Whatever did or didn’t happen in the brief freehold of Claudine Gay at the pinnacle of academia, her resignation letter is an epitome of contemporary self-pity – so much so that it made me think of someone else.
Gay did not apologize for harming the institution she was supposed to protect. Gay took no responsibility for her choices, shifting blame to others. Malevolent outside forces, not her own failing, brought her undoing.
The failing was not extemporaneous comments to Congress under political pressure, rather, was plagiarism: which she knew was wrong, had a long time to think about and correct.
So self-absorbed she had to write about herself twice in two days, Gay in the New York Times once again blamed others — a “coordinated” intrigue against her by conveniently unnamed shadowy figures. (Bad people did bad things? Name them!) Gay did not own up to plagiarism: in her articles “material duplicated other scholars’ language without proper attribution,” weirdly passive phrasing that suggests “material,” not stolen work, magically appeared.