Award-winning conservative political scientist and author Dr. Carol Swain, who was allegedly plagiarized by Harvard president Claudine Gay in her Ph.D. dissertation, blasted Harvard University for not forcing Gay to resign.
Swain authored the book “Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress,” which won the LBJ Foundation’s D.B. Hardeman Prize for congressional scholarship and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award from the American Political Science Association.
After Harvard indicated it would back Gay and not force her to resign in the wake of plagiarism accusations and Gay’s claim that calls for genocide of Jews required “context,” Swain blasted the university on X, “The Harvard Corporation did not have the cojones to own and remedy their mistakes regarding Dr. Gay. Despite the evidence of plagiarism throughout her career, she will remain at the helm of the University. There’s no accountability at Harvard.”
The Harvard Corporation did not have the cojones to own and remedy their mistakes regarding Dr. Gay. Despite the evidence of plagiarism throughout her career, she will remain at the helm of the University. There’s no accountability at Harvard. #poisonivy #Ivyleague https://t.co/m7MkGP0bjZ
— Dr. Carol M. Swain (@carolmswain) December 12, 2023
“I rarely get angry, but I am angry right now about the racial double standards that are TEMPORARILY giving #ClaudineGay an opportunity to resign,” she added. “White progressives created her and white progressives are protecting her. The rest of us have had to work our rear ends off to achieve success. Some get it handed to them.”
I rarely get angry, but I am angry 😡 right now about the racial double standards that are TEMPORARILY giving #ClaudineGay an opportunity to resign. White progressives created her and white progressives are protecting her. The rest of us have had to work our rear ends off to… pic.twitter.com/5ls2f4PUtB
— Dr. Carol M. Swain (@carolmswain) December 12, 2023
Swain also recommended a book she had written in order to understand the mindset at Harvard:
This book is ABSOLUTELY relevant for understanding the #Harvardu #ClaudineGay scandal. Order a copy for anyone who is confused about how and why we are losing our nation. https://t.co/nNTpHLYxVu
— Dr. Carol M. Swain (@carolmswain) December 12, 2023
Swain had told RedState that she hadn’t examined whether Gay had plagiarized her work, stating, “If she was doing work on minority representation and publishing articles, if she didn’t cite my work at all, but she was clearly using my work, that’s more serious. … Did she cite my work at all? Because my work won the highest prize political scientists can win, and my work was the one cited in the voting rights cases about majority-minority districts.”
“If she didn’t cite my work, then that would be more concerning to me, that she was able to advance through academia doing work very similar to mine without citing me,” she said. “I mean, her ideas came from me because she came after me, right? … If people like her who are supposed to be hotshot are not citing my work — they’re using it and they’re not citing it, it hurt my reputation. It diminished me; it helped marginalize me because we get our promotions and recognition based on how much our work is cited.”
“Over the years, I have always felt that given the seminal nature of my work, there should have been more citations,” Swain recalled. “But, I’ve also noticed that there’ve been people doing work on white nationalism and various topics where I was out there first that did not cite me at all.”
“She was in graduate school when I was tenured at Princeton,” Swain recalled. “I was a professor, and she was supposed to be the new hotshot. I was a hotshot, and then I was being displaced by her. I heard about how brilliant she was, but I never met her. I never knew her, and she’s never contacted me. We never had conversations.”
“I haven’t read the articles that she published,” she said. “I can tell you this: when I got my tenure at Princeton, the standard at the Ivy League was you had to have one major book, and you had to have a path-breaking book. As far as I can tell, she has no path-breaking books. I only see one, and it’s not really a book. It’s listed as a book, but it doesn’t seem to be a book.”