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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions where we talk about

American politics, power and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year.

So we are going to bring you two podcasts a week,

rather than the usual one on average.

And I hope you enjoy listening to them all.

Today, I am delighted to be joined by Peter Wood, who is president of the National Association of Scholars in America, obviously, and we are going to be talking about the resignation of Claudine Gay, who was, until very recently, Harvard's president, and she has left the post after being accused of plagiarism.

And there's been a tremendous fuss in America about it this week.

Peter, for our British listeners, could you please give us a sort of overview of the story

and what's happened so far?

Yes. A scholar named, a journalist named Chris Rufo

discovered and published evidence that Claudine Gay had plagiarized portions of her

Harvard PhD dissertation from the late 1990s.

Less than a day after that, a journalist at the Washington Examiner, I think it was, published a story in which he documented extensive plagiarism in four of President Gay's

11 published articles in academic journals.

Since that time, others have discovered additional instances of plagiarism,

both in the journals, the dissertation, and in other

published journals. So half of her material now, more than half of her published articles, have

documented plagiarism in them, and her dissertation has been vitiated by academic dishonesty.

...