The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Pouncing? Yes, But Also Seizing: GOP Gets Credit for Resignation of Harvard University’s Plagiarist President

Posted on | January 3, 2024 | Comments Off on Pouncing? Yes, But Also Seizing: GOP Gets Credit for Resignation of Harvard University’s Plagiarist President

Speaking on behalf of the “far right,” I must express our collective gratitude to the media for recognizing our work. Strange as it might seem, some journalists apparently believe it’s a bad thing to force the president of Harvard University to resign amid a plagiarism scandal, which followed close on the heels of Claudine Gay’s failure to condemn anti-Semitism. It was not anything that Gay did wrong, they tell us, but rather “a conservative-stoked firestorm” that brought her down:

Gay served a total of just six months as university president, the shortest tenure in the school’s nearly four-century-long history. She was the first Black person and just the second woman to lead Harvard. . . .
Gay received national scrutiny in December when she, MIT president Sally Kornbluth, and University of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill testified before the House Education and Workforce Committee about their responses to incidents of antisemitism on their campuses.
Committee Chair Elise Stefanik asked the university presidents whether students chanting “intifada” violated the schools’ codes of conduct. Each president said it would depend on the context, with Gay pointing out that chants she finds “personally abhorrent” could still be protected under freedom of speech.
But the video clip that went viral — thanks to the right — showed the university presidents stumbling after Stefanik asked whether calls for genocide against the Jewish people should be forbidden, leaving out the longer disingenuous line of questioning.

See? It was a “disingenuous line of questioning” that provoked the Harvard president to defend the right of students to call for the genocide of Jews, and “thanks to the right,” the video went viral.

You’re welcome, America. To quote Treacher’s Law: “When a Republican screws up, that’s the story. When a Democrat screws up, the Republicans’ reaction is the story.” When the media tries to make the story about Republicans “seizing” and “pouncing” on a controversy, you know it’s about maintaining a narrative in which the GOP is always the villain, no matter how egregious the Democrat behavior in question may be. Hunter Biden makes millions of dollars peddling his father’s influence to shady foreigners, but if you watch CNN, the story is about how those mean Republicans are taking advantage of Hunter’s “struggles” with addiction.

“Republicans claim victory for Harvard president’s resignation” is the Politico headline, which is their way of telling their readership that this is a very bad thing those mean Republicans have done. Ed Driscoll at Instapundit has compiled a stack of reactions to the Harvard scandal.

Ace of Spades also has a round-up, emphasizing that Gay’s plagiarism was not minor or trivial. In fact, it was so clumsy and widespread in her work that it’s hard to believe she didn’t get caught at the time she published the articles but . . . Uh, “the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb,” you might say. And I really don’t need to say much more, because I’m sure our “far right” commenters will have plenty to say on how it was that this academic fraud made it all the way to the presidency of Harvard.



 

Category: Scandal, The Ivy League Is Depraved and Decadent

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