467. Plagiarized by Harvard's President | Dr. Carol Swain
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Going back to school is a big step, but having support at every step of your academic journey can make a big difference. Imagine your future differently at capella.edu. Hello, everybody. I'm speaking today with Dr. Carol Swain.

Dr. Swain was a professor of political science and professor of law at Vanderbilt and also worked at Princeton. Now, she came from a backwoods family, 12 kids, mother in some distress, dropped out of school when she was in grade eight, then retired.

Went back to get her GED, then a two-year community college degree, then a four-year degree. She stacked up five degrees and ended up with a very stellar academic career. She's published or edited 12 books, including one that's been cited by the Supreme Court three times. Very solid person from an academic perspective.

Why is she interesting? Well, she's interesting for all those reasons, but she's also interesting because she happens to be black and she also happens to be the target of plagiarism by Claudine Gay at Harvard University. Now, you may remember that Claudine Gay was the last president of Harvard University and was asked to step down, not least because of

the revelation of her proclivity, pronounced proclivity for plagiarism. And one of the major sources that Gay relied on was Carol Swain. And so we're going to talk about that. Join us.

Well, Dr. Swain, thank you very much for agreeing to speak today to me and to everybody who's watching and listening. I guess we should probably start with a little bit of description about who you are and where you came from, what you're doing. Well, everything about me and the positions I take in the world, I know it's rooted in where I came from.

And I was one of 12 children born and raised in rural poverty in southwestern Virginia. I spent the early part of my life in a two-room shack with no indoor plumbing. I dropped out of school after completing the eighth grade, married at age 16. And then in my early 20s, I...

I earned a GED, which is a high school equivalency, went to a community college, got the first of five degrees. I graduated in 1983 with a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude. I never intended to become a university professor. I struggled with shyness most of my life and people came into my life. They steered me.

And I became a professor, but it's not something that I ever saw happening for myself. Many of those people were white men, white professors who encouraged me. They never treated me like a victim. But I grew up at a time in America where we were told if you worked hard and got an education, you could make something out of yourself.

So let's delve into that a bit more. So that's quite a twisty journey, that's for sure. You were married at 16 and you went back to college at 23. Is that right? 23. Had you had children by then?

I think I probably was 23 when I went to the four-year college, but I had my first child at 17. And so in my early 20s, I had three children. One died of a crib death, the sudden infant death syndrome.

And I struggled with depression, suicide gestures. And it was a medical doctor who turns out to be to have been Catholic. He was five years older than me. He was the first person to tell me that I was intelligent. I was attractive. I could do more with my life.

And based on his encouragement, I earned my high school equivalency because I remembered that when I was in school, that I did really well. And later there was an African orderly from Sierra Leone, a Muslim, who told me that he attended college with a lot of people who were not as smart as I was, ought to go to college. And so those two people helped change my life. But along the way, I came through

The educational system at a time after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had passed. And so there was a recruitment of talented minorities with the emphasis on talented minorities, right?

And I benefited from an environment that I was intelligent. I worked hard. I caught people's attention. And when I earned my bachelor's degree at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, graduating magna cum laude, I was working full time nights and weekends at the community college library. And so I don't have a lot of sympathy for this DEI and all this stuff about minorities can't do because I know what I did do.

Right. Well, it certainly seems like you came from

well, you might say almost an archetypically unlikely background, right? Poor, multi-children, no, no, you said no running water, no indoor plumbing. Right. Married very early, very early children. Okay, so here's a question for you. You had these two guys, you talked about this physician and you talked about this Muslim gentleman who saw something in you and then encouraged you. Okay, so first question might be what,

What do you think they saw in you and how did they see it? And then the second question would be, why did you believe what they told you when it was encouraging and complimentary, right? So there's two mysteries. They saw something in you, but you also obviously believed

decided to what take a big risk now you said you remembered that you had done well in school so you had that going for you right you sort of had that in your back pocket but it's easy to brush off encouragement you know and i mean you had every reason as far as i can tell to presume that well there's just no way you could do it that was beyond you it was too late you already had children that time had gone like there's a million rationalizations that you could have used instead of

going to get your GED and then going to community college. So why did you do it? Well, first of all, my mother would say that I was different from her other children, that I was always serious. But as a child, I had a sense of urgency. And I also felt like

that I had been dropped from outer space and I was watching my family like a participant observer. My mother said I would hide behind furniture because I was terribly shy and I would peer out at people. But I had a sense of urgency and was very serious, but then ended up feeling trapped, getting married, not because I was pregnant, because I saw that as a way out. And

I had, during the time that I was a child, we missed a lot of school. One year,

My siblings and I missed 80 of 180 school days. And that had to do with the weather being bad. We didn't have proper clothes or shoes. And so we stayed home until the snow melted. We all failed. And I recently noticed as I was trying to work on a memoir that I failed three times in elementary school. But we could my oldest sister and I could miss school.

you know, two weeks of school, come in and make an A or B on a test. And so I remembered that I was smart at one time, but I had forgotten until this medical doctor who happened to be white, who was five years older than me. And I didn't know that at the time, but we have reacquainted in the last five years. He remembered me. He said he always wondered what happened to me.

He was not on social media and he obviously was not watching conservative news. Right, okay, so you remembered that you had done well in school and your first step was to take the GED. And how long did it take you? That was, you had to make up four years, hey? You said you stopped in grade eight. You had to make up four years. And so how long did it take you to get your GED and how did you manage to persist? And also, did you have support around you? Like,

Was your husband supportive? Was your family supportive? Did you have people who were also encouraging you apart from these two gentlemen?

Well, I can tell you that most people say if they didn't know it was a true story, that they would not believe it. But with the GED, I studied a book at home, and I was told that I had one of the highest scores that they had seen. But in math, I barely passed. I was in the 34th percentile, and if I had been in the 32nd percentile, I would have failed the math portion.

And in graduate school and doing my time at the community college, math and statistics, that was a challenge. But I took remedial math at the community college. And as far as people who encouraged me,

Certainly when I reached the community college, there were plenty of encouragers, but I never sought to become a university professor. My first degree was in a business. I wanted to be an artist. I have art talent, but I was told to be practical. And I can tell you one thing that made me different, I think, than a lot of young people. Sometimes I run into people that are wired the way I was, is that if there was an authority figure around,

that gave me advice, I was prone to follow the advice. And so if they told me that it was not practical to do art, I chose business and that was more challenging, but I ended up getting my two-year degree in business in two years. And then for the bachelor's degree, it was criminal justice because I love those courses.

and political science for the master's and PhD. And then later I went to law school for a one-year program at Yale. And I never, again, sought to become a university professor. My motivator was to be able to get a good job

And so I could support my family. I had been in bad marriages and I saw an opportunity that if I got educated and I did try to distinguish myself, I made a decision to be an honor student at college.

at Roanoke College. And I studied, I purchased and checked out books on how to make A's in college, how to do essay exams. And I also watched how other people dressed. And I had people comment that I was dressed inappropriately for a student. I was dressing like a professor as a student because I was watching other people trying to figure out what they were doing. And so if I

My success has had a lot to do with I've had great mentors over the course of my life. And even now I have mentors. I don't think you get too old to have a mentor. All right. So you finished your two-year degree in business and then you were pursuing criminal justice and then political science and law. When did the idea...

I remember, you know, when I decided to go to graduate school, this was at the University of Alberta, where our tracks parallel each other to some degree in terms of our age. And, you know, when I went to graduate school, when I started considering graduate school, I didn't know anyone who had ever gone to graduate school. And so it was quite a mystery to me, the whole situation. And I started to associate a little bit with a psychology lab at my last year at the University of Alberta. I guess that would be in 1983, I think.

