Breaking! Minutes after I posted this, the Harvard Crimson announced that Harvard president Claudine Gay is resigning.

Harvard’s daily campus newspaper, the venerable Harvard Crimson, currently has two editorials and one student op-ed up regarding the President Claudine Gay scandal, aka The Harvard President Ethics Train Wreck, in which the new president, the first black and only the second woman ever to hold the post, faces duel crises of confidence regarding her leadership. The first is her stuttering and inadequate response to anti-Jewish demonstrations on campus, low-lighted by her evasive and cringe-worthy testimony before Congress. The second is the subsequent revelation that Gay engaged in plagiarism in multiple scholarly works to a degree that would get her school’s students sanctioned.

In an official editorial, “President Gay Plagiarized, but She Should Stay. For Now,” a majority of the editorial board argues that,

…All plagiarism is wrong and antithetical to our University’s academic mission. But not all plagiarism is equal.

Plagiarism offenses lie on a spectrum. As defined by Harvard’s undergraduate “Guide to Using Sources,” it includes both misrepresentation of others’ ideas as one’s own and misattribution of borrowed material. Both matter, but the latter category, into which Gay’s allegations fall, is less serious by far…

To be clear, sloppiness of this kind is unbefitting of a Harvard president. Still, as an independent review found, Gay’s violations clearly seem to lack the intent to steal or deceive that would elevate them to the level of research misconduct, and many of the academics whose work Gay improperly cited have either downplayed the severity of the offense or outright rejected their characterization as plagiarism. (Their words should be taken with a grain of salt, however: The New York Times reported that academics more skeptical of Gay’s offenses refuse to go on the record, likely because of her powerful position.)

A sober-minded assessment of the plagiarism charges indicates that Gay’s behavior constitutes plagiarism, but since the errors do not appear intentional, they do not warrant her resignation.

Because we still have faith in our president as a scholar, because we regard her plagiarism as limited and unintentional, and because we recognize that a stopgap interim president would bring chaos instead of needed stability, we do not believe President Gay should resign.

At least, not now.

It is a weak argument, and wan defense. The president of Harvard must have an impeccable and superior record of scholarship and integrity, not a “well, it could be worse!” record. The number of instances of plagiarism that have been identified are so numerous that the lack of intent conclusion seems forced at best, and the whole argument the Crimson relies upon is the worst rationalization of them all, #22, “There are worse things.” No, Claudine Gay didn’t kill anybody. The Crimson regards it as a mitigation that her plagiarism was “limited”? What does that mean—that she should be given a pass because everything she has published wasn’t copied without credit or attribution?

Why does the Crimson still have faith in Gay as a scholar, after it agrees that she is a negligent one at best? Meanwhile, the Crimson editors are guilty of ignoring the metaphorical elephant in Harvard Yard, or perhaps deliberately misidentifying it as a big squirrel. The academics who are “more skeptical of Gay’s offenses” aren’t refusing to go on the record “because of her powerful position.” They are ducking because she is black, and because she is a progressive under fire by conservatives.

Ethics Grade: D

A minority of the paper’s editorial board issued a dissent from that editorial titled, “Dissent: For Harvard’s Sake, It’s Time to Let Gay Go.” It argues in part,

It has been less than half a year since Gay assumed one of the most prestigious posts in all of academia. Since then, scandal after scandal has plagued our beloved university.

The president of Harvard must be a formidable leader, capable of managing thousands of the brightest minds on the planet, a widely revered international brand, and a multi-billion-dollar bureaucratic behemoth. Further, by way of its field-leading eminences, Harvard exerts influence — and encounters controversy — at the highest levels of politics and policymaking, which often presents challenges for its leader and public face.

In other words, Harvard’s presidency is no mere empty honor; it is a deeply challenging managerial job with deeply challenging duties, not least of which is navigating national outcry.

In each of these respects, Gay has failed. The Harvard Corporation must find a leader who can do better…Still, the Editorial Board today makes peace with Gay’s series of slip-ups, opposing her resignation even after dozens of allegations of academic misconduct, including, bafflingly, two sentences in the acknowledgements of her dissertation…

We are tired of reading about Harvard’s failures every time we check the news…Signing an affirmation that we will follow the Harvard College Honor Code before we take our final exams should not feel like a farce…President Gay may be a good person. She may even be a praiseworthy scholar, despite the allegations. But that isn’t enough to remain president. The leader of the world’s foremost university must be held to a higher standard, one that Gay has unfortunately failed to meet.

Bingo. That’s the case, and well-argued. Those students get it.

Ethics Grade: A

Finally, a Harvard undergrad who is only identified as “An Undergraduate Member of the Harvard College Honor Council” issued an op-ed titled, “I Vote on Plagiarism Cases at Harvard College. Gay’s Getting off Easy,”and the piece is devastating. It argues in part..

I have served as a voting member of the Harvard College Honor Council, the body tasked with upholding the College’s community standards of academic integrity. In my time on the Council, I heard dozens of cases.

...A plurality of the Honor Council’s investigations concern plagiarism…In my experience, when students omit quotation marks and citations, as President Gay did, the sanction is usually one term of probation — a permanent mark on a student’s record. A student on probation is no longer considered in good standing, disqualifying them from opportunities like fellowships and study-abroad programs. Good standing is also required to receive a degree.

What is striking about the allegations of plagiarism against President Gay is that the improprieties are routine and pervasive. She is accused of plagiarism in her dissertation and at least two of her 11 journal articles. Two sentences from the acknowledgement section of her dissertation even seem to have been copied from another work.

According to the Honor Council’s procedures, the response to a violation depends on the “seriousness of the infraction” and “extenuating circumstances, including the extent to which a student has had similar trouble before.” In other words, while a single lifted paragraph could be blamed on a lapse in judgment, a pattern is more concerning.

In my experience, when a student is found responsible for multiple separate Honor Code violations, they are generally required to withdraw — i.e., suspended — from the College for two semesters. …But strict sanctions are necessary to demonstrate that our community values academic integrity. Cheating on exams is not okay. Plagiarism is not okay.

It may be true that the plagiarism allegations against President Gay fall short of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ interim policy on research misconduct. She may not have “intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly” tried to represent the work of her doctoral advisor and others as her own. And there is no evidence that any of her arguments posited as original contributions were plagiarized.

But President Gay’s pattern of mistakes is serious, and the Harvard Corporation should not minimize these allegations of plagiarism, as it has readily done.

…By definition, Gay’s corrections were not proactive but reactive — she only made them after she was caught. And that the Corporation considers her corrections an adequate response is not fair to undergraduates, who cannot simply submit corrections to avoid penalties. When my peers are found responsible for multiple instances of inadequate citation, they are often suspended for an academic year. When the president of their university is found responsible for the same types of infractions, the fellows of the Corporation “unanimously stand in support of” her.

There is one standard for me and my peers and another, much lower standard for our University’s president. The Corporation should resolve the double standard by demanding her resignation.

Wham! Bash! Pow!

I’m lowering the grade of this essay because the author wasn’t willing to sign it. That only reduces the grade to an A, however. Otherwise, it would warrant an A+.

Ethics Grade: A