Harvard University law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Thursday the university’s president could survive a plagiarism scandal because she is a “DEI-protected person” due to her race.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced an investigation into whether the Ivy League school ignored allegations that Harvard President Claudine Gay committed plagiarism.
“There are two categories of people at Harvard,” Dershowitz said, adding, “Those that come under the protection of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and the rest of the students, Jewish kids, Asian kids, kids who don’t come from protected minorities or backgrounds.”
Dershowitz discussed a case he was involved in centering around a dyslexic student at the Ivy League school.
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“The school provided him with a secretary under the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Dershowitz said. “He submitted a paper which had handwritten footnotes but the secretary forgot to put the footnotes in. He was disciplined. And when we argued that well, it was an accident. It wasn’t reckless, it was just a mistake, the university administration said there is no such thing as an honest mistake when it comes to plagiarism, it is absolute liability. The student has the obligation to make sure all the citations are correct.”
“If you apply that standard to this student who almost didn’t get into medical school as a result of this, when you apply that to President Gay it is not even a close question,” Dershowitz continued. “What they say maybe she wasn’t reckless, how do you not cite full paragraphs that you quoted without putting quotation marks? I just don’t get it.”
Gay previously came under fire after she refused to say whether students and applicants would be held accountable for using phrases like “from the river to the sea,” which has connotations of wiping out Israel.
“The school simply applies a double standard,” Dershowitz said. “If you’re a DEI-protected person you don’t get fired. If you’re not a DEI-protected person, you do anything that amounts to even minimal plagiarism, you’re in trouble.”
Dershowitz noted that Gay might survive the scandal.
“The problem is that the Harvard Corporation appointed her, and they don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to be accused of having made a mistake and therefore, it was a good article in The Wall Street Journal today, saying why Harvard will not fire Gay and it is partly the DEI and it is partly the fact that this board, which is a DEI board, it’s a board which consists of people who support the diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is against diversity, against equality and against the inclusion of Jews and Asians and other disfavored minorities.”
“So this is a symptom of a much deeper and more serious problem,” Dershowitz said. “There is a good chance if more material comes out in the end, she will have to step down.”
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