Paul Waldman writes for the New Republic that the Right's real target is Harvard President Claudine Gay. That's why they're leveling all of those plagiarism charges against her. Those charges are "mostly bogus" and being used as a blunt weapon by the Right.
Why Gay?
But Gay’s is the scalp the right’s newly self-appointed protectors of America’s Jews would really love to get. In part that’s because Gay is Black and can therefore be tagged as an unqualified affirmative action hire, but mostly because it’s Harvard, America’s oldest, richest, and most prestigious university. If you want to thrust a dagger into the heart of the academy, Cambridge is where you aim.
But what about the plagiarism charges? About half of her total academic output has been found to include plagiarized passages. It wasn't intellectual theft — it was just sloppiness.
There’s no question that the accusations against Gay are being offered in utter bad faith, and the charges are inseparable from the political context in which they’re being made. Nevertheless, the right-wing critics could have a case regardless of their motives. A fair reading of the passages they’ve presented suggests that while some of their claims are bogus, others do show problematic issues in a few of Gay’s writings. But they amount to academic misdemeanors—real, but evidence of occasional sloppiness rather than malicious theft.
Wait, the subheading said they were "mostly bogus," but now it's just suggested that "some of their claims are bogus." But those "problematic" passages can be excused as "occasional sloppiness."
Waldman singles out Christopher Rufo in his piece, of whom he's definitely not a fan.
Gay's keeping her job despite all of the plagiarism charges, all of which have been documented.
It's telling how the Left doesn't think Gay's plagiarizing of her Ph.D. thesis is a bad thing. "Problematic," maybe. So conservatives care about academic integrity but liberals don't.
From "mostly bogus" to "problematic." Why is the New Republic defending this woman when she's so obviously guilty? Because Harvard must be protected from "the Right."
We already think Harvard is a cesspool because Harvard's done the damage to its own reputation. It is a poisoner of young people's minds.