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The Brew: Harvard Prez Finally Quits Amid Plagiarism Scandal and ‘Contextualizing’ Calls for Jewish Genocide – The Stream

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Happy Wednesday!

Seems we might want to start The Brew today in prayer and intercession for Japan and South Korea. They’re having a rough start to 2024. Japan has already seen a massive earthquake, which has killed dozens, and a fiery airport collision which has killed five. One of the planes involved was a Coast Guard craft on its way to aid in earthquake recovery. In South Korea, the leading opposition candidate Lee Jae-myun was stabbed in the neck while touring the proposed site of a new airport in Busan. Thankfully, Lee has survived.

A motive has not yet been determined.

Harvard Prez Finally Calling It Quits After Six More Allegations of Plagiarism

Call her “President Xerox.” Or Ex-President Xerox. Harvard President Claudia Gay is resigning after intense pressure stemming from both her reluctance to condemn calls for Jewish genocide before Congress, and a plagiarism scandal that grew worse by the day. In fact, 2024 started with six more allegations of plagiarism, according to Washington Free Beacon. That puts the number of allegations at 50. What’s her doctorate in? Cutting and pasting?

Perhaps she can be given an honorary degree in blame shifting. In her resignation letter, Gay blames “personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus” for her departure. And offers no apology:

It is a singular honor to be a member of this university, which has been my home and my inspiration for most of my professional career. My deep sense of connection to Harvard and its people has made it all the more painful to witness the tensions and divisions that have riven our community in recent months, weakening the bonds of trust and reciprocity that should be our sources of strength and support in times of crisis. Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.

Gay had the shortest tenure as president in Harvard’s history, just six months and two days. Despite the plagiarism charges, Harvard confirms she will remain on the faculty.

CNN offered an even more hilarious take on Gay. She didn’t steal the ideas in her academic papers. She merely copied what other people said about those ideas. How soon would you have been flunked and sent to the principal’s office if you tried that on a teacher?

Now that Gay has resigned, at least we don’t have to keep trying to spell “plagiarism.” Never get it right on the first try.

Gay’s plagiarism and resignation is big, but we have something that may be more far reaching.

Dr. Michael Brown asked the AI Chatbot Claude about the plagiarism allegations against Gay. And Claude “feigned” total ignorance. The AI program insisted it could find no credible evidence that plagiarism allegations had even been made against the Harvard Prez … even though it has been on the news repeatedly and she has already gone back and fixed some of the plagiarized work. Read about it in, “My Bad Experience With AI Chatbot Claude.”

Beer Had Worse Year Since 1999. Thank You, Dylan Mulvaney.

Dylan Mulvaney has caused more accidental economic damage than any of God’s creatures since Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. Again, you can’t blame the trans influencer for accepting Bud Light’s offer to cut some social media promos for the brand. That’s on Bud Light. And not only did Bud Light pay the piper to the tune of billions in lost value, but the entire American beer industry took a hit.

For the first time since 1999, beer shipments dropped below 200,000,000 barrels. “It was a tough year for beer,” says Beer Marketer’s Insights VP, David Steinman. The intense backlash against Bud Light for featuring a dude who likes to present himself as a young girl is largely responsible for the worst year for beer in a generation, but not entirely, says Steinman. Domestic premium brands have been in a long decline and beer is facing tougher competition from new “sugar-forward alcoholic beverages” being pushed by soft drink and energy companies.

Will any corporations play “Woke Roulette” in 2024? Or has the Bud Light disaster opened corporate eyes?

CNN Names Which Candidates Have Qualified for Its Pre-Iowa Caucus GOP Debate. Sorry, Chris and Vivek.

CNN is hosting a GOP Debate January 10, days before the Iowa Caucus. Why the RNC picked CNN is a mystery even Jessica Fletcher couldn’t solve. On Tuesday CNN announced that only Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley qualified … leaving Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie out in the Iowa cold. Trump won’t be there. He’ll be doing a live town hall on Fox News at the same time as the CNN debate, 9 p.m. Eastern. Vivek will be doing a town hall with podcaster Tim Pool at 8 p.m.

In lieu of not having Trump, Vivek or Christie to liven things up, CNN will instead feature a series of questions on Taylor Swift. Well, maybe not. But they’ll like find several creative was to call Trump a dictator and DeSantis and Haley boot-lickers if they don’t agree.

FiveThirtyEight’s latest polling in Iowa shows Trump at exactly 50% with Haley and DeSantis far behind. DeSantis is at 18.4%, Haley at 15.7%. Trump got more good news when House Majority Leader Steve Scalise offered his endorsement.

Along The Stream

We’ve kicked off a three-part series on 2023, “Favorites, Forgottens and Unfathomables.” First up, the stories that Stream writers found unfathomable, stories from 2023 they have trouble believing really happened.

Jason Jones kicks his year off with, “Even Pope Francis Can Smell That the World Is on Fire.”

Al Perrotta is the Managing Editor of The Stream, co-author, with John Zmirak, of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and co-author of the counter-terrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.

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