The College President Discourse Has Taken an Even Dumber Turn

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“This is unacceptable. Antisemitism has been allowed to fester on campus for years.” —Reps. Elise Stefanik and Kathy Manning (or: Elise Stefanik plagiarizing Kathy Manning?)

Elise Stefanik wasn’t too terribly concerned about antisemitism in 2021, when she sponsored the “End Zuckerbucks” bill, a law with a name the Anti-Defamation League condemned for conjuring “an antisemitic trope.” Nor was she too worried about antisemitism last year, when she endorsed Carl Paladino, a New York politician who praised Hitler, for Congress. But after Stefanik, a Harvard alumna, saw an opportunity to go after Harvard University President Claudine Gay, Stefanik was extremely troubled by antisemitism—and subjected Gay and other Ivy League presidents to a line of hypothetical-rich yes-or-no questioning designed to gin up maximal outrage, and succeeded. “One down. Two to go,” she tweeted, after the University of Pennsylvania’s Elizabeth Magill resigned.

Stefanik’s campaign against Ivy League presidents didn’t just rely on antisemitism charges; it also featured a rearguard effort led by Harvard-minted billionaire financier Bill Ackman (whose name you may recognize from the Jeffrey Epstein extended universe). Ackman brought forward (ultimately thin) charges alleging plagiarism by Gay in her 1997 dissertation.

The introduction of plagiarism charges—meant to add fuel to the fire, and make people even more mad at elite Ivy League administrators and their liberal students, I guess—hasn’t gone as expected. Gay has maintained her post, but now Stefanik herself is being accused of plagiarism. Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning is claiming publicly that Stefanik plagiarized at least three paragraphs of a letter Stefanik sent to the members of the governing boards of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn on Friday. Three paragraphs make up a pretty sizable percentage of the two-page letter.

Manning posted the two drafts side by side on X, and one doesn’t need to squint to see the commonalities. Stefanik, for her efforts, managed to change one clause at the end of the missive’s third paragraph ever so slightly: “threats of violence” became “acts of violence,” a writerly intervention that does succeed in making the claim even more factually dubious, but wouldn’t get a middle school history student out of hot water. Other paragraphs feature similar … coincidences.

According to Politico, Stefanik and Manning were working together on a letter, but the partnership fell apart after Stefanik “insisted on using the message to demand that the university presidents quit their posts—a step too far for Manning.”

No matter. Stefanik “went ahead and used language drafted by Manning’s staff anyway,” according to Manning spokesperson Gia Scirrotto, and published the letter Friday without Manning’s name on it. To defend herself, Stefanik then tweeted, “This is something that happens everyday on Capitol Hill.” Plagiarism, evidently, is a site-specific infraction. Somebody alert Bill Ackman!

In truth, both representatives were likely plagiarizing—or borrowing, abundantly—from an American Israel Public Affairs Committee directive. Both members count AIPAC as their top individual campaign donor, and both were indeed looking to score points after the infamous hearing Stefanik played a major role in orchestrating. (AIPAC, like many big-time lobbying outfits in Washington, is known for peppering its favored members with messaging guidance, talking points, and more, especially on pet issues.)

But the plagiarism ouroboros has slowed the Ivy League administrator revenge campaign at least for now, as Stefanik is fighting off the very same allegations that were supposed to push Gay over the brink. And Gay is decidedly staying in place. That won’t be the end of this, though. Republicans have found an opening into railing on the Ivies, and they’d rather focus on the culture war on campus than the ever-climbing civilian death toll in Gaza.