The Crimson independently reviewed the published allegations. Though some are minor — consisting of passages that are similar or identical to Gay’s sources, lacking quotation marks but including citations — others are more substantial, including some paragraphs and sentences nearly identical to other work and lacking citations.

Some appear to violate Harvard’s current policies around plagiarism and academic integrity.

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Some semi-alert Harvard fundraiser decided to tweak this letter to emphasize supporting students rather than the institution itself. I rule that deceitful, but it’s such an obvious and pathetic ploy that the chances of it fooling anyone with an IQ above 80—most, though not all, Harvard alums probably can top 100— are slim.

This year-end fundraising appeal arrives in my mailbox the same week that the school’s leadership unanimously supported a president who embarrassed herself, the school and its alumni in a public forum. It comes after Harvard gave tacit approval to students threatening the welfare and educational opportunities of Jewish students by refusing to take any action against other students extolling terrorism targeting Jews, and espousing intafada and genocide. While a lesser Ivy League institution, UPenn, correctly dismissed its president who made almost exactly the same tone-deaf and cowardly statements before Congress that Harvard’s Claudine Gay did, saying that whether calls for the death of Jews constitutes harassment and a violation of the school’s conduct code depends on their “context,” Harvard’s governing body submitted an absurd-on-its-face endorsement of Gay, stating “Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.”

Yes, the most prestigious university in the U.S., among all its scholars and graduates, can’t find a better leader than one unable to explain the limits of free speech on campus, or do better under questioning than to repeat verbatim the canned answers provided by lawyers as if she were reciting “The Wreck of the Hesperus.”

Who believes that? What informed graduate not yet in the throes of senility doesn’t comprehend that the vote of confidence means, “We chose this woman because she was black and a DEI hun, and not having black alums and woke faculty rebel is more important to us than showing that we reject anti-Semitism and care sufficiently about maintaining Harvard’s reputation. “

If there was doubt that President Gay could do anything short of running naked with a bloody machete through Harvard Square and keep her job, she was also permitted to pilot “Back to the Future’s” Delorean and remove plagiarized sections of her nearly 30 year-old PhD dissertation, though it was in its illicit form when the document won her the doctorate. Although the Harvard Crimson has supported Gay (on the theory that Harvard should never do anything demanded by evil, racist Republicans) it also concluded in an investigation…

The Crimson independently reviewed the published allegations. Though some are minor — consisting of passages that are similar or identical to Gay’s sources, lacking quotation marks but including citations — others are more substantial, including some paragraphs and sentences nearly identical to other work and lacking citations.

Some appear to violate Harvard’s current policies around plagiarism and academic integrity.

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Honestly, how do these people look at themselves in the mirror without retching? Isn’t there some level of toxic hypocrisy that is physically disabling, or does one build up resistance over time?

An aide to Boston’s Asian-American mayor Michelle Wu was supposed to send that invitation for the Mayor’s “Electeds of Color Holiday Party” (Catchy name!) to, you know, only elected officials who aren’t white because, after all, who wants them at a party? Oopsie! Poor Denise DosSantos, soon to be ringing a bell by a red pot on a corner, accidentally sent the invitations for the secret racist and exclusive event to everyone. This prompted criticism, and this resulting “apology” from the aide: “I wanted to apologize for my previous email regarding a Holiday Party for tomorrow. I did send that to everyone by accident, and I apologize if my email may have offended or came across as so. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.”

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As I suggested in the post yesterday, bias and arrogance is a particularly toxic combination, and that is what we are seeing at Harvard now. Characteristically, the university is retreating to its traditional “Who are those low-IQ peasants to tell us what’s right and wrong?” stance.

Mediaite reported last night: “The Harvard Corporation, one of the two boards governing the Ivy League school, will meet Monday to discuss the future of President Claudine Gay in light of the fallout from her anti-Semitism testimony before Congress last week. The other governing body, Harvard’s Board of Overseers, met Sunday. Tensions are reportedly high at both boards over whether taking action would be worth it appearing that Republican. Rep. Elise Stefanik was able to ‘force’ an ouster.” I have not seen this anywhere else, but it’s so ineffably Harvard that I am inclined to believe it. Harvard’s leadership might decide not to take the correct and responsible action because they don’t want to appear to be bending to—yechh!—Republicans. The university would rather let its reputation and credibility fester, not to mention leaving the supposedly superior institution under the management of an administrator who has shown herself unable to handle the job, to avoid being momentarily on the same side as the people it teaches its students to despise and distrust. This is pure hubris, vanity, and pride.