And that's when I formulated the ambition to pursue a graduate degree. You finished your business degree and then you're

four-year bachelors, how did you come across the idea of going off to do graduate work? And then maybe you could wind in the story about your mentors as well and describe exactly, you know, what role they played and why they were important. It's really important to have guidance, you know, like when I went to graduate school, I had a superb advisor.

Like he was everything I could hope for. He was a really good administrator. He knew the literature extremely broadly. He was very, very encouraging. Like we worked together like clockwork and it was, I still work with him. It's 40 years later. Like we had a great relationship, super important. So how did you develop the idea that you should go to graduate school? And how did you get the confidence up to do that? Because he also said that you had to overcome shyness. And what role did your mentors play in that?

Well, first I have to tell you that I wanted to be a store manager at the mall. I applied for jobs after I earned my two-year degree and I was told I needed a four-year degree. And I knew that I needed to distinguish myself. And so I chose criminal justice because it was filled with courses, interdisciplinary courses that I thought I would do well in. And I did. And so that's how I chose criminal justice.

And while I was getting my bachelor's degree, I started getting letters from colleges and universities. And my advisor, it turns out he was a conservative. He exposed me to Glenn Lowry, Walter Williams, Milton Friedman, Edward Banfield's work.

And I was by the time I was graduating with the four year degree, I knew I didn't want a criminal justice career. I went to Virginia Tech thinking that I would work for the government like a lot of other black people. I would get a job with the federal government while I was there. My professors and they were progressives. They really don't push me.

By saying that there was a critical need for black professors. If you can become a professor, you should become one. I was not interested. This was the 1980s. And you may recall the 1983-84, we had a recession. I could not get a job. And that's why I applied to graduate school and the University of Michigan.

of North Carolina Chapel Hill immediately admitted me. They gave me a generous stipend, which I believe was like $11,000, which was a lot of money back in the 1980s. And that's how I got to graduate school. But at Virginia Tech, the mentoring was important. I started giving conference papers and being exposed to academia and

But actually pursuing a Ph.D. and becoming a professor was something that I followed that path when I was not able to get a job.

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two-year degree and then your four-year degree, that you were also working full-time. And you said that you were learning how to be a student and reading about how to do that and watching other people and dressing up, essentially. And so how much time per week do

Do you suppose you were working, let's say, in the third year of your four-year degree, if you totaled up the amount of classes you were taking, the studying you were doing, and the job that you had? How many hours a day do you think you were putting in that were actual work? And then for how long?

Well, for at least three years at Roanoke College, I worked nights and weekends and it was in circulation in the library. And I confess not many people use the library nights and weekends. So it was a perfect job for a student. Oh, yes. And so I went to school during the daytime.

I was working in circulation during the evening and I was able to get my schoolwork done. And so that's how I graduated magna cum laude. It's not that I was some genius, but I was very focused on I needed to distinguish myself. And I'm not stupid. I knew that as a black person, that if I excelled, that I would be rewarded for that.

And sure enough, you know, my first semester, it's like everyone knew my name at that small liberal arts college that was predominantly white because I had distinguished myself. And when I think about race...

My race has advantaged me, I would say, more than it's disadvantaged me, certainly once I reached college. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that I've always tried to distinguish myself. I've had great mentors and those mentors did not look like me. In fact, my advisor is and was a Republican,

I didn't know that, but when I started college, I was met by the Black students who were already there. They gave me the list of racist professors. He was at the top of the list, and I'm the kind of person, you throw that in the gauntlet. So they told me he was racist. I signed up for his class first because I wanted to—I knew that if I could impress him, that would make a difference.

The professor was not racist, but he had high standards, and we're friends today. Okay, so two questions still. Now, you know, you said that you were very shy.

And so, but when you were in college, you were at conferences giving academic papers. And so what did you, how did you manage your shyness? And then also, how did you become disciplined and able to work so diligently and to focus? You said a little bit of that was there when you were a kid. You were a serious kid. You had a sense of urgency. So likely you have a temperamental tilt in that direction. But

You know, you worked very hard to get your GED and your degrees. And so how did you learn to work and how did you overcome your shyness?

Well, when I was an undergraduate, as you know, most professors will set aside 10% for class participation. And I wanted to earn that 10%. So I would write out a question or I'd write out a comment and I would raise my hand shaking and I would read my comment or ask my question. That's how I got the class participation. And when it came to conferences or whenever I had to speak, I

I overprepared like today, you know, I can do things off the cuff. But back then I tried to write out everything I was going to say. And I was not really, I would say, delivered of that shyness until I was in my 40s. So most of my life I have been shy.

I also would like for you to know that it wasn't just the doctor and the orderly who told me, you know, that I was talented. At least three times in my life, I had complete strangers come up to me in my early 20s, late teens, and they said, you're going to be famous someday. Do you know you're going to be famous? And there was nothing, nothing I was doing at the time that it made any sense.

Yeah, well, there's no shortage of strange things about life. So you said you were delivered of your shyness about when you were 40, so in your 40s. So why did you persevere? And how did you learn to speak off the cuff? And how did it come about that you were delivered of your shyness? Before I get to that, I want to tell you that I took psychology courses and usually made an A.

I had great fear in my early 20s that I was suffering from delusions of grandeur because I never fit where I was. And I had no idea that I would go to college or I would become, you know, the person that I am today. And so that is a part of what happened, part of my background. But the other part of it is, you asked me, how did I overcome the shyness? Yep.

I had after I earned my tenure at Princeton, I earned early tenure on the basis of my book, Black Faces, Black Interests, the Representation of African-Americans in Congress. It was my first book. It's the one that won three national prizes, was cited by the Supreme Court. It's the book that Claudine Gay plagiarized and used as a straw man for her own research. After that,

The early tenure, the prizes, I was very disillusioned. Like I had worked so hard, like nights in. I had worked without taking off breaks during the summers. I can remember doing everything I had to do in the day, going back to work and being there, working overnight when the cleaning crew came in. And I was so obsessed with getting early tenure. And I got my early tenure, but then I was disillusioned.

And I really didn't fit at Princeton. And I guess I would never fit in the Ivy League because once I was hired and I received a signing bonus and I was a hot shot,

Then when I looked around at the other people who were at the table, they spoke in these long paragraphs. And like if they were going to ask a question, if they were going to take someone down, they had a particular way of speaking that was foreign to me. Like if I was going to ask a question, I tend to be very direct. I go straight. But I noticed the way they argued and I was miserable there.

And that sort of set in motion a spiritual journey. And I can say that spiritually, I was always a seeker. I studied New Age, Eastern religion, and I had a Christian conversion experience. I became a devout Christian believer in 1999, but it was a journey before I had the culmination. And it was like I was delivered instantly from my shyness. And I would argue that

It's like, I would say God impressed on my mind.

that he had given me a message bigger than me and that I should focus on the message. And when I thought about my shyness, I was always embarrassed by my southern accent. I was embarrassed that people could tell that I came from poverty. And all of that kept me silent. I was embarrassed that I made grammatical mistakes at times. All those things worked to keep me silent. But when I realized I only had to please God, it didn't matter what other people thought.

I've been talking ever since without really caring what people think. I try to be careful. I try to speak truth. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to lose sleep if I make a mistake or someone laughs at me. That's their problem. Reminds me of the scene in Exodus. You know, when Moses becomes a leader, he goes off the beaten path and follows the call of the burning bush and says,

He focuses intently and follows his interest and delves further and further into the mystery that's caught his attention. And eventually, God himself speaks to him and tells him that he has to become a leader. He has to lead his people away from slavery and he has to stand up to the tyrant. And Moses says, I can't do that because I'm not

a good speaker. No one knows what his problem was precisely, but Moses certainly believed that he didn't have the talent or the ability to say what he was being called upon to say. And God's response to that is twofold.

