Dr. Carol Swain
Appearances
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
Well, Claudine Gay was Harvard University's first black president and second woman president, and she served a tenure of six months. And the plagiarism issue, it's my understanding from the reporters who had investigated it, that rumors had been swirling around, you know, for years.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
And before she gave disastrous testimony in the House about anti-Semitism, there were already people hot on the trail. But the story broke December 10th, 2023. This was after her testimony before Congress, along with two other presidents of Ivy League colleges. Well, when the story broke, Initially, when I found out about it, first, I was not quick to rush to judgment.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
I thought it could have been an accident that when you're doing a lot of research, maybe you forget to put the quotation. People can make innocent mistakes that were not meant to be plagiarism. And so I read her work and I became deeply troubled. That was my first reaction, deeply troubled.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
But when Harvard came out standing behind her, then it began to turn to anger, especially when they tried to redefine Pleasureism, because I knew that with Harvard being a world-class university. They would call themselves the world-class university. If Harvard redefines plagiarism, it has a downstream effect on every other institution, including K through 12 education.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
And so I started giving interviews. I believe I gave 83 interviews between December 10th and the end of January, all sorts of media. And then when she resigned on January 2nd and this book, The Gay Affair, Harvard Pleasureism, and the Death of Academic Integrity was timed to be released January 2nd, which is the anniversary of when she resigned.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
She resigned and she blamed racism, and that was a bridge too far for me.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
Well, I mean, that's a serious problem because we know at Harvard and most institutions, students have been suspended and they have been failed for courses and they have paid a price. The faculty have tenure and I think institutions decide that they don't want to deal with tenured faculty. But in the case of Claudine Gay, her dissertation is where I found plagiarism of my first book.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
Black Faces, Black Interests, the Representation of African Americans in Congress. And, you know, when I got my Ph.D., you had to have original research that had to be defended before a committee. It had to be pathbreaking. And for her to be able to get a Ph.D. from Harvard, win a prize for that Ph.D., and have a rapid rise in academia...
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
to become the president of Harvard University, it just speaks volumes about diversity, equity and inclusion. I believe the fact that her committee did not hold her to high standards. And in the book, I talk about first hearing of Claudine Gay and the word brilliant. usually preceded discussions of her, this brilliant black student at Harvard University.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
I was on the faculty of Princeton at the time, and I was tenured, but all I could hear about was this brilliant black student at Harvard. I did not know Claudine Gay personally, but I believe the fact that she was labeled as brilliant caused those progressive, and I'm going to say white, progressive white professors not to look very closely at her work. Mm-hmm.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
From day one, some people would say, well, you know, it sounds like you're jealous. Well, I observed this thing. I know how hard I had to work to get my degree and to get my promotions. And this thing with Claudine Gay, she went to Phillips Exeter for her high school, and her undergraduate education includes Princeton and Stanford. Her bachelor's degree is from Stanford.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
And then she went to get her Ph.D. from Harvard. She has 11 articles, I believe, and that was the basis of her being given tenure at Stanford and then also Harvard, becoming a full professor at Harvard, a named, chaired full professor. That would not have gotten her tenure at a Tier 1 school when I earned my tenure at Princeton. You had to have path-breaking work.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
It was not the quantity as much as the quality. And you had to have path-breaking, pioneering work to earn tenure. And they expected a book. Black Faces, Black Interests was my tenure book. And so normally, that was the standard at Harvard, at Princeton, at Columbia, all of these places. For the social sciences, you had to have a path-breaking book. Claudine Gay never had a path-breaking book.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
And according to some of the researchers, There have been allegations that three quarters of her work was plagiarized. And in the case of my work, and I talk about it in the book, the book is not just about Claudine and Harvard. It's also about plagiarism more broadly in journalism and academia.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
and the fact that copyright law doesn't really protect intellectual property for situations like what I encountered, because I tried to pursue the legal route, and it became very clear that copyright law was not going to work for me, and it could work against me, because under copyright law, it's lose or pays. And for someone without deep pockets, you go up against Harvard University,
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
university they have a 50 billion dollar endowment 50 plus billion dollar endowment it's an uneven impossible battle even to have a court case against them would cost an individual between a hundred thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand and i was not deterred by that initially but in the book i talk about a discussion i had with a law professor at vanderbilt the former colleague
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
And he pointed out to me the risk in a way that I could really grasp what I was about to walk into. And then I realized that I could lose because I couldn't control which judge would actually get my case. I've seen enough lawfare against conservatives to know that even with the judge, there was a risk.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
Lose a pace, and I was not about to use my retirement money and my Social Security to pay Harvard's lawyers.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
We see that universities are no longer respected institutions. In fact, I've seen some surveys where a majority of parents and students say that a college education is not a good investment. And I think it has to do with the fact that we see just so much chaos and dysfunction coming from academia. I would say some of the worst ideas that have impacted our society came out of academia.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
We occasionally get lists of National Science Foundation or National Endowment of the Humanities studies that were funded of ludicrous ideas that were funded using taxpayer dollars. And in the case of plagiarism, you know, most people who are educated and you don't have to have a college degree. I believe they start teaching about plagiarism in middle school.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
And certainly by the time you're in high school, you know about citing sources and what's permissible and what isn't. And so that's always been the standard. You don't steal other people's intellectual property. But when it started disadvantaging elite institutions, they have started redefining the rules. And there have been plenty of white plagiarists.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
