President Plagiarist

Harvard’s, not the one currently sitting, on occasion, in the White House. Claudine Gay has been caught out again.

Seven of Gay’s 17 published works have already been impacted by the scandal, but the new charges, which have not been previously reported, extend into an eighth: In a 2001 article, Gay lifts nearly half a page of material verbatim from another scholar, David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin.
That article, The Effect of Minority Districts and Minority Representation on Political Participation in California, includes some of the most extreme and clear-cut cases of plagiarism yet. At one point, Gay borrows four sentences from Canon’s 1999 book, Race, Redistricting, and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts, without quotation marks and with only minor semantic tweaks. She does not cite Canon anywhere in or near the passage, though he does appear in the bibliography.

Gay’s…performance…goes downhill from there.

Is it the case that here, too, every word she writes is a lie, including “and” and “the”?

In the end, on Tuesday she resigned as Harvard President. The Harvard management team cravenly allowed her to resign, rather than firing her for cause—of which there were two: her dishonesty and her bigotry. Harvard management, even more cravenly, are keeping her on the professorial payroll. Never mind that she should be fired altogether for cause—of which there are two: her dishonesty and her bigotry.

It’s unfortunate that Harvard continues to employ this person, and her continued employment demonstrates that the school doesn’t care about her dishonesty or her bigotry. From that, Harvard should be disqualified from any further government funding, from any level of government.

A Karen Sues a Company

So, what else is new? Not this one; it just happened to catch my eye. A Florida Karen, Cynthia Kelly, is suing Hershey’s over its Reese’s labeling, which Kelly claims is misleading advertising. The image below is the cause of her ire and the center of her (proposed class-action) suit:

She would not have purchased the candy had she known there was not actually ap face carved into the item. Given the image, she plainly expected, also, that there would already be a bite taken out of the item. Why would she buy a candy that had already been partly eaten?

This is the depth of the…foolishness…to which so many Precious Ones and outright lawfare gold diggers have stooped.

“Very Contentious Issue”

Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has vetoed the SAFE Act, which would have barred biological males from women’s sports and protected Ohio’s children from mutilation in the form of sex hormone…treatments…and related sex change surgeries until those children reached 18 years old. DeWine had had this bill on his desk since 15 December, yet he waited until the last moment to veto it.

DeWine called the debate over transgender youth a “very contentious issue….”

Riley Gaines was direct on the matter during those two weeks:

He hasn’t signed it yet. He has 2 more days to sign before it becomes law without his signature. Why the hesitation, [Governor DeWine]?

No—there was, and is, nothing contentious at all in moving to protect children. There’s nothing contentious at all in moving to protect women’s sports and the women who compete in them. Contention exists only in the minds of extremists on the Left and of cowards in public office.

Riley Gaines is right: of what was Mike DeWine so terrified?

Or was he just putting his political position at the top of the Ohio heap ahead of the safety and welfare of Ohio’s children and women athletes?

It’s embarrassing that DeWine is a member of the Republican Party.

A UN Official…

…gets one right.

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden, through organs of his administration, is moving to expand Title IX’s definition of sex and sexual discrimination to include “gender identity” and to bar schools, colleges, and universities from banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.

Even an agency of the UN sees this as…foolish.

Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls:

I share the concern expressed by women and girl athletes and women sports associations, as well as women and girls on sports scholarships, that the proposed Title IX rule changes would have detrimental effects on the participation of biological women and girls in sports, including by denying them the opportunity to compete fairly, resulting in the loss of athletic and scholarship opportunities[.]
More importantly, it would lead to the loss of privacy, an increased risk of physical injury, heightened exposure to sexual harassment and voyeurism, as well as a more frequent and accumulated psychological distress due to the loss of privacy and fair and equal sporting and academic opportunities[.]

Right on all counts. A better solution, and it is a problem that wants a solution, even as the Biden administration refuses even to consider the alternative, would be to modify Title IX to create a transgender section and separate transgender athletic programs.

A Proposal for Harvard University

Given the blatant antisemitic bigotry of Harvard’s President Claudine Gay, as well as her dishonesty, demonstrated by her plagiarism—She plagiarized her acknowledgments—and the antisemitism demonstrated by the Harvard Corporation, the school’s governing body, and its open condonement of Gay’s bigotry and dishonesty, when that body unanimously supported retaining her as President, it’s clear that drastic changes to Harvard University’s governance is badly needed.

A Harvard professor has suggested a pathway to that.

One faculty member, citing a carve-out in the Massachusetts Constitution that reserves authority over Harvard to the state legislature, has urged Massachusetts lawmakers to install a government official on the board to provide more transparency and public accountability.

Here is the relevant section of that constitution, from Chapter V, Section I, Article III:

…it is declared, that the governor, lieutenant governor, council and senate of this commonwealth, are and shall be deemed, their successors, who with the president of Harvard College, for the time being, together with the ministers of the congregational churches in the towns of Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown, Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester, mentioned in the said act, shall be, and hereby are, vested with all the powers and authority belonging, or in any way appertaining to the overseers of Harvard College; provided, that] nothing herein shall be construed to prevent the legislature of this commonwealth from making such alterations in the government of the said university, as shall be conducive to its advantage and the interest of the republic of letters….

The professor is on the right track, but one government rep on a board of 13 or 14 won’t accomplish anything. The State needs to revamp the Corporation board altogether—maybe put on the board reps from the ministers of the congregational churches in the towns of Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown, Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester in sufficient number that their aggregation outnumbers the remaining members, if they’re not, instead, to replace the incumbents. Additionally—these are Critical Items—the State needs to remove the President’s sole authority over the board’s agenda and to eliminate the board’s authority to select their own replacements.

 

Massachusetts’ constitution can be read in its entirety here.