The first part of the response is something like, well, that's your problem. And just because you have inadequacies or idiosyncrasies, that doesn't alleviate you of your destiny or your moral responsibility. So no excuses. Thank you very much. And then the second part of it is he tells him to ally with his brother Aaron, who can be his political voice. And the idea there is something like, well, you know, you might be called upon

to do something in all likelihood, and your conscience might impel you in that direction, but you don't necessarily have to do it alone. Like you can find people around you who fill in your gaps. Now, you said that you had quite a lengthy process of seeking through the New Age realm, through comparative religion, let's say.

and that you ended up with a Christian conversion in 1999. Why do you think your seeking led you to Christianity per se? Do you have any idea about that? Well, you know, I'm Black, I'm a Southerner, and most Southerners are Christians. And the people around me were either Baptists or Methodists. My family, they were Methodists. And when I watched them,

the way they lived their lives, they did not have anything that was attractive to me. And, and so, I mean, I explored with Jehovah's Witnesses. I was all over the place. I was always very spiritual. I always knew that there was something larger than me guiding my life, but I was not ready to say, you know, this is Jesus Christ. You know, this is, uh,

I believe one God, many paths. And I believed that for a long time, but I knew that I was different. I knew that I was set aside and I knew that things happened for me that didn't happen for other people. But I can say, in a way, I went back to my roots. My great grandfather had been a Methodist pastor. My grandmother was pastor's daughter, but I walked away from all of that and then returned to it in my 40s.

But I always felt that Christianity that I experienced in my youth did not have any power. And I knew that there was a supernatural world. And I was always drawn to the New Age section of the bookstore. I was into Edgar Cayce trying to do an autobiography experience. I did a past life regression. Like I was all over the place. And, yeah.

And I came full circle. I believed in reincarnation for a long time, but came full circle to believing what I believe today about Christianity and Jesus Christ being the only way. And I do believe that God called me. He set me aside among the 12 in my early 20s.

I had a lot of guilt about my success because it didn't seem fair that out of the 12, my life was always better. Even when I married at 16, my husband and I were building a brand new house. And it was because of a government program. But my life has always been better than all of my siblings. And it took me a long time to get over the fact that

you know, that I was different. And for some reason I had a favor about me. And when Princeton hired me, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't get early tenure. That was my goal. I accomplished it, but then it was just so empty. And that is what, you know, the journey part of it accelerated, but it culminated with me having a Christian conversion experience and becoming a devout believer.

So, Carol, you said it didn't seem fair that out of the 12 children who were your siblings, that you advanced forward in the way that you had. And you talked also about not fitting and being different. I wanted to comment on that part first for the people who are watching and listening. You know, it's possible to be the sort of child and adolescent who has to grow up and find an intellectual community to fit in.

And so just because you don't fit in when you're eight or you don't fit in when you're 13 doesn't mean there's no place in the world for you. It just means you have to find your place. And, you know, I knew kids in my little town where I grew up, where, you know, they kind of,

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their best years were when they were 16 and 17, and everything was downhill from then. And that's pretty fun when you're 16 and 17, but it's not so much fun when you're 30 and 40. And so you had the reverse situation, it sounds like, where you didn't find your place when you were a child or an adolescent, but

It's pretty good to find your place as an adult because then you have your whole adult life for that. So now you said it didn't seem fair. You also talked about your shyness and you said that. And so it confused me a little bit because it wasn't obvious to me.

whether or not you were shy or whether or not you were ashamed, right? You said you were ashamed of your origin, you were ashamed of your poverty, you were ashamed of your accent and the possibility that you might make mistakes. And so that's different than temperamental shyness, you know, and I can see therefore why a religious revelation or conversion might help you with that because did it free you from your shame? Is that...

Is that a reasonable way of conceptualizing it? I don't think I was ashamed of where I came from because I knew that, you know, I'm surrounded by people like Claudine Gay who have gone to the best schools in America. And there I was coming from nothing, high school dropout, and I was surpassing them. And so in some ways I had confidence, but in other ways I knew I did not fit in.

And I can tell you even today, I don't fit in institutions. I don't fit anywhere. And so I still feel like an outlier and it's okay. And I would say that it took me until my 40s to accept myself and realize that it was okay to be me.

And so why do you feel that you, why do you think you still feel like an outlier? I mean, you've had a spectacularly successful academic career and also one that's associated with a high volume of publication. So that's obviously a marker of the validity of your high impact academic career. And so, I mean, you alluded to perhaps, you know, part of the reason why you don't fit in, so to speak, because you're

you're definitely not descending into academia from a multi-generational history of academics and educated people. So you're kind of a path breaker in that regard. And obviously your familial and educational background isn't standard for upper echelon, Ivy League, approximate academic positions. Is there more to why you don't fit in? You're more conservative, you're Christian,

You're creative. So that's also maybe all, are those things part of it? Well, when I had my most success at Princeton, I was agnostic.

And I also believed in the academic enterprise. And so I was not faking it in any way. I believed in the standards and I wanted to be the best congressional scholar I could be. And that was who I was. But then at some point, I realized that that was empty for me. And I think that I've always been rejected. And some of that has to do with

I'm very direct, I'm very blunt, and I'm very transparent. And that makes people feel uncomfortable. And whether we're talking about in the political world or the church world or wherever I am, I think it's uncomfortable for people to deal with someone that isn't acting the way they should be acting because they know the norms. And I can tell you one of the hardest things I had to learn, and I learned it while I was at Vanderbilt Law School, is

If you send someone an email or you contact them and they don't respond, that means no. And I would just keep on trying to get an answer until one day a dean told me, and he was being very kind to me. He said that if someone doesn't respond, that means no. I always respond. And so there's so much that made me different. And I think people are uncomfortable because they don't know what I'll say. I don't know what I'll say.

Do you regard yourself as a conservative? I regard myself as a truth speaker. And I feel like that at this stage in my life, I have to be positioned where I can speak truth and not worry about what anyone thinks. And I find that whether we're talking about conservatives or liberals, people are more comfortable around those they can control. And when you reach 70, I'm 70 now, I'm 70.

I just don't care. I care about the world. I care about the call on my life and ending well when I die. I would like people to say that I ended well. But the things that people use to control other people, it doesn't seem to work. And as far as academia, I would say that every effort was made to destroy me. And yet, you know, it didn't work.

And I think that it didn't work because it didn't work. Well, so let's talk about that. You alluded to the situation with Claudine Gay. Now, for everybody watching and listening, Claudine Gay was the president of Harvard University, despite being woefully unqualified for that position. In fact, I believe after reviewing her academic record that she's woefully unqualified to be a tenured professor at Harvard because

Her publication record is thin, to say the least. With a record like that, she likely wouldn't have got an interview under normal circumstances at the University of Toronto for the psychology department for an entry-level position. And so it's woefully inadequate. Now, Claudine Gay is also the person who revealed, I would say, the absolute truth.

the decay of the Ivy League system at Congress last year with the president of UPenn and the president of MIT. And then was embroiled in a plagiarism scandal

brought to light by, publicized primarily by Christopher Rufo, who's working in Florida with Ron DeSantis. Now, you're tangled up in that business in a major way. And so you alluded to that earlier. And I also presume that this has at least tangential connection with these attempts that you just described to undermine you and destroy you. So could we walk through the Claudine Gay situation first and then talk about

The other more destructive elements of your experience in academia? We can walk through the Claudine Gay situation first. You were very generous to her. As far as I'm concerned, her dissertation, which was heavily plagiarized,

And there she used my work to set up a straw man, actually taking one of my conclusions to frame her research question. There was direct verbatim plagiarism, but many ideas that were stolen were

I question, I don't call her Dr. Gay. I called her Claudine Gay because to get a PhD, you're supposed to have original work that you defend. And from my perspective, if that work, parts of it is plagiarized, then there's a serious issue there. She's only made a few corrections of her work.

