Dave Portnoy doubles down and says he will ‘never hire a Harvard grad again’ after President Claudine Gay keeps her job: ‘Your diploma is useless to me. The entire country should do the same’

Barstools Sports founder Dave Portnoy has doubled down on his pledge to never hire another Harvard graduate after the Ivy League board pledged its support for President Claudine Gay.

“To reiterate, I will never hire a Harvard Grad again. Your degree is useless to me. The entire country should do the same,” Portnoy wrote on X on Tuesday, after Harvard revealed it would not fire Gay over allegations of anti-Semitism and plagiarism.

Portnoy, who is Jewish, shared a clip of an interview with Fox Business in which he said he would blackball alumni of Harvard, MIT and UPenn until their presidents apologized for their testimony in Congress.

“If you can't condemn genocide, you don't deserve to be in a position of power,” Portnoy said in the interview, adding that “there is a difference between free speech and hate speech.”

The Harvard Corporation finally provided answers on Tuesday about Gay's fate at the Ivy League, following calls for her resignation following disastrous testimony in Congress. Gay told Congress that whether calls for genocide of Jews violated Harvard's rules depended on context.

As pressure mounted on Gay to resign, accusations of plagiarism emerged alleging that the scholar had inappropriately lifted work by other academics. However, in its statement, Harvard said it investigated the allegations in October and found no inappropriate behavior.

But for many on social media, especially on the political right, Harvard failed to hold Gay accountable.

Dr. Carol Swain, one of the authors Gay allegedly plagiarized, wrote on X: “This is a terrible blow to civil rights and academic standards. What signal does it send to young people and the world? Shame on Harvard!… The Harvard Corporation did not have the cojones to correct their mistakes regarding Dr. Gay to own and restore.

“Despite evidence of plagiarism throughout her career, she will remain at the helm of the university. There is no accountability at Harvard.”

For his part, Elon Musk responded to the fact that Gay would keep her job with the hashtag #DefundHarvard.

Free Beacon contributor Noah Pollak said: “Exempting her from plagiarism rules is part of sending a message: Harvard is now Animal Farm, and some 'scholars' are more equal than others. The president may be a grim, corrupt DEI apparatchik, but in public we will call her a brilliant scholar.”

The Harvard Corporation – the university's 10-member board of trustees – said in its statement: “Our extensive deliberations reaffirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help heal our community and address the very serious societal problems we face. are confronted.'

The administration acknowledged Gay's mistakes in dealing with anti-Semitism on campus, adding, “So many people have suffered enormous harm and pain as a result of Hamas' brutal terrorist attack, and the university's initial statement had an immediate, should be direct and unequivocal condemnation.

Billionaire hedge fund alumnus Bill Ackman — who has led a campaign to dethrone Gay — claimed Harvard's board didn't want to be seen looking up to him.

In its statement Tuesday, Harvard's administration addressed allegations that Gay plagiarized part of her dissertation, saying they had opened an investigation at Gay's request.

'The university was informed of allegations about three articles at the end of October. At President Gay's request, the Fellows immediately initiated an independent review by leading political scientists and conducted a review of her published work.

“On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which identified some cases of inadequate citation. Although the analysis found no violation of Harvard's standards on research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert quotations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”

The Harvard Corporation, formally the President and Fellows of Harvard College, has twelve members, including Gay, Amherst College President Biddy Martin and former American Express CEO Kenneth I. Chenault.

Gay, the school's first Black president, was appointed to the post in July 2023. She sparked outrage at a congressional hearing last week after saying it depended on context whether calls for genocide of Jews at Harvard constituted harassment and broke the rules.

She was then forced to apologize after the hearing that cost Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania her job over a similar response.

Despite the backlash, Gay held on to institutional support at Harvard.

On Monday, the Executive Committee of the Harvard University Alumni Association announced their full support for the scholar and asked the school's administrators to publicly endorse her, according to The Harvard Crimson.

The group wrote: “President Gay is the right leader to guide the university during this challenging time… She is thoughtful. She is kind. She is firmly committed to the growth and well-being of our highly diverse community. We recognize that there was disappointment in her testimony this past week. President Gay has pointed this out and apologized for the hurt her testimony caused – a powerful demonstration of her integrity, determination and courage.”

Bill Ackman responded to the alumni group's letter, saying, “How did the association support President Gay without first surveying its members?”

In addition, more than 700 Harvard faculty members signed a letter in support of Gay, urging the school to resist calls to fire her, describing the attacks against her as “politically motivated.”

Harvard lawyer Lawrence Tribe, who previously described Gay's testimony as “deeply troubling,” told CNN that he signed the petition because “once external pressure, either from ultra-wealthy donors or from politicians pursuing their ideological agendas, undermines universities' internal decision-making processes nullifies, we are headed for tyranny.”