Commentary: Harvard May Never Have to Face Accountability for Claudine Gay’s Actions

Claudine Gay

In an ideal world, wrongdoers face swift and exact justice for their misdeeds. In reality, the legal system is costly. Justice comes at a steep price, one that I, and others whose works were allegedly plagiarized by Harvard’s Claudine Gay and others cannot afford.

After months of turmoil and legal back and forth, it is with a heavy heart that I announce that my intended copyright infringement case against former Harvard President Claudine Gay and the Harvard Corporation — a legal complaint that would have requested a jury trial — cannot be filed as planned in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. The inability to raise sufficient funds for a trial (a steep minimum of $100,000 to $250,000) and the knowledge that the losing party could be ordered to cover the legal expenses of the victors, to which no limits exist under federal copyright law, gave me pause.

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House Panel Opens Probe into Ivy League Schools Following Anti-Semitism Hearing

The House Education and Workforce Committee is opening an investigation into Harvard University, MIT, University of Pennsylvania and other schools, following a recent congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses. 

House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik R-N.Y., called the testimony of the universities’ presidents “morally bankrupt.” Democrats and Republicans have condemned the universities’ presidents’ responses to questions about how their respective schools combat hate speech and antisemitism on campus. 

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Commentary: Let’s Try Teacher Choice

The House Education and Workforce Committee convened a hearing last week entitled “American Education in Crisis.” The perennial left–right debate between promoting parents’ rights and protecting public schools was on full display. 

Committee Chair Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina, used her opening statement to argue for extending “education freedom” and to defend parents’ prerogative to take their children and the public funding that goes with them to private, charter, or home schools. Representative Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat from Oregon, countered by expressing her “strong opposition” to plans that would “funnel taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools and for-profit charter schools,” saying that such an approach would “undermine the effectiveness of public education.”

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