And the 11 articles that she published, three quarters of them were pleasure rise. I was not the only person pleasure rise. I believe there may be 20 people altogether. It's quite a few. And there are about 50 instances of pleasure. She's earning $900,000 a year.

her Harvard presidential salary. She was allowed to keep it. And to add insult to injury, there's a lot of insult to injury when it comes to me because she's never apologized, never reached out to me. She's teaching a course in the fall on reading and research ethics.

Wow. Wow. Okay. So part of the reason I wanted to talk to you was because I was following the Claudine Gay story as it so painfully unfolded, and I learned about you. And then a mystery sort of emerged for me, and maybe you can help me. It's, what would you say, dangerous ground to tread on, but I'm going to try to weave my way through it nonetheless. You would think that

if you thought about this situation rationally, and maybe even with a certain degree of cynicism, that you would be a much better poster boy for the Democrat progressives than Claudine Gay. Because

There's the racial issue, obviously, which unfortunately in this day and age can't be overlooked. But Claudine Gay came from a privileged background, from an economic perspective. And her family is very powerful, I believe, in Haiti, which is already...

is something that stirs up all sorts of questions given the state of that country and she was by no means oppressed at least on economic grounds and you came from well the archetypal rags to riches situation fundamentally and you're making claims that claudine gay used your

original work to build herself a pseudo career and hasn't been called out on it. Okay, so I don't understand why this isn't a much bigger scandal than it is. Because I can't imagine anybody situated to be more credible than you to bring up these sorts of allegations, which you just duplicated and even extended, describing your unwillingness even to

describe her with her hypothetical academic credential, doctor. And so you're obviously not very happy about this. So what ideas do you believe that she took from you? Why does it matter? What should happen with her? What has happened and what hasn't happened? Like, I know she still has her tenured faculty position at Harvard, and I can't understand that because if she was

Crooked enough to be taken out of her position as president for plagiarism. She is clearly, if that was the reason, she's clearly not

to be a professor at Harvard. Because in my way of thinking about things, being a professor at Harvard is not a lesser position than being the president of Harvard. That's an administrative position and it's key administrative position, but tenured professor at Harvard, that's a very hard thing to manage. And you don't get to have that if there are questions, for example, about whether or not you bloody well plagiarized all of your academic work.

So and I don't understand. OK, so can you help me? Tell me what's going on. Well, I can tell you that progressives never supported me, even when I was hired at Princeton. It was the conservative professors that were so delighted at me.

at what I presented. And when I was hired, I had a National Science, I had had a National Science Foundation grant for my dissertation research. I had a Harvard Press contract on my, on a book. And I had offers of signing bonuses. I had my own short list. Back in those days, I was hired in 1989, started in 1990.

They held all professors to high standards. And to get tenured in the Ivy League, you had to have path-breaking work. The work needs to be considered seminal. And I met those standards. But early on, the progressives did not like me. One of the professors who is at Harvard today, I could name her,

She is a friend of Claudine Gay, but she sat me down the first week I was on campus and told me that I acted as if I didn't need black people, that I couldn't trust white people, that white people would sell me down the river. And so I was never the poster child for the progressives because I

I did not fit that narrative. And I was told many times that I did not need to share my background because I've always shared where I came from. That was always an embarrassment to the progressives. And so look at Claudine Gaye.

And during the time that I was at Princeton and sometimes I was on admission committees, I saw them pick Blacks that had weaker academic credentials, but the right pedigree. Claudine Gay, Phillips Exeter Academy, undergrad at Stanford and Princeton, and then the Ph.D. from Harvard.

she had the right pedigree. They have always used affirmative action to handpick the people that they wanted. And I think about Claudine Gay and other minorities that I have encountered. For some reason, white women

or the people who run universities have always favored the angry blacks. And they have wanted those in my mind who had weaker credentials. And so I was never rewarded. I never received a, a cheered position while I was in academia and the environment was just not conducive to my thriving. And I left academia in 2017,

The immediate catalyst for that was 2016. I wrote an opinion piece criticizing Islam. It created a firestorm. My circumstances changed. The university distanced itself from me. And at some point, I realized I couldn't be my best self.

Under those circumstances, I was not getting any younger. And so I took early retirement and I had to reinvent myself. I walked away from the tenure that I worked so hard to earn and I

I can tell you that I'm very sad because I love students. And I assumed that I would be teaching until I retired at a normal age. But I took the early retirement and I knew nothing about Claudine Gay still in my research until December 10th when the Chris Ruffo story broke.

And I was willing to give her the benefit of a doubt because I thought maybe it was an accident. You know, I didn't realize until I started reading her work that

that her dissertation itself was framed around my work and some of her early articles. And she essentially, uh, set up a straw man using my work without doing it the way professors are taught, uh, to disagree. Like normally, if you want to take, you can take down anyone, but you say, uh, who you're taking down, why they're wrong. You lay out a case, uh,

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Okay, so I didn't understand that you had only really come across this problem after the plagiarism scandal broke with Christopher Ruffo. Okay, so that's part of the reason why it's received less attention than it might have. See, I'm still wrestling with this because you say, you know, you've said a bunch of things that are very provocative in the last tranche of your statements. You said you didn't fit the progressive narrative.

Now, it's a weird thing. You know, I kind of see this with Ayaan Hirsi Ali as well. You know, I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel. Oh, it must be 15 years ago. And I thought, oh my God, this woman, she's just unbelievable. She's so tough. She's so forthright. She comes from this backwards African place under, you know,

fighting against extreme odds. She makes it to the Netherlands. She makes something of herself. She's stunningly articulate. She's brave beyond belief. You would presume that the feminists and the progressives would be hoisting her up on their shoulders as a triumphant example of what a woman can achieve on the basis of her character and the nobility of her intellect. And yet,

She's regarded with enmity among the so-called progressives. Now, and you're telling a story that's very similar. And then you added something to it that's even stranger, you know, and really difficult to wrap your head around. So you said it's been your experience in academia that the white progressives in particular who didn't like you

We're very much inclined to pick the angry blacks, let's say, angry resentful blacks with an ax to grind, with lesser academic credentials. Okay, so now you got to think about, well, why the hell is that? Is that you could imagine an element of racism, which would be, if you're going to have black people around, you want to make sure that you have the great advantage of being able to look down on them, at least for some reason.

If they're at least of the right class, then you don't have to put up with their annoying working class idiosyncrasies. And then, but that's so nefarious, you know, it's so nefarious. It's a kind of racism that's so, it's much worse than the racism of low expectations, right? It's actually...

What is it exactly? Is that it is just pure old fashioned racism. I believe that the progressives in academia, they believe that racial and ethnic minorities are inferior. I'm sure you have heard, or you're familiar with the fact that there are progressives who have labeled Booker T. Washington's up from slavery as a fiction, a work of fiction. And so the progressives, uh,

they have to maintain this thing of all minorities being victims and black people and people of color not being able to do anything for themselves. And when they run across those of us who defy that narrative, there's no place for us. And in my experiences, they have always rewarded those that fit the stereotype. Or who are willing to exploit it. Okay. So I think you put your finger on, on this, the core issue here. So I,

Most of the pathology on the campuses and in the broader political sphere that I see now, I attribute to the forceful imposition of a victim victimizer narrative.

It's pretty straightforward, right? It's a postmodern derivative of Marxism, essentially, although the pedigree of such ideas goes way back before Marx, into the French Revolution, way back before then, into the biblical story of Cain and Abel, right? The resentful Cain who always construes himself as a victim, who wants to pull down his ideal, who wants to shake his fist at God. It's a very old story. Okay, so you're...

essentially is that because you didn't play the role of victim, didn't regard yourself as a victim and did take advantage in the positive way of the benefits that the system

offered you, including the mentorship of primarily conservative people, and that you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps. Although you said you had people who were encouraging you and helping you, that you're exactly the sort of person that indicates that the victim-victimizer narrative is wrong. Now, do you put Clarence Thomas in the same category? I met Justice Thomas. We had a very lovely time for about two hours.

