The Patriot Post® · In Brief: 'Claudine Gay and My Scholarship'

Harvard University circled the wagons around its president, Claudine Gay, after her disgraceful congressional testimony and allegations of plagiarism. The school’s board insisted she had committed “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.”

The Leftmedia is remarkably incurious about the whole thing, but Dr. Carol Swain, Senior Fellow for the Institute for Faith and Culture, was one of the subjects of Gay’s seeming plagiarism, and she has thoughts. In addition to an interview with The Daily Wire, she wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, which we excerpt below.

I write as one of the scholars whose work Ms. Gay plagiarized. She failed to credit me for sections from my 1993 book, “Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress” and an article I published in 1997, “Women and Blacks in Congress: 1870-1996.” The damage to me extends beyond the two instances of plagiarism identified by researchers Christopher Rufo and Christopher Brunet.

She notes that her work “received numerous accolades and recognitions” and “has been cited in court opinions.”

Ms. Gay’s damage to me is aggravated because her early work was in the area where my research is considered seminal. Her scholarship on black congressional representation, electoral districting and descriptive representation builds on terrain where I plowed the ground.

When one follows in the footsteps of a more senior scholar, one is expected to acknowledge the latter’s contribution to the field and how one’s own research and ideas refute, affirm or expand knowledge in the area. Ms. Gay ignored the substantive importance of my research, which she should have acknowledged and engaged. A single citation or two wouldn’t usually be considered intellectually honest.

When scholars aren’t cited adequately or their work is ignored, it harms them because academic stature is determined by how often other researchers cite your work. Ms. Gay had no problem riding on the coattails of people whose work she used without proper attribution. Many of those whose work she pilfered aren’t as incensed as I am. They are elites who have benefited from a system that protects its own.

Swain goes on to say that Gay’s “mediocre research” also doesn’t contain any “ground-breaking originality,” which should be prerequisite for obtaining her position. And she concludes with the most fundamental point:

Harvard can’t condemn Ms. Gay because she is the product of an elite system that holds minorities of high pedigree to a lower standard. This harms academia as a whole, and it demeans Americans, of all races, who had to work for everything they earned.

Wall Street Journal subscribers can read the whole thing here.