The Gay Affair: Harvard, Plagiarism, and the Death of Academic Integrity

Claudine Gay's resignation on January 2, 2024, as Harvard University's first Black president, after only six months on the job, sent shock waves across the world. However, it did not shock anyone closely following her situation. Gay stepped down less than a month after giving disastrous testimony in Congress about her university's laissez-faire approach to protecting Jews on campus from rising expressions of antisemitism that followed Hamas's terrorist attacks on Israel. A double whammy occurred when it was reported that Gay had committed serial plagiarism involving her 1997 PhD dissertation completed while a student at Harvard and in other published works.

Among those whose work Gay pilfered was Dr. Carol Swain, author of the ground-breaking 1993 book Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress. In The Gay Affair, Dr. Swain offers a candid, compelling narrative about Gay, Harvard, academic plagiarism, and how she (Swain) was rebuffed and threatened financially when she attempted to seek a legal remedy from Harvard officials. For an insider's look into the world of elite institutional academia and how corners often get cut, Swain's The Gay Affair is a no-nonsense must-read.

The Gay Affair is the 13th book Dr. Carol M. Swain has either authored or co-authored. In addition to Black Faces, Black Interests, her other notable works include The New White Nationalism in America, Be The People, Black Eye for America, and The Adversity of Diversity. Dr. Swain is a retired university professor who was tenured at Vanderbilt and Princeton Universities. She resides in Nashville, Tennessee.