It was like meeting an old friend. It was quite striking. And I think it was partly because there are elements of our background that were oddly similar. You know, like my father was, my grandfather was essentially, was he a sharecropper in Saskatchewan? Close enough. He lived in a log cabin. And so I'm one generation farther along than you with regards to, you know, the separation from poverty. But it's...

It's not that far back in the past. I knew my grandfather quite well. He died about 15 years ago, but I knew him quite well. And talking to Clarence Thomas, I mean, I really enjoyed speaking with him. He was extremely warm and he had...

done everything he could to put his life together and stunningly successfully. And so I think it is the situation like you and with Diane as well as you're the worst sort of enemy for the progressives because you had the temerity to be a minority and be successful. And I see the same thing with this burgeoning anti-Semitism. The big problem with the Jews, so to speak, is that they're a minority with the temerity to be successful. I know. And so-

Yeah, yeah, so I see. So that's the rule, and that's the basis of this racism, is that if we're going to uphold the victim-victimizer narrative, our worst enemies are minority people who've made a success of themselves. And you know something? I feel like that the people in academia, for someone like me, if they can destroy us, they do.

And I'm still standing. And some of the attacks on me, most of the attacks have backfired in a way that it just gave me a greater platform. But I think being a strong individualist, I've always been a strong individualist. And that's not something that's welcomed.

When I think about my being more conservative, I did not think of myself as a conservative when I was in undergrad. I wrote my senior paper on affirmative action and I was critical of it. And that was because I felt like it was hurting minorities even back then.

And certainly today I see how it has hurt minorities. And the worst thing is this diversity, equity and inclusion, because it's like affirmative action on steroids. And I strongly believe that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is what benefited me, millions of other people, you know, blacks.

Even some whites and women benefited from an environment that focused on non-discrimination, equal opportunity, outreach. I think about my success. I had an equal opportunity to succeed or fail. The outcome wasn't guaranteed. I chose, you know, to become an honors student. I worked hard for that. I knew that if I distinguished myself, it would make a difference.

But they are just telling all minorities, no matter where you come from, that you can't because of racism. And they are erasing the successes. Except Asians. Yes. Well, they are considered white, honorary whites. Right. Worse than whites, maybe, just like the Jews. So, OK, so I'm going to tell you a story because I want to get to the heart of this matter with regards to DEI. So I worked at Harvard for seven years.

And I became friends with the dean of admissions there. And I was very interested in predictors of future success. So I did a whole research project at Harvard trying to identify predictors

personality and cognitive attributes that were predictive of success in managerial positions, working class positions, creative positions, entrepreneurial positions, and so forth. It was a pure research enterprise, and that took me deep into the IQ and the personality literature before I knew anything about the political ramifications.

Okay, so what I found out was this. I found out, first of all, that SATs, GREs, all the standardized tests that are used to gatekeep admission to high-level schools

institutions of higher education were essentially tests of verbal IQ. And now people deny that, but that's because they don't know what the hell they're talking about. I know this literature inside out and backwards. And so their IQ tests. Now, I talked to Dean Whitlaw about admissions policies at Harvard.

And he told me that without an affirmative action structure, that there would be very few black people in the Ivy Leagues. And so Dean, I wouldn't say was either a liberal or a conservative as far as I was concerned. I think what he was trying to do was to find the best people, the best undergraduates to come to Harvard. And so now, so that's a problem.

Now, another problem is that if you just use SATs and GREs and so forth, you're going to get a majority, a disproportionate number of Asians and Jews. So that's also going to happen. And then there's a third problem. So I talked to this guy named Adrian Woodward. He used to work for The Economist, very smart man. He wrote a book on the history of merit.

And he pointed out that if you don't use objective classifications of merit for your hiring and your promotion, the systems that don't rely on objective merit default to dynasty and nepotism.

So you don't get some sort of egalitarian equity if you scrap objective tests. What you get is who you know, who you're related to, who can pull strings, and who can put your name forward. Well, that's what's happening. But we're in a real conundrum, right? Because if

If we use purely objective tests, then we don't get an equal distribution of applicants from the ethnic and racial groups. We get a lot more Jews and we get. Yep. Go ahead. Well, I mean, I've given that a lot of thought and I believe that racial and ethnic minorities can meet any standard put before them. But when they started lowering the standards,

So far with affirmative action, people learned what they had to do if you are black to get into Harvard or to get into the elite schools. And I can tell you my success story would not have been a success story if I had not gone to that community college, taken remedial math, gone to Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, the Liberoite School, and then Virginia Tech. And I

I was never in an environment where I was struggling. And my personality is such that if I were at the bottom of the class, if I were failing a class, I would quit. I would have quit because I needed to do well. And so they are harming racial and ethnic minorities that have high standards that really could have been successful at a state school or somewhere else when they bring them in to make them feel good. I believe that

If you hold everyone to the same standard, you will have fewer racial and ethnic minorities, uh,

maybe, but now, you know, people have had so many opportunities. I don't know how many fewer, but once people learn what the standards are that they have to meet to go to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, wherever they want to go, I have confidence in racial and ethnic minorities being able to rise to meet that standard. And even before affirmative action during the era when there was blatant discrimination, the schools in New England, and I would say Harvard too,

If minorities were qualified, they admitted them. So they had graduates, but not in large numbers. And now we believe that there has to be a certain percentage. I don't think there has to be a certain percentage. The difference between back when I came through and now is equity. They're seeking equal outcomes and they believe that you need people in certain percentages to

When I came through, it was equal opportunity. You had an equal opportunity to succeed or to fail. Our friends over at Legacy Box offer a simple and safe solution for digitizing all your memories. Do you know where that old box of home movies is? Have you checked to make sure it isn't in an environment that's too hot or too damp?

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Well, the other problem with the bloody equity idea is that there's no limit to the number of ways you can categorize people. And so the idea that we're going to get to some sort of utopia where every single person, regardless of how you categorize them intersectionally, all of those people are going to be represented in every single category.

in numbers equivalent to their proportion in the population. It's such an absurd idea that you'd have to be educated at an Ivy League school for many years before you'd become daft enough to believe it, even on arithmetic principles alone. It's so preposterous. And so the question is exactly what's motivating. And it's especially weird because it's,

It really strikes me. Okay, so there's a worse thing about this too, as far as I'm concerned. So, you know, I was bounced out of academia about the same time you were, and under circumstances that were broadly similar, let's say. You were asking questions, and for me, I think that I fell out of favor when Bowen and Bach published The Shape of the River, and I started talking about affirmative action. I wrote an op-ed piece about

I favorite class based race neutral affirmative action. That was not what the elites wanted. And that was part of the beginning, beginning to the beginning to the end for me.

Yeah, well, I stood up against a bill in Canada that mandated pronoun use. But I was also no fan, for example, of affirmative action because I think it's clear that it does more harm than good. I think it's clear now. So there's another way it does harm. And this is an ugly little thing too, but I believe it's true. As the DEI movement gained steam,

I found myself looking with increasing suspicion on anyone who was black, let's say, or gay. Anybody who could have benefited from preferential treatment under the DEI rubric, I started to become skeptical of. It was like maybe I'd be on a panel with someone, maybe we'd be on the same side or different sides, but

That person, say, on the opposite side would be the member of a favored minority. And I'd think, just who the hell are you and how did you get your position? And this really makes me ill. Well, and I saw this at Harvard, too, you know, because the black kids there that I got to know, they had an additional burden to bear. Like all the kids who go to Harvard have a burden.

have imposter syndrome when they first get there. If you don't have imposter syndrome, there's something wrong with you, right? But then the minority kids who've benefited from the DEI approach, they've got a lot bigger helping of imposter syndrome because it isn't exactly obvious to them and also to the people around them exactly what they're doing there. And

that's perfectly fine for the scoundrels and scamps who are willing to twist the system to their benefit, who feel no shame for doing so. But for people who've actually worked their tails to the bone, let's say, worked their hands to the bone in order to move ahead and to be credible, to have that shadow of doubt cast on them is, well, that's Satan's choice. There's nothing worse than punishing people for their virtues. And you punish people

People who've got ahead on the basis of merit by using DEI standards. I agree. And I think that with the way the system is set up, it makes these students angry. And they set up these systems.

segregated spaces, these safe spaces. And they encourage, they've basically set up a system of segregation within colleges and universities. Racial and ethnic minorities are angry. And I think they have a reason to be angry because they know they're being used. And if you can't do the work, of course, and you're being told that white people are responsible, you

you're the victim and they've done all these things to you. All this campus unrest, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they have used diversity, the progressives, to bring in people who are not academically prepared to do the work. And so they band together and now they've lowered standards to the point that if you get your feet in the door at an Ivy League institution, many of the state schools, they're going to pass you along. You'll get your degree, but you won't know anything.