You know, we can name Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, Kevin Cruz. And these are some people that were caught. In fact, I dedicate my book to these people for drawing attention to the problem of plagiarism.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
But DEI seems to have worsened it in the sense that many of the people that Christopher Ruffo and Aaron Burnett identified happened to be racial and ethnic minorities and universities just turned a blind eye to it.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
I think with AI that it writes in a particular kind of style and it may take more work on the part of the professor, but I believe that you can craft assignments or identify which papers are written by AI. And it's going to be more difficult.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
I think what we need to do is somehow bring back a sense of integrity, moral ethics to the whole enterprise of academia, because right now it's in a sad state. And for people whose kids, you know, get into the Ivy League, they want to brag about it. Those are not bragging points anymore.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
I can tell you that discovering that I had been victimized 26 years ago was a shocker. And then the process, what I watched unfold over the next few months was very eye-opening. Because in the past, when people were caught plagiarizing, If they were journalists, they paid a price. And institutions used to monitor that.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
Your child is better off probably going to a state university where they adhere to traditional approaches to education than they are at an Ivy League school where they think they are morally superior to everyone else and they turn a blind eye to violations of traditional norms.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
Well, I'd like to speak to Harvard alumni and people who care about the Ivy League, because whether we like it or not, and I hope this changes, most of our Supreme Court justices and newspaper editors, people in powerful positions are educated at Ivy League institutions. I would like to see Ivy League institutions make a commitment to high standards.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
And one of the things that they all need to do, and not just the Ivy League, I would recommend every college or university that's been in existence for more than 100 years read the founding documents, the mission statements, the visions of the people who decided that they wanted to create that particular institution, because they have lost all sense of where they came from, any sense of purpose.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
They are adrift, and they're part of the problem. Instead of lifting up nations, they're helping destroy nations. And I know what I'm saying is strong, but I do believe this. And I would like to see Harvard University make a commitment to high standards, Make a commitment to Veritas, its motto. Go back to seeking truth.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
No, and I can tell you that as far as I'm concerned with Harvard, they added insult to injury because they totally ignored me. And Claudia and Gay did go back and make some corrections of other people's work that was plagiarized. In the book, I mentioned that there were 47 instances of plagiarism that were identified by researchers. And she only corrected a handful of those.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
Nothing regarding my work was corrected, but I've said in the book that if she had picked up the phone and called me and apologized, that I would have accepted her apology. And I see Claudine Gay as a victim of a system that pushes racial and ethnic minorities really hard, far beyond where some of them should go. But the issue of plagiarism is not confined to racial and ethnic minorities.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
It's something that elites do. Joe Biden did it. Teddy Kennedy. I mean, we can go down the list of people that cheat. It's all about cheating. And we need to live in a society where that's frowned upon rather than excused away.
Morning Wire
The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25
But I learned that in the case of Claudine Gay and Harvard, what they did was stand behind her and even try to redefine plagiarism as duplicative language without attribution.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
Carol, welcome back to the show. Great to see you. It is great to see you, too. And I understand you were at the Super Bowl. Yes. I was rooting for your Eagles.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
Yes. And before I was at Vanderbilt, I was tenured at Princeton, early tenure. And my prize winning first book, Black Faces, Black Interests, the Representation of African-Americans in Congress, was the book that was plagiarized. And I found out, along with the rest of the world, on December 10th,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
2023, when Dr. Art Laffer gave me a phone call and asked if I had heard that the president of Harvard University had been accused of plagiarizing her dissertation. And then he said, guess who she plagiarized? You. And so he referred me to Christopher Ruffo's a X page Twitter. And I went there, I saw the article and then I started getting phone calls and I read the work. First, I was shocked.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
It happened 26 years earlier. Then I was deeply sad because she's a Black woman, I'm a Black woman, and I didn't think it was a good look for Black women. And then that sort of morphed into anger, which is not something that I usually engage in. When Harvard came out and said that it wasn't plagiarism, it was duplicative language without attribution. Right. And how did you feel about that?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
I was angry. And that anger, again, it's not good to be angry. And I gave, I believe, 80 some interviews between December 10th and the middle of January. But I calmed myself down for Christmas. This happened December 10th. I'm angry, angry, angry, but I want to have a good Christmas.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
I'm a Christian, calmed myself down, started posting scriptures on X, which I still do, because it was consuming me in a way that was not healthy. But January 2nd, Claudine Gay resigned. She has a letter, I believe, in the New York Times, and she blames racism. And when she blamed racism, then I'm angry all over again. And I called an attorney who had offered to take the case pro bono.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
And I told him to pursue it. And so it was an attorney from Austin. And then later I moved from him to a paid legal team. And doing all of this, Claudine Gay never reached out to me. I had heard of her while I was at Princeton. I was a hot shot when I was hired and I got early tenure, got it in three years. First book, three national prizes. It's been cited by the US Supreme Court. Thank you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
What an interesting thing about all these degrees that she has. We know that colleges and universities are not equal. We also know that they have lowered the standards so much, especially at even the Ivy League, that once you get your foot in the door, they pass you along. It's almost impossible to fail. And so a person having a lot of degrees, that tells me nothing about their knowledge base,
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
or their work ethic. And I think the work ethic is key. And just having a degree and showing up, that doesn't mean anything. Do you show up? How hard do you work? Those women that were featured, they seem to be doing pretty well.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Left Pushes "Constitutional Crisis" Narrative, and Trump Brings Back Plastic Straws, with Charles Cooke, Rich Lowry, and Carol Swain | Ep. 1005
Well, I can tell you, Megan, I identify more with you just because we are two women that had to reinvent ourselves because we ran up against the forces that be. And we did so successfully. Most of the liberals don't have to worry about that.