students, who routinely receive stiff penalties for sorts of errors Gay made.
"[W]hen students omit quotation marks and citations, as President Gay did, the sanction is usually one term of probation—a permanent mark on a student’s record," a member of the university’s honor council wrote in an op-ed for the Harvard Crimson. Students who commit multiple infractions "are generally required to withdraw—i.e., suspended—from the College for two semesters."
Since 2019, when the laxer policy for faculty was put in place, Harvard has sanctioned hundreds of students for academic dishonesty, according to data from the honor council. But it has been comparatively soft on professors, from former New York Times editor Jill Abramson to legal scholar Larry Tribe, who admitted to plagiarism, a double standard that has rankled students.
"It’s hypocritical for the university to apply one standard to students and another standard to faculty—and perhaps even a third standard to Claudine Gay," Ian Moore, a member of the Harvard Crimson editorial board, told the paper before Gay resigned.
It is not clear whether Gay was personally involved in drafting the new policy or what motivated the change. But as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, she would have signed off on any revisions recommended by the Committee to Review Conduct Policies and Procedures, a body that advises the dean on policy updates, and by the Committee on Professional Conduct, which deals with research integrity matters and also reports to the dean.
Asked to confirm that Gay approved the new plagiarism rules, a member of Harvard’s professional conduct committee, history professor Janet Browne, wrote in an email: "sorry, can’t help you." Other members of the committee did not respond to requests for comment.
The Harvard Corporation has never disclosed the names of the people who conducted the review of Gay’s work, referring to them only as "distinguished political scientists." Nor has it addressed its widely panned legal threat to the New York Post, which first brought the allegations to the school’s attention, through high-powered defamation attorney Tom Clare.
That threat itself relied on the policy Gay approved. In a 15-page letter to the Post, which the paper published in full on Tuesday, Clare and his co-counsel, David Sillers, cited Harvard’s research misconduct policy to argue that plagiarism "requires more than the mere use of similar phrases or descriptors"—and that publishing the allegations would make the paper liable for "immense" damages.
Harvard faculty have criticized the corporation’s cloak-and-dagger tactics. Richard Parker, a law professor, slammed the review of Gay’s work as "irregular" and "opaque." Kit Parker, a professor of bioengineering, told the Wall Street Journal that some board members should resign.
The scandal snowballed in late December as new questions emerged about Gay’s use of data and her refusal to let other researchers scrutinize it. That revelation, along with a growing list of plagiarism allegations, made her presidency even more tenuous than it was the day of her disastrous congressional testimony, when Gay hemmed and hawed about whether calls for killing Jews violate Harvard’s code of conduct.
Her support among students and faculty withered, and columnists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic all said that she should go. Gay announced her resignation on January 2, one day after the Free Beacon published a new batch of plagiarism allegations.
Her downfall came as Harvard was hemorrhaging donors over its handling of anti-Semitism. By some estimates, Gay cost the school $1 billion over the course of her tumultuous tenure, with businessman Len Blavatnik, whose foundation has given $270 million to Harvard, the latest scion to stop giving. The Wexner Foundation also cut ties with the university.
The plagiarism charges compounded the donor revolt and fueled a sense that Harvard, which was founded in 1636, was shredding its centuries-old brand. Former Facebook executive Sam Lessin told CNN in December that the allegations were "very embarrassing" for the university, adding that Harvard’s trustees "didn’t do their homework" when they tapped Gay, who has only published 11 academic articles, to lead the school.
"It’s pretty clear the [Harvard] Corporation … skipped a step," said Lessin, now a venture capitalist.
The scandal has also raised larger questions about the prevalence of plagiarism in academia and how it should be policed. Mark Ramseyer, a Harvard law professor who has been critical of the university’s trajectory under Gay, said the new rule she adopted made sense on the merits, in part because a less permissive policy would be subject to abuse.
"Everyone makes mistakes," he told the Free Beacon. "If colleagues could take any unintentional mistake as grounds to throw a politically incorrect professor into the research misconduct meat grinder, we’d be in deep trouble."
Ramseyer added that students, unlike professors, are unlikely to be accused of plagiarism for political reasons. "I think the different standards for faculty and students—in this context—make sense," he said.
But others argued that the bar should be higher for Gay, who was not just a professor but a university president.
"Harvard certainly should not hold its president to lower academic and moral standards than it holds its students," Omar Haque, a Harvard Medical School professor, told the Free Beacon. "If anything, the president should be held to higher standards than it holds its entire faculty."
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