Well, the other thing that happens too, although the decrease in standards is starting to mitigate against this, is like if you would... I spend a lot of time studying the literature on managerial success. There's quite an extensive business literature on managerial success. And one of the findings of the managerial literature is that many managers fail because they're promoted to a position that they're not actually competent to manage. The Peter Principle.

Exactly that. And the rule as an employer is something like, and I've learned this the hard way with my enterprises, do not do someone a favor when you're hiring them because it's not a favor. If you take someone and you aren't thoroughly convinced that they're competent for the job, all you're doing is either setting them up for eventual failure or

or you're downloading all their obligations to their minions who will have to work much harder under the thumb of an incompetent who's likely to become a tyrant joylessly and without credit to pick up the overflow. And there is nothing in that. You also simultaneously demoralize the other managers who were hired on merit. It's a catastrophe. And

And I see that happening in spades in academia. And so one of the consequences of that, at least early on, was that there might have been a disproportionate number of unqualified minority students being admitted, but the probability that they would actually graduate was very low. So they tended to... Well, and then you can understand how that would even further heighten racial tension, because if you're brought into a school...

And everybody tells you that you belong there, and then you fail. It's very attractive, especially if you're being shouted at by the progressives to do this constantly, to blame something like systemic racism for your failure. Yeah, right. Well, and you can understand why, and

And we're focused on higher education. Look what they're doing at K through 12, where they're telling, you know, minority children, they're telling everyone that math is racist. There's almost no job that you can do that you don't need math. Even an artist needs math. And so they're taking minority students and rather than trying to equip the ones, you know, that have the ability to learn math,

They're telling them that if you're not doing well in math, it's because it's racist.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and again, that's an extremely... So psychologically, that's extremely demoralizing. Like we know that people who have an external locus of control, that's the technical term. You may have encountered this in your psychology classes. If you believe that your life is governed by external forces, you allow yourself to believe that, you're much more likely to be ineffectual, depressed, anxious, and hopeless.

Okay, so that's not a great outcome because you don't succeed plus you're miserable and you and you have no happiness Those are separable things

right? And so, whereas if you have an internal locus of control and you believe that you're an active agent in the construction of your own destiny, then you obviously have to take on more responsibility, but you have a lot more hope and you're much less likely to be depressed and anxious, and you're more likely to be effectual and successful. And the victim-victimizer narrative is an external locus of control narrative. It's like,

You can't succeed. These cards are stacked against you by evil, malevolent people who perhaps were even around before you were born. There's nothing you can do. Well, you know, and then if you do fail, it's because of these, you know, forces that are arrayed against you. And of course, there is some corruption in the systems and there has been racism and ethnic bias. And so there's some of that criticism that's true. But as a

comprehensive explanatory framework, well, it's the victim-victimizer narrative that turns the world into enmity. Let me say this.

I believe that what progressives are doing to minority communities, Black and Hispanic, that is criminal. And part of it is that they really do want to overthrow traditional institutions. And the crime and the dysfunctional behavior that you find in the Black community, progressives excuse it. They encourage it. And so they're really using people's misery. Even

Even with the LGBTQ community, they're using people's misery to advance a political goal. I don't think they care anything about any of the groups that they claim to represent. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay, so let's delve into that a little bit. So there's a section of the literature on psychopathology that includes what are called cluster B personality disorders.

Okay, so if you have a cluster B personality disorder, one of them is histrionic. That's sort of a derivation of the old Freudian hysteric. You're dramatic. Everything around you is a drama, right? You're a drama queen because it's often a female pathology, by the way, histrionic personality disorder. So you're a drama queen. You play the victim. You make...

Mountains out of molehills continually. You take a simple situation and you complicate it, and you make sure that the attention is focused on you while you're dealing like a martyr with your difficult life. So that's histrionic. That's not much fun. Narcissistic, which means you want unearned social attention and status, and you'll do anything to get it. Then there's

borderline personality disorder, which is probably the most serious of all the personality disorders and it's characterized by a pronounced tendency to victim victimize and by radical emotional instability and so that's not much fun and then you have antisocial personality disorder in that Category as well and that's more male and it's it leads more to like overt criminality Okay, so now

The reason I'm telling you that is because those are the people who are most likely to pathologize a victim-victimizer narrative. So if you're dealing with someone who's in that personality disorder cluster, and they're after power and attention, the way they camouflage that is by presenting themselves either as a victim or as an ally of victims.

So, right. So that's fun. So like the most serious personality disordered types are the kind who will use their own misery, even if it's self-induced and the misery of others to camouflage their own power seeking. And I see a tremendous amount of that in the so-called progressive movement because they are, you put your finger on it. They're using and probably abetting

The misery of others, these ethnic minority groups they claim to be compassionate to, they're using that as a justification for their own ideology and for their own power striving. And that happens even within families is the real cluster B types, they'll make victims out of their own children just so they can parade themselves as martyrs. It's really ugly, it's really ugly.

Well, you know, to go to something positive, I feel like these people are strategically placed, but they are by no means the majority. And whether we're talking about Congress that's dysfunctional, it's because the people who have common sense have no courage because they could stand up to the extremists.

And I believe the extremists, the ones that are driving the agenda, they are a minority, but they are placed in a way everyone's afraid to challenge them. Yeah, well, there's no doubt they're a minority. You know, there's no doubt there's a minority. But the thing is,

You don't want to underestimate the strategic brilliance of the approach. Because if I position myself as either a victim or an ally of victims, which is even more convenient because then I don't have to go through the trouble of being a victim. But now I've got, now I'm,

making the case that everything compassionate and loving resides in me. They believe it. And so I know they do. Well, but then the upshot of that is, so I'm one of these people now compassionate to a fault. Now, if you oppose me, I can easily just say, well, you're against compassion.

What sort of person is against compassion? It's only the worst of the predators that could possibly be against compassion. You wouldn't be one of the worst of the predators, would you be? And so that's the accusations that come out right away. You know, and if those are made out against people who have some conscience, and so the typical conservative, for example, tends to be high in conscientiousness, if you

Make allegations like that especially as a mob against someone conscientious the conscientious person is likely to think oh my god All these people are upset with me You know I probably did something wrong and maybe I am a little more sexist than I should be and maybe I am a little more racist and

You know, the psychopaths and the cluster B types, they have no shame. So if you accuse them of something, they don't care. But if you accuse a conservative or someone of decent moral standing, you're going to put them back on their heels. And that's also part of the reason that people are afraid to speak.

Well, that's why the conservatives appear at times to be losing. And I can tell you with my interactions with Harvard University through my lawyers, you know, they don't care. Claudine Gay has one of the best lawyers in the country. And there's been no apologies. And the insult to injury when it comes to the plagiarism is that they have never acknowledged that Carol Swain exists. Well, we're going to do something about that.

