New York Times columnist calls for Harvard President Claudine Gay to resign: ‘A tipping point it is’

A New York Times columnist has called for embattled Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s ouster amid accusations of plagiarism, writing the situation has reached “a tipping point.”

John McWhorter, a linguist professor at Columbia University, wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times on Thursday in which he said Gay should resign if the Ivy League school declines to dismiss her from her post.

Gay allegedly quoted or paraphrased authors more than 40 times without proper attribution in her academic works — which breaks the school’s strict rules on plagiarism.

“Harvard has a clear policy on plagiarism that threatens undergraduates with punishment up to the university’s equivalent of expulsion for just a single instance of it,” McWhorter wrote.

“That policy may not apply to the university’s president, but the recent, growing revelations about past instances of plagiarism by Dr. Gay make it untenable for her to remain in office.”

He added that Gay keeping her job “would not only be a terrible sign of hollowed-out leadership, but also risks conveying the impression of a double standard at a progressive institution for a Black woman, which serves no one well, least of all Dr. Gay.”

Gay, Harvard’s first black president, has produced a mere 11 academic articles in her career and not one book on her own, noted McWhorter, who is black.

Her appointment as president, he argued, “gives the appearance that Dr. Gay was not chosen because of her academic or scholarly qualifications, which Harvard is thought to prize, but rather because of her race.”

On Thursday, a complaint revealed more than 40 allegations of her plagiarizing others’ works.

The allegations first surfaced earlier this month, with accusations she lifted other scholars’ works in her 1997 doctoral thesis and that four papers published between 1993 and 2017 did not include proper attribution.

The allegations have also caught the attention of Congress amid its investigation into existing claims of antisemitism on campus, which McWhorter noted he initially pushed back on, wanting more evidence.

“But in the wake of reports of additional acts of plagiarism and Harvard’s saying that she will make further corrections to past writing, the weight of the charges has taken me from ‘wait and see’ to ‘that’s it,’” he wrote in The Times.

“If it is mobbish to call on Black figures of influence to be held to the standards that others are held to, then we have arrived at a rather mysterious version of antiracism, and just in time for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in less than a month,” he wrote.

“I would even wish Harvard well in searching for another Black woman to serve as president if that is an imperative. But at this point that Black woman cannot, with any grace, be Claudine Gay,” McWhorter said.

Gay has defended her academic integrity, telling the Boston Globe “Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards.”

Harvard has stood by its president, with its board announcing unanimous support for Gay.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Wednesday announced a probe into how the school handled the allegations of plagiarism against Gay.