Dr. Carol M. Swain, a retired university professor who was tenured at Vanderbilt and Princeton Universities, has published her latest book titled, The Gay Affair.
Swain sat down with The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief for an exclusive interview on Thursday to discuss her latest book, which she said examines former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s alleged plagiarism of multiple academic scholars’ work, including that of Swain’s
In addition to Gay’s alleged plagiarism, Swain noted how the book discusses Gay’s disastrous testimony before Congress last year in which she was unable to provide an answer regarding Harvard’s policies on antisemitism which was the point that ultimately threw the former university president into the spotlight.
“Claudine Gay is the former president of Harvard University and was its first black president and its second female president. Her tenure as president lasted six months, and you may recall that she gave disastrous testimony before Congress about whether or not Harvard’s policies would protect Jewish people against antisemitic attacks, some of which were violent. She couldn’t answer that question, what Harvard’s position was on the issue, so that is one of the things that made her famous,” Swain explained on Thursday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Swain said Gay’s disastrous testimony in front of Congress led multiple journalists to investigate her background, including her academic career which led to allegations that Gay plagiarized “multiple sections” of her Ph.D. thesis from 1997.
In addition to pulling materials from other authors, Swain said she has identified multiple direct instances of verbatim plagiarism by Gay, including from her prize-winning first book, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress.
“Twenty six years ago, Gay had plagiarized my prize winning book while she was writing her dissertation,” Swain said.
Swain said that while she went through a wide range of emotions after finding the plagiarism in Gay’s thesis, including anger, shock, and disbelief, she believes her new book will work to “hold Harvard accountable” and “change the discussion in the country about plagiarism and the decline of American academic institutions.”
“I would argue that at the root of all of this is Marxism, because Marxism is about turning down traditional institutions. Marxists have destroyed every institution they touch. That’s why the FBI, the CIA, the Congress, the presidency, everything has been in shambles because of the Marxists that have taken root. With Claudine Gay, she’s like the poster child for DEI. She never met the standards that at least were in place when I earned, with the emphasis on earned, my tenure at Princeton,” Swain said.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.