Yeah, I think your story is... You see, there's another problem with your story, eh? This is always the case with situations like this. And this is really where we find ourself. So look, here's the option that confronts people who come across your story sort of casually, okay? They can assume that...

You know, you came up from poverty and you worked your way through the university system with merit on the basis of merit. And you became a professor and you did your work and it was plagiarized. And it was plagiarized by none other than the president of the world's foremost university,

which indicates a depth of rot in that institution that's so deep that it's almost incomprehensible. That's also characteristic of many other institutions. So that's what you're asking them to believe. Or they can take the easy route out and say, well, Dr. Swain,

She's doing this for personal reasons. She's after status. Like writing you off is a way easier option. No, no. That's how they would write me off. They would write me off as a right-wing extremist because Claudia Gage's defense has been it's racism. There are racists that are going after her.

And for them to acknowledge that I'm a black woman, you know, that has worked very hard in her career, you know, has been distinguished as a professor. They're not going there. So they're just totally ignoring the fact that I exist. And as far as I'm concerned, of all the people that Claudine Gay plagiarized, I have the greatest claim against her because her dissertation where she got her Ph.D. that started her career was framed around my work, her early articles.

And then if you look at her, she's been fraudulent all of her life. And there's no evidence of a conscience. And certainly Harvard University, the corporation, has no conscience. They're not even willing to have a discussion with my attorneys. Okay, so let me, I want to push back against all that because, well, it's necessary to straighten all this out. So...

Imagine earning a degree that prepares you with real skills for the real world. Capella University's programs teach skills relevant to your career so you can apply what you learn right away. Learn how Capella can make a difference in your life at capella.edu. Are there people in the academic community who have a reputation that you believe to be credible who presume that your claims of plagiarism are accurate and justified? Yes.

Okay, okay. So can you talk about... Some of them are at Yale, but I don't know if they'd appreciate me giving out their names. I think it's fear. Okay, well, that's fine. It's fear that has kept some people from going against Harvard. And for me, I'm retired from academia. I'm doing other things now. And so if I were still in academia...

I probably would pursue it, but most people who still have a career in academia would be afraid to get involved. And when I think about Harvard and one of the things I want to talk about with you is I think that it's necessary to hold them accountable in multiple ways. There are other professors other than Claudine Gay who have plagiarized. And some of this is because of DEI.

I would be very interested in someone trying to identify a class of people who have been harmed by Harvard and the plagiarism of their work. And so I think that needs to be pursued.

Well, the undergraduates have been harmed by it. You know, if they have professors who aren't bloody well qualified, who are also crooked, who are plagiarizing, and who are teaching research ethics, then they've been harmed because

Because there's, I can't imagine virtually anything more fraudulent than that. Well, someone needs to start a class action, you know, set up the website, try to identify the class of people. And you need, you know, brilliant lawyers who can identify what the class should look like. And that's something that needs to be done. I myself have attorneys.

We have a complaint for copyright infringement. It was supposed to be filed on June 24th,

One of my friends who's a distinguished professor at a university looked at it and he said, there's considerable risk to you. You can be sued personally if Harvard makes a motion to dismiss under copyright law. Copyright law is set up in such a way that the judge can order you to pay the court costs of the winning side. And so I could find myself

paying for Harvard's lawyers and the court costs. And I was told that with copyright infringement and plagiarism, in academia, it has not been pushed. There's really no...

No criminal or even civil penalties straightforward for plagiarism. And so when Harvard was approached with the demand letter, they responded that that ideas, you know, can't be you can't use copyright infringement ideas anymore.

law to protect ideas. They said that her plagiarism of my work was de minimis, meaning it wasn't that serious, and that it was fair use. I don't know that the lawyers know who I am or they actually read her dissertation, read my work.

But they said that if we pursued it, I would be we would be engaged in a frivolous lawsuit and that I would be responsible for their legal fees. That gave me pause. I still may file the copyright infringement lawsuit.

a complaint because I think I have a strong case, but financially I can't afford to pay for Harvard's lawyers. There's considerable risk to me and I'm paying for my own lawyers. And so that's one thing that there's an individual action that I would like to pursue.

I'm willing to help someone else set up a class action that I would help advertise, but I'm not sure that I should be part of the class. But there needs to be a class action against Harvard. And then I have thought about taking my complaint and the letters from Harvard and publishing a book and just not filing the complaint, but exposing them.

And I'm sort of at a crossroads. I'm not sure what to do, but I cannot allow Harvard off the hook. They tried to redefine plagiarism as duplicative language.

And they have not done anything. Duplicative language, yeah. And have not done anything about the pleasure risks that they have on their faculty because some of them are DEI or HIRS. And since they are progressives and they believe minorities are inferior intellectually, they probably believe that the ends justify the means that if they deal with that DEI, HIRS, that they will not have enough Black people to satisfy whatever goal they're trying to accomplish.

Yeah, so you are in a tough situation, eh? Because first of all, you have Harvard with its infinite pool of money arrayed against you. So that's a problem. And second, sharp legal minds on her side. But also, you pointed to the fact that

Well, there isn't a lot of legal precedent for what you're doing. I mean, the rules for everybody watching and listening, you have to understand that in a functioning academic community, and Harvard was certainly like this, certainly through the 1990s, and I would say through most of the 2000s, if you plagiarized as a faculty member

Even accidentally, you were in really serious trouble. Like that was a big problem. Is that the prime no-no among academic researchers? It's certainly up there in the top two or three.

So, but now you're in a situation, you see, this is very problematic because if the university has defaulted on its obligation to pursue plagiarism rigorously, and now that's also what they're broadcasting to all their students, by the way, they're completely devaluing the notion of original contribution, which is the bread and butter of those engaged in academic inquiry. And so they've defaulted on their responsibility. Now,

Now you're trying to make a legal case. It's like, well, it isn't obvious at all that the legal framework allows such a case to be made because it hasn't been. So because you have to show, for example, that you had copyright and that her infringement actually caused you damages. And that's a really hard thing to that's going to be a hard thing to demonstrate in the legal realm with regards to academic discourse.

Because how the hell do you quantify the value of your ideas? It's not like you have a patent with a somewhat identifiable economic price tag on it. So I can see why you have pause. It's probably better

Is it better to publicize it widely, you know, in the manner that we're doing now with regards to a book, with regards to the podcast circuit to tell your story? That might be more effective. Well, let me tell you this. It's not about me, even though it is about me. It's about...

them in integrity and what universities are supposed to stand for. And I just don't believe that Harvard University, with its worldwide influence, has the right to lower the standards because if they lower it for higher education, it's going to affect K-12, even kids in fifth grade learn about pleasureism. And

And so they should not have the power to do something that's so impactful. And of course, it hurt my career because our work is based on citations. And if someone is building their career around your work and not citing you, they're cheating you out of citations. And then when caught, if the person says that they are being accused by people that are extremists, right wing,

I think that there's reputational harm. Why is Carol Swain pursuing this? I'm pursuing it because it's the right thing. It would benefit a lot of people. But I think I have suffered reputational harm, insult to injury, because Harvard has never even responded really other than the letter to the lawyer saying that I'll be sued if I go up against them and lose. Yeah, well, I would say, you know, it looks to me like your fight

may have just begun in some sense, you know, because, well, you we already talked about what you're asking the public to swallow. You know, I've been watching this billionaire, Bill Ackman on on Twitter, and he woke up after the devastating testimony of the UPenn, MIT and Harvard presidents at Congress. And he started paying attention and started to understand that the

That the Ivy Leagues need a new coat of paint, let's say. That's what he understands. Yes. No, they need a whole new foundation. Like, the rot is unbelievably deep. And the problem with your case is that it's pivotal in indicating that. Right? I mean, you just... I'm sure you've looked at it from the outside. But so, just to summarize, let's say, where we've been through in this discussion today. Like...

