All-star panelist, renowned academic scholar, and author Carol Swain joined The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Tuesday as the dual scandals involving Harvard University’s President, Claudine Gay continue to unfold.
A fiery Swain expressed her anger over Harvard’s apparent attempt to redefine plagiarism to protect its DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) image, stating that despite their best efforts, the university doesn’t get to decide what constitutes plagiarism. She emphasized that Harvard’s reputation has suffered tremendously as a result. Swain detailed how her own acclaimed research was allegedly plagiarized by Gay, and pointed out that this lack of citation damages academia as a whole by undermining the work of students and researchers. Swain’s stance has resonated with many who believe that Harvard’s decision reflects a double standard.
TRANSCRIPT
Michael Patrick Leahy: We are delighted to have you here, Carol.
So big news over the weekend that the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, basically plagiarized your work. The Harvard Corporation the Board of Trustees met and this morning, they announced that they’re going to keep her on as president despite this plagiarism of your work.
Your thoughts, Carol Swain.
Carol Swain: Well, currently, Harvard University, your alma mater, has decided that it gets to redefine and reimagine what constitutes plagiarism. And I’m calling them out on that. Harvard University doesn’t get to redefine and reimagine plagiarism. We all know what plagiarism is, and they have decided that keeping a DEI president is more important than protecting their brand.
Michael Patrick Leahy: I agree. I think the brand, the Harvard brand – and I regret to say this as a graduate of Harvard – the Harvard brand now is more toxic than Bud Light was, frankly.
Carol Swain: I agree.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Yeah. So the other thing too, you know, the motto of Harvard. It used to be Veritas, for like 380 years, it was Veritas, that is truth.
There is a new motto, Plagiarius, right? You like that?
Carol Swain: Well, you know something, I’ve gone through the range of emotions, and as you know, Sunday evening I wanted more information. Monday I looked at some of her articles and I became upset and sad. Because independently of the passages that were lifted from my book, Black Faces, Black Interest, the Representation of African Americans in Congress, that prize winning book her work, it’s been in the same area where I, you know, produce my prize winning research, and if you go to her articles, She will have my book listed in her bibliography, but she doesn’t engage the work.
She doesn’t let people know that her research questions, everything she was dealing with, came pretty much from the ideas that were in Black Faces, Black Interests.
And so her whole research career with articles on minority representation, and on Congress on descriptive representation, all of that research – these are things that I talked about in Black Faces, Black Interests, and that’s harmful to me that she is not citing and did not engage my work because in academia your stature depends on how many citations you have, and she became a very prominent person within political science, so students would certainly go to her work, they would not necessarily know about my work that she was building on that was seminal, that was path-breaking because she did not engage the work, like normally, someone like her, a researcher, would be expected to review the literature, but if there was something that they disagreed with, they wanted to refute it, or they wanted to affirm it, you would acknowledge that work and engage it.
She didn’t do that, and I blame her committee, and I blame reviewers as much because they allowed her to get away with that.
Michael Patrick Leahy: It sounds to me like the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, is an academic fraud. Is that too harsh?
Carol Swain: No, I said that this morning, and it’s worse than I knew, Michael, and today I’m angry; and people who know me know that I rarely get angry.
I just don’t get angry, but today I am seething.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Do you have a next step that you have in mind, Carol?
Carol Swain: I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, doing interviews and calling her out because she harms everyone – not just racial and ethnic minorities by the Lord’s standard – but everyone who has worked hard in school and tried to follow the rules, and all of a sudden Harvard decides that plagiarism is okay if you’re a racial and ethnic minority, and I guess they decided that the optics of firing its first black president would be too bad. But the optics of leaving her on and not holding her accountable in my mind – and I believe the minds of many other people – it’s much worse.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Why would any high school senior apply to Harvard these days?
Carol Swain: Well, I mean the brand they’re living on past glory. We need to ask, why would any parent that’s following the news with common sense, why would they allow their child to go to Harvard and pay their portion of the tuition?
Michael Patrick Leahy: I think that’s a very good question.
You know, Harvard has been trending Left for decades and I don’t think either you nor I actually would even be allowed to speak on campus.
Carol Swain: I don’t know. I had a Harvard student approach me about a week ago before the scandal broke and asked would I participate in a debate on the Harvard campus, it’s a conservative student.
And so he’s in the process of arranging a debate. And I had suggested Claudine Gay as one of the possible persons to debate. I don’t know where that stands now, but we were supposed to debate on the Harvard campus on February 15th.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Well, keep us posted on that, but Carol, I think the powers that be, you know – the emperor has no clothes, right?
Carol Swain: The emperor has no clothes, but you know something? I think that my voice is important, and I’m one of the persons that has been injured, but I’m speaking for a lot of Americans who have been injured by these double standards, and I don’t think that the case that I’m making will go away.
I posted today that Claudine Gay should be the poster child for my new book, The Adversity of Diversity.
Michael Patrick Leahy: And on that note, Carol Swain, author of the book, The Adversity of Diversity, a great academic scholar, a good friend of the program. Carol, thank you so much. I know you’ve been very busy. Thank you for making the time to join us today.
Carol Swain: Thank you.
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Listen to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy weekdays from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm on WENO AM760 The Flame.
Photo “Carol Swain” by Carol Swain. Photo “Claudine Gay” by University of Harvard. Background Photo “University of Harvard Campus” by rp72. CC BY 2.0.
