By defending the indefensible Gay, American elites have forfeited the high ground
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The (now-deleted) headline of an Associated Press analysis of the Claudine Gay plagiarism scandal says it all: “Harvard president’s resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism.” The rest of the story develops this theme by implying that the charges of plagiarism against the former Harvard president are somehow suspect because they come from the right. Many “academics were troubled with how the plagiarism came to light” and that “the plagiarism allegations came not from her academic peers but her political foes.”
At the moment, it’s actually unclear whence these allegations originated. We don’t know who provided the initial evidence for plagiarism charges to Christopher Rufo, Christopher Brunet, Aaron Sibarium, the New York Post, and others who reported on this situation. But the bigger issue is the assumption that charges of plagiarism should matter only if they are brought by the right (i.e., left-leaning) people.
The idea that plagiarism is a “new conservative weapon against colleges” precisely misunderstands the crisis of credibility facing many elite institutions, including top-tier universities. Two forces work in tandem to threaten the standing of these institutions: Americans have grown increasingly anxious that they have been captured by an ideological fringe, and the pressures of ideological churn have made these institutions less able to police themselves. This was crystalised during the coronavirus pandemic, when many educational organisations embraced a radical vision of identity politics while also fighting to keep schools closed. The activism of Rufo and others does not create those conditions. Instead, it leverages them.
Disqualifying a charge of plagiarism because it comes from some “deplorable” quarter only adds to the spiral of institutional discrediting. It also imperils the ability to uphold basic standards of academic integrity. If progressive elites should not be held accountable for plagiarism, it becomes far less tenable to discipline students for such infractions. “For my friends, everything – for my enemies, the law” is not the foundation for institutional renewal.
Nor is that psychology a basis for a robust democratic politics. Led by members of the institutional elite, the post-2016 “resistance” championed the overturning of every norm in order to oppose Donald Trump. American newspapers became cyclones of anonymously sourced innuendo, the federal bureaucracy set about undermining the elected part of government, and the breakdown of public order was excused and even applauded (especially during the summer of 2020). The game of anti-Trump constitutional hardball has continued after he left office, as seen in the unprecedented wave of indictments against him and the effort to use the 14th Amendment to throw him off the ballot.
Yet one of the major legacies of the “resistance” may be the way that has strengthened Trump. It provided a ready foil for him as president. The politically-charged indictments have prompted Republican voters to rally to him in the 2024 primary. The torching of institutional credibility and norms in order to “resist” Trump has often helped normalise his vision of “American carnage.”
On both sides of the Atlantic, the loss of trust in major institutions has provided an opening to political outsiders. In order to restore their credibility, leading institutions will need to embrace the conditions of responsibility. They will need to show that they can deliver for the common good – and not merely be engines of self-gratification. They will also need to be more sensitive to the conditions of pluralism. If elite institutions reflect a narrow ideological monoculture, they will be less able to understand and meet the demands of the public at large. In facing political disruption, the political establishment would be wise to avoid the vices that have made it so vulnerable in the first place.