You might not be a poster child for the diversity, inclusivity and equity crowd, but you're definitely a poster child for the American dream. Right. Right. Seriously. Right. Seriously. And I love America. I love America. Well, another one of your right wing crimes. And so and so and so and you're of the same race.

background as Claudine Gay, given the idiot categories that we use now. And so you're a very credible witness testifying to the absolute corruption of Harvard, right? They actually put this woman in as president.

Right? They elected her to the highest possible position, despite the fact that she's radically unqualified and also crooked. Okay, so that's really bad. Well, it's not surprising that you have an uphill fight in front of you because that's a bitter pill to swallow. Like, I worked at Harvard from 93 to... 93 till 98, you know, and...

I really loved it there. The undergraduates were great. I really liked my colleagues. They were working like mad dogs. They didn't even like faculty meetings. They were very short so they could get back to their labs. They had a great sense of humor. It was a very intense place. It was focused on quality. The administration served the senior faculty, the undergraduates. It was an impressive institution. And it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to see it

disintegrate and become corrupt in the manner that's clearly occurring. And I haven't seen a case like yours that's a bigger testimony to exactly that fact. And so it's no bloody wonder that you're not being paid attention to because you're a very bitter pill to swallow. I mean, I agree. And my personality is such that I can't walk away from an injustice. But I want people to know that

What I'm doing or what I'm trying to do is not about me. It's bigger than me. And I feel like my life, one of the things God impressed on my mind was that he'd given me this story, the story of my life, and it wasn't about me. And so whatever happens...

it's like walking away is not really an option. I don't know how it would turn out, but if there, if there's a need for, for someone to organize or to set up the class, um,

where people can identify themselves that they've been victimized by Harvard, or maybe it's the whole, not just Harvard, other universities, they have the same problem. The universities need to be held accountable or there's no academic enterprise. People are just wasting their time. And so I think,

But something has to be done. And as far as whether or not I do an individual action, if I file a federal complaint, you know, it becomes a part of history. It becomes a part of the record. Does Harvard want that out there? Yeah.

But I do that at considerable risk to myself because I could get a judge like Judge Merchant, who threw the book at Trump, who decides to take away my home, my retirement, everything I've worked to accomplish. And so that gives me pause. I'm not a person who is fearful, but I'm asking myself at 70 years old, do you want to jeopardize your retirement? I've been, you know, dirt poor and I'm comfortable right now.

everything's on the line if I file this lawsuit. Well, Dr. Swain, you know, you did say something and I can share my experience a little bit with you because there's some parallels. You know, you said that the most vicious attacks on you have eventually turned in your favor. And okay, so I actually think there's a rule there. So look at what happens in the book of Job. So Job

is in a situation where really he loses virtually everything. Plus he becomes extremely ill to the point where his wife says, you know, there's nothing left for you to do, but shake your fist at God and die. And Job refuses to lose faith in himself, even though he's willing to admit to his errors. And he refuses to lose faith in providence. And the story ends with him

entering a life that's even more abundant than the one he left behind. Now, the intervening time is a little rough, but you haven't backed down. And so my guess is that as long as you continue to aim up and you say what you believe to be true, that people will rally around you

in a manner that introduces you to all sorts of people you wouldn't otherwise know, the same sort of people who are fighting the same sort of battles that you are, and that whatever you need to provide for you in your straightened financial condition as a consequence, let's say, of the lawfare, I think you'll find that it'll make itself manifest. I don't think people will forget you. I know what you're saying is true, and I think about David and Goliath, and

My faith tells me that I serve a big God. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Everything that I have came from him. And so I don't like the part of me that calculates and says, do I really want to risk everything? But...

That's, you know, that's what I'm working my way through. But spiritually and intellectually, I know that God has given me a platform. He's elevated me. Even having this interview today, the way it came about through Senator Bill Hagerty that made the introduction. Everything, you know, is so providential. I just need to be more courageous. Well, people are watching. Well, you know, the other...

No, I don't think so. I think that you need to be afraid of the right thing. Like you're afraid that the comfort that you've built is going to be stripped from you and that you'll be left bereft. And a sensible person would be afraid of that. But there is a corollary to that, which is

Do you want to lose your tongue? Do you want to lose your soul? And so you've actually got two things to be afraid of. And my guess, like the reason I forayed out into the public domain in 2016 was because a pack of half-wit bureaucrats wanted control over my tongue. And I thought, I know what happens when

the lying tyrannical state gets control of your tongue. I know what happens because I've studied totalitarian states my whole life. And so I understand what happens when people

Go along with the lie. It's not good. And so I thought, well, I don't care what happens to me. I'm not letting this pack of jackanapes take control over my tongue. And they want me to say words that are their coinage that I despise. It's like, go to hell, you pikers. I'm not doing it. And I don't care what happens to me. And it wasn't because I was brave. It was because I knew that there's nothing worse than losing control over your tongue. There is literally nothing worse than

I agree. And I know that the anti-Semitism that surrounded Martin Luther, but I feel very much like Martin Luther in feeling like here I stand, I can do no other because for me, I have no option but to go forward and I'm just wired to do what I do. But it just seems that

I'm always fighting a battle. It's always uphill. That's been the story of my life. And so that's the story of my life. And here I am, 70 years old. All of this stuff was dropped at my doorstep in December, and it has consumed me. It's taken me away from my memoir. It has just been all-consuming.

But I do believe that I can make a difference and maybe academia can be transformed and that in some ways we're winning the battle about DEI. I published a book in 2023 after the Supreme Court decision striking down race-based college admissions, the adversity of diversity. And at that time, a lot of people did not know what DEI was all about, regular Americans.

Now they do. And I argued that diversity, equity and inclusion programs violate the Constitution and our civil rights laws in the same way as education.

as the race-based college admissions and that these programs would fail, but also we can have diversity without discrimination. And I believe that racial and ethnic minorities can meet any standards you put before them and that what is taking place through the DEI regime is destructive to our whole society. And I think the critical race theory that has painted all white people as, um,

all minorities as victims and all white people, even those in Appalachia as a privilege that this stuff is ludicrous, shaming little white children because of the skull, the color of their skin. You know, that is just horrible that we would have ever done that. We,

We were doing it and people were standing by it. And so these are battles that I don't even feel like I have a choice about fighting. But I did not see the Harvard situation coming on. It has consumed me. And so here we are.

All right, ma'am. So I think that's a good place to stop. Please keep me posted with regards to what you're up to. I'm going to send you an invitation to our Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, too. I really like you to come to that because, you know, you'll find people there that I think you'll

Maybe you'll find a place there, you know, that would be good. It wouldn't surprise me in the least. And there's lots of people who are keeping an eye on what's happening to you. Like lots of the people I know who are watching and plenty of people will be watching this podcast. So, you know, I don't know whether your best tack is on the legal front or whether it's on the broader publicity side, but, uh,

This isn't over. It's not over. And it's not over for Harvard. Not in the least. And they might think it is, but it's not. So good luck with your continued efforts and

I hope that this isn't enough to demoralize you. But like I said, there's plenty of people who are watching what's going on with you. Well, thank you. And thank you for all you do. And I do believe we can transform academia and it's going to affect K through 12 education. And it's well worth the battle.

Yep. Yeah, exactly. All right. So for everybody watching and listening, I'm going to continue to talk to Dr. Swain on the Daily Wire side for half an hour. So you could give some consideration to joining us there. I think I'll delve some more into her background, a little bit more and some more about her ideas with regards to what might constitute a reasonable alternative on the hiring front since she wrote a whole book about it. And so join us there if you'd like. Thank you to the film crew up here in Northern Ontario.

Thank you, Dr. Swain, very much for telling us what's been going on. Thank you. Imagine earning a degree that prepares you with real skills for the real world. Capella University's programs teach skills relevant to your career so you can apply what you learn right away. Learn how Capella can make a difference in your life at capella.edu.