Tipsheet

Black Scholar Whose Work Harvard President Allegedly Plagiarized Speaks Out

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  December 12, 2023 2:30 PM

Award-winning political scientist and former professor Carol Swain sounded off Tuesday morning shortly after Harvard released a full-throated defense of President Claudine Gay. The board’s expression of support came a week after Gay’s disastrous congressional testimony and amid allegations she plagiarized portions of her dissertation, including from Swain’s work.   

“I rarely get angry, but I am angry,” she wrote on X, with a red-faced emoji. “[R]ight now about the racial double standards that are TEMPORARILY giving #ClaudineGay 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. #Adversityofdiversity #DEI # affirmativeaction #HarvardisAntisemitic #PresidentGay”

In an interview with journalist Christopher Rufo, who broke the plagiarism story with Christopher Brunet, Swain explains it wasn’t just a matter of a few paragraphs of ripped-off work, but she believes that Gay’s “whole research agenda, her whole career, was based on my work.” 

While Swain rose to prominence in the early ‘90s, she described how academia began to turn on her when she started criticizing race-based affirmative action. 

Despite both being African-American, Swain detailed how differently the two were treated. 

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“She became president of Harvard and got recognition as being its first black president. I don’t believe her record warranted tenure, and I believe that I had to meet a much higher standard than she did,” Swain told Rufo. “Something changed in the mid-1990s, [when] we were having a big affirmative action debate.”

The academic noted how standards started getting watered down in the mid-‘90s when the elites decided to support affirmative action and "they needed someone like her."

Asked to clarify, Swain explained how "White progressives have always rewarded the blacks who supported their ideas. Someone more mainstream, like me, could never be rewarded in the same way."

Swain expressed her belief that Harvard's board ought to apply the same standards with regard to Gay and the plagiarism allegations as they would anyone else. 

"And under these circumstances, what do you think would happen to a white person?" Rufo wondered. 

To Swain, the answer was clear: "A white male would probably already be gone."

Stay tuned, however. The saga may not be over just yet.