Much of America was surprised to hear the word that embattled Harvard University president Claudine Gay- who dodged pressure to resign from the post last month after her bungled testimony about anti-Semitism on the Harvard campus- instead chose to resign from the post Tuesday after more charges of plagiarism in her academic writing surfaced.
National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry is among those surprised not by the announcement itself, but rather by what took Gay so long to fall on her sword. Speaking on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program, Lowry discussed how the swelling number of plagiarism charges against Gay finally made it impossible for Harvard to keep covering for her.
“I think the plagiarism just became too much,” Lowry opined for Berman and Riedel. “It’s just unsustainable to be the leader of an institution where, if a freshman did that, he’s suspended or expelled and that’s the end, but they can do it as the president, so I think that’s just drip-drip-drip. They absolutely wanted to stick by her. They did everything they could to look away, but it just became totally unsustainable.”
However, Lowry does not see Gay’s removal as the start of a seismic shift in America’s campus culture. “It’s not taking out a few presidents that makes a difference. You have to pull up this whole DEI bureaucracy and that way of thinking is so ingrained. Its so deep; so many students are committed to it and will go crazy if it’s really torn up. It’s going to be hard. It will be a generational effort to get them in a better place, and I don’t think it will happen.”
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