If Claudine Gay had never published her papers, would human knowledge be worse off in any way? Would anyone be less wise, less aware, less happy? I find that extremely difficult to believe. I think there’s a reason that, relative to actual academics, Gay has published almost nothing, and I think that the reason is that she’s not very good at it.

At the Free Beacon, Aaron Sibarium records that “academics say the pattern raises serious questions about Gay’s scholarly integrity and her fitness to lead the nation’s oldest university.” But, in truth, it doesn’t do anything of the sort, because Gay isn’t a “scholar,” she doesn’t have any “integrity,” and her “fitness to lead the nation’s oldest university” has never been contingent upon her academic output.

[That’s becoming clearer and clearer after Harvard’s board chose to “unanimously stand” with a president who now has to go back and make remedial changes to her meager scholarship. It’s not a good sign when it takes 26 years for people to notice that you’ve plagiarized better scholars in fields with as high a degree of visibility as the DEI/CRT space has had for a generation. She’s a hatchet woman for Woke Inc, and that’s all she is. — Ed]