And it’s fair to ask whether such a charitable standard would be used for those outside the faculty guild. None of us were born into this life ten minutes ago, so we understand that the answer is no. The “spirit of the law” in these cases is always less observed than the hard letter of it when it comes to people outside the fraternity of enforcement (whether because they are lowly undergraduates or political exiles). So hypocrisy reigns yet again, as it has in the nature of human tribalism. Recall the saga of disgraced Princeton historian Kevin Kruse, who built his social-media brand over years of “professional historian here to inform you!” and “anti-plagiarism” online scolding only to be revealed to have himself plagiarized significant chunks of his own Cornell University graduate thesis from other, better scholars. Princeton and Cornell circled the wagons, conducted quiet, in camera reviews, and absolved him of the same crime they regularly expel or discipline their students for. Some animals are more equal than others.

So I am confident that, as embarrassing as these new revelations are, Gay will survive them without breaking much of a sweat. After all, it was her graduate thesis from 1997, 26 years ago and before she formally began her professional career. What might hurt Gay, however, is the possible emergence of more examples of plagiarism, especially from her years as a professional academic and not merely as a student. Gay, as noted, has a notoriously small publication history — it did not go unnoticed at the time of her appointment as president, and is not unnoticed now — and the real peril for her lies in that remaining (and rather easily surveyable, because so small) body of work. Should a pattern of professional plagiarism throughout her work be established, then everything is up for grabs again, because then she has become provably a career-long fraud and not just a one-time blunderer.

[The Harvard board already has evidence of that, made more obvious in the context of Gay’s wafer-thin publication list. Would they *really* say, “Oh, we could overlook four instances of academic/scholastic fraud, BUT NOT A FIFTH INSTANCE!” I’m … skeptical. — Ed]