Heat on Harvard bid to suppress Gay report
Harvard University has come under fire amid revelations it sought to thwart The Post’s probe of school president Claudine Gay’s alleged plagiarism and cleared her of such accusations before even conducting an investigation.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who sits on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which has been scrutinizing the Ivy League school, called the aggressive attempt to suppress The Post’s investigation “shameful.”
“Harvard has been terrified of losing donations and taxpayer funding since they were exposed for harboring antisemitism,” he told The Post. “Claudine Gay claimed to support free speech and truthful inquiry in her congressional testimony, but now the university is threatening journalists and lying to protect its reputation and over $50 billion endowment.”
A law firm representing the elite university sent The Post a threatening legal letter in late October, dubbing accusations that Gay plagiarized from other academics “demonstrably false” and insisting that her work was “cited and properly credited.” It threatened to sue The Post for “immense” damages and insisted that The Post’s reporting “must not be published.”
School’s admission
By Dec. 12, Harvard had conceded that Gay had been investigated by the university’s top governing body and was issuing corrections to two academic journals, to acknowledge where her work had really come from.
The firestorm over Gay’s alleged plagiarism exploded shortly after her hearing before the House Education Committee earlier this month in which she was evasive on whether antisemitic chants violated the campus’ code of conduct.
“@Harvard misled and threatened the @nypost with litigation to get it to kill an article which alleged that President Gay had committed plagiarism. This reflects very poorly on the Corporation board, and anyone else in Harvard’s administration who was behind this effort,” Bill Ackman, a Harvard alum, hedge-fund billionaire and critic of Gay, wrote on X.
“This is yet another Hunter-Biden-laptop-like suppression of the NY Post, and further evidence of Harvard’s rejection of speech that does not fit the favored and dominant narrative.”
‘Realm of Rathergate’
Harvard tapped Clare Locke, a law firm that has done work for the Sackler family, Russian oligarchs and Matt Lauer, to send the fiery letter that dangled legal action after The Post requested comment in October on allegations that Gay had plagiarized parts of three published works.
“Harvard hired Thomas Clare, a lawyer whose signature is attacking journalists with frivolous libel bluster on behalf of deep pocketed clients. This is looking worse for Harvard & Gay,” ProPublica senior editor Josh Eisinger wrote on X.
“[The Post’s] long story has more damning details that seem to me to take the scandal into the realm of Rathergate and beyond into satire. [Journalist Dan] Rather stood behind his fraudulent story for 12 days before higher authorities at CBS News compelled him to stand down (with his fingers crossed behind his back),” conservative author Scott Johnson wrote for the Powerline blog.
National Review’s George Leef ripped Harvard’s use of Clare Locke as a “nasty effort at suppressing the investigation into her plagiarism.”
The Post contacted Harvard for comment on Sunday.