In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “some animals are more equal than others.” Orwell’s dystopian novel about the dangers and hypocrisy of Marxism was meant to serve as a warning. But Harvard University seems to be using it as a guide. As higher education has come under pressure from the Trump administration and increased skepticism from Americans over its value, universities are not only due for a much-needed purge, but are increasingly revealing themselves to centers of nothing more than Marxist indoctrination dressed up as racial justice.
Last January, Harvard’s former president, Claudine Gay, resigned from her leadership position after it was discovered that she had plagiarized her work; however, she was accepted back into her teaching role, where she is reported to earn $900,000 per year. Harvard’s Francesca Gino, a professor known for her research on honesty and ethics, was recently fired from her $1 million position after it was discovered that she falsified data in at least four of her projects. Gay and Gino are both Ivy League liars. Gay is black. Gino is white. Orwell and racism are alive and well at Harvard.
The Claudine Gay scandal erupted first after her response to Congress when she testified about Harvard’s anti-Semitism problem. Last year, when asked by New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik if calls for “intifada” or for the genocide of Jews amounted to bullying, Gay gave an administrative party line reply that such speech depended on context. One does not need to be a genius to determine that a 20-day encampment, the takeover of a university building, and light reprimands of anti-Semitic protestors are evidence that anti-Semitism at Harvard not only exists, but is openly tolerated. Whether or not a breach of conduct occurs, Harvard students should exhibit mature behavior. They did not. As for the outrage over Gay’s testimony, who arguably symbolizes the worst of what higher education has become, it began swiftly after her testimonial disaster.
Pressure for Gay’s resignation amped up after the resignation of the University of Pennsylvania president, Liz Magill, in late 2023. Harvard Corporation rallied to Gay’s defense, declaring that “extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious social issues we are facing.” Within a week of its staunch defense of Gay, over 40 cases of plagiarism were levied against her work and were reported to Harvard’s Research Integrity Office. A side-by-side comparison of Gay’s work with that of those from whom she stole is pretty damning. After her resignation, Gay quietly returned to teaching as the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and teaching in African-American Studies.
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Harvard’s claim to exceptionalism is clearest in its selective approach to truth and race. And this brings up the case of Francesca Gino. Gino was summarily fired for apparently lying about data while serving as a scientist at Harvard Business School and working as the university’s fifth-highest-paid employee. Rather than being accused of plagiarism, Gino was fired after she was investigated for altering her data to support her theories. When I completed my doctorate at the University of California, I witnessed researchers doing things like this firsthand. Once, while in the graduate student lounge, a student who now teaches race and “decolonial politics” as a professor asked those of us in the room how to define “Latino” in order to obtain the desired outcome to support her hypothesis. Harvard, like higher education as a profession, is truly not that unique.
What is unique is the odd connection between Gay and Gino. Gino, who ironically researched “workplace behavior, ethical decision-making, and moral psychology,” began a downward spiral in the execution of her academic career while Claudine Gay was still president at Harvard. In 2023, Gino was accused of “data manipulation” by Data Colada, a blog devoted to research integrity. In a nutshell, Data Colada discovered “inconsistencies” in patterns of Gino’s work that undermined the consistency of her findings. For her part, Gino asserted her innocence and blasted Harvard for not allowing her to defend herself publicly. Harvard did something it had not done since the 1940s when it stripped Gino of tenure, and it did so amid a $25 million lawsuit Gino is levying against the university for gender discrimination.
The beginning of the end for Gino’s career coincided with the ending and resurrection of Gay’s. It was Gay who “personally signed off” on the process to revoke Gino’s tenure. Gay ironically initiated the process to officially destroy Gino’s career over academic misconduct, just as she was in the middle of her own publicity crisis. In a January 2024 story, the outlet Poets and Quants, which reports on the world of business schools, highlighted the double standards between Gay and Gino in glaring detail. Despite roughly 50 allegations of plagiarism across 11 publications for Gay, compared to 4 allegations of data manipulation across 150 publications for Gino, Gay was retained while Gino was fired. Gay was defended due to identity politics, while Gino was not.
At best, Gay and Gino are examples of sloppy researchers and scholars working at America’s top university. At worst, they are both liars. The difference in outcomes and treatment at Harvard comes down to race, virtue signaling, and Harvard’s moral compass, guided by identity politics rather than honest excellence.
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There is a huge difference between fabricating data and copying and pasting words used by others to describe a statistical procedure. If I have to spell it out, the first leads to erroneous results which may have a deleterious effect when applied to real problems whereas the second simply regurgitates what others have written and adds nothing to our understanding of reality. If Gay had faked her data (and this probably has not been checked very thoroughly as it would require going back to the original data sources), then arguments of a double standard would be valid. A more valid argument is that Gay has been given preferential treatment because of her race by reason of her promotion to president of Harvard.