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The outrageous performances of the three “context” obsessed college presidents teed up satirical possibilities like few other public events. The skit virtually wrote itself. The day of SNL’s latest episode, one of the three, UPenn’s Liz Magill, stepped down in disgrace. So handed this rich and easy topic for parody and high comedy, what did SNL’s writers choose to ridicule?

Why, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), whose sharp questioning and refusal to accept non-answers led all three officials to unmask leftist academia’s ethics rot, what Bishop Robert Barron described as their “Collapse of Moral Reasoning.” Instead of performing the clarifying function that effective and objective satire can provide (and that SNL has provided in the past, if you have a good memory), the show defaulted to circling the progressive wagons. The theme of it’s satire was “Republicans pounce!” as if there is nothing amiss when the leaders of three prestigious universities make legalistic arguments to justify allowing Jewish students to be targeted and threatened on their campuses.

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There were two major stories with ethics implications that arrived last evening after I had closed down Ethics Alarms for the night. Both involved institutions that involve lifetime connections for me. I’d prefer to write about the astounding $700,000,000 contract baseball’s biggest star Shohei Otahni signed—and will—but first I must again deal with another Harvard issue.

Late yesterday,the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, resigned, and the school’s chairman of the board followed with his own resignation a couple of hours later. Magill was one of three elite college presidents who embarrassed themselves and their employers with offensive, legalistic answers to pointed questions from Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) regarding their school’s tolerance of anti-Semitism on their campus in the wake of the October Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, and their weak responses to demonstrations on their campuses that could fairly be called threatening to Jewish students.

UPenn’s situation became critical when alumnus Ross Stevens announced that he was withdrawing a gift worth around $100 million. That would be a significant loss even for Harvard, whose endowment exceeds the treasuries of many nations. The resignation immediately focused attention on Claudine Gay, Harvard’s president of just a couple of months, whose responses to Stefanik’s withering cross-examination in the Congressional hearing were extremely similar to Magill’s. The resignation of all three women was called for in an unusual letter signed by 72 members of Congress, many of them Democrats.

MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth, the third inept president, had performed slightly better than her two counterparts at the Ivy League schools, though not by much. MIT leadership quickly gave her a public vote of confidence, reflecting, I think, the school’s calculation that its non-humanities and non-social sciences focus as well as its traditional position as only the second most famous university in Cambridge, Mass. would allow the controversy there to calm down sufficiently so it could get back to what the institution really cares about: technology, ones and zeros, and engineering. It is a cynical response, but a safe one.

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The Republican National Committee announced yesterday that it would be holding no more primary debates. It’s about time. The debates presented nothing, literally nothing, more than dart boards for Democrats and progressive pundits to aim at. Few watched the things other than desperate NeverTrumpers. If Donald Trump had participated, the four events might have been consequential. It would have been ethical and responsible of Trump to stand on the same stage as his competition and allow them to challenge him, but it also would have been stupid. He could only lose by taking that chance.

To celebrate the demise of this completely pointless exercise, Ethics Alarms offers a few observations on the final installment.

1. It began with a lie. Moderator Megyn Kelly: “On stage tonight, four candidates all vying to become their party’s nominee and given the state of affairs in our political system right now, one of you might very well do it.”

2. Ronald Reagan memorably said that it was a “commandment” that Republicans “shalt not” speak ill of any fellow Republican. RR was astute: these kind of scorpions-in-a-bottle displays only weaken the party and give aid and comfort to Democrats. Reagan’s “11th Commandment” seems especially relevant because a full half of the debaters last week were only there to troll the other Republicans on stage and, in bitter Chris Christie’s case, Donald Trump too. Neither the disgraced former New Jersey governor nor class clown Vivek Ramaswamy have a slice of an iota of a scintilla of a micro-chance of getting the Republican nomination, so they are wasting time, diverting attention, and indulging their egos to the detriment of everyone else.

3.Nikki Haley, sadly, is a weasel. Ramaswamy accurately characterized her bone-headed suggestion that anonymous statements and aliases should be forbidden on social media, and Haley denied it, then changed the subject. She could have simply said that she was wrong. That would have been refreshing. She can’t be trusted.

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