Harvard's embattled president is facing even more questions about her academic record after a statistics expert questioned the data used in a report that helped her win her tenure at Stanford.
Claudine Gay, who took over the presidency in July, has been at the center of a firestorm since the October 7 Hamas attacks. She was apparently slow to condemn students who justified terrorist violence, and slow to call out anti-Semitism on campus.
The harsh spotlight has spread to her academic record, with accusations of plagiarism – and on Tuesday a data scientist questioned her analytical methods. A journalist subsequently revealed that she had refused to share her details, raising eyebrows in academia.
Jonatan Pallesen, a Copenhagen-based data scientist who works for the Confederation of Danish Industry, tweeted that he had examined her use of data in her dissertation and in a 2001 article from the American Political Science Review (APSR).
The 2001 article was one of four peer-reviewed articles in political science that secured her a tenure at Stanford in 2005.
Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, won a tenure at Stanford in 2002, thanks to four peer-reviewed articles. One of them has now been questioned
Gay had earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in government at Harvard before returning to Stanford to teach.
In 2006, she joined the faculty at Harvard, where she was professor of public administration and African and African American studies. In 2018, she became dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Pallesen found that the 2001 article was misleading and incomplete.
“I'm not a political scientist, but I think about the whole approach to her research,” he said.
Christopher Brunet, a contributing editor at The American Conservative, then addressed Pallesen's concerns Fileand discovered that Gay had refused to share the data that led to her conclusions.
Two professors – Michael C. Herron, professor of quantitative social science at Dartmouth, and Kenneth W. Shotts, professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business – told a 2002 conference of The Society for Political Methodology that she did not want to change her position to share. data or code with it.
“However, we were unable to examine Gay's results closely because she would not release her data set to us (personal communication with Claudine Gay, 2002),” they noted.
But, Brunet believes, their criticism of Gay has been removed from the website.
Brunet called Gay's refusal to share her data “shameful.”
Herron, the professor who criticized her in 2002, told the story The New York Post that Gay was just one person they looked to when discussing data analysis.
Gay attended Stanford (pictured) and then taught at the university before transferring to Harvard in 2006
Also on Tuesday, it emerged that two Harvard administrators and four faculty members held a private dinner where they reportedly discussed a culture of “self-censorship” on campus, amid growing outrage over the school's response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The four professors present Tuesday said they were not addressing the elephant in the room at the Ivy League institution — Gay's uncertain future as president — despite reports saying otherwise.
Harvard Law School Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, Psychology Professor Steven A. Pinker, lecturer Flynn J. Cratty and former Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey S. Flier were present, along with board members Tracy Palandjian and Paul J Finnegan.
The dinner at Bar Enza in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was first reported by the New York Times— and it sparked rumors that Palandjian and Finnegan might break ranks with the Harvard Corporation's decision to support the beleaguered president.
Gay, who came to power in July this year, sparked outrage at a congressional hearing after she said whether calls for genocide against Jews at Harvard constituted harassment and violated the rules depended on context.
Two Harvard administrators and four faculty members held a private dinner where they reportedly discussed a culture of “self-censorship” on campus. According to the professors, there was no discussion about the elephant in the room: Claudine Gay's term as president. (Photo: Claudine Gay)
The dinner at Bar Enza in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was first reported by the New York Times — and it sparked rumors that Tracy Palandjian (left) and Paul J Finnegan (right) could break ranks with the Harvard decision Corporation to the beleaguered president
According to the Times, Palandjian said that “replacing the university president may not go far enough to get Harvard back on track” — but each of the professors at the dinner said the Harvard Crimson the subject wasn't even discussed.
Pinker told the Crimson that he had “no memory of Palandjian saying she supported Gay's resignation.”
“That would have been a bombshell that I couldn't possibly have forgotten,” he said.
Cratty described the dinner as one “very candid and friendly conversation about the ways Harvard can grow in its commitment to civil discourse and diversity of thought.”
“We have not discussed or requested the removal of President Gay,” he added.
According to the Times, Palandjian also said Harvard needed “generational change” — but Gersen wrote in a statement to The Crimson that she “did not specifically remember Tracy Palandjian using the language of 'generational change' at Harvard.”
“But if she did, it was not about the possible replacement of the president or members of the Corporation, because that was not the conversation we were having,” Gersen said.
Harvard spokesman Jonathan L Swain said the dinner was “a constructive and positive conversation about the importance of academic freedom, civil discourse and intellectual diversity.”
'The discussion about 'generational change' took place in that context; that addressing such a vital and complex social problem would not happen overnight, but would take time,” Swain said. “It wasn't related to anyone at Harvard.”
Meanwhile, Flier previously told the Times and the Wall Street Journal that he urged Palandjian and Finnegan to do more to address the anti-Semitist anger that threatened to envelop the Ivy League school.
“You have to be more outspoken here,” Flier recalled telling executives as he spoke to management New York Times. 'When people say the university makes mistakes, they are talking about you!'
Finnegan and Palandjian did not immediately respond to requests for comment from DailyMail.com.
Danielle Rhoades Ha, spokesperson for the New York Times, wrote in a statement that the publication “is confident in the accuracy of our reporting and stands behind the story.”