Dem
51
GOP
49
Earlier this week, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) was riding high, having gotten a lot of press for her "fight" against antisemitism at America's elite universities, and for having cost Penn president Liz Magill her job. The Representative was hoping to spend the rest of the week bringing down Harvard president Claudine Gay and MIT president Sally Kornbluth.
Yesterday, things definitely took a turn for the worse. Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) is also on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and she wanted to work with Stefanik on the antisemitism problem. So, Manning showed Stefanik a draft of a letter to the governing boards of Penn, Harvard and MIT. Ultimately, it became clear that the two representatives had different goals, so Manning broke off the collaboration. That did not, however, stop Stefanik from plagiarizing a sizable chunk of Manning's letter. You can see the two letters here, if you wish; Stefanik's is the one on the left. In any event, the lifting couldn't be clearer.
Now, Stefanik could plausibly have defused this in two ways. She could have said something like: "We were working together, and I did not realize that my colleague was no longer OK with a collaborative letter. I apologize for the misunderstanding." Or, she could have said: "Both of our letters were substantially influenced by releases from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is why they are similar." Instead, Stefanik lashed out: "Desperate and deranged Democrats are now attacking us for uniting the country around calls for these university presidents to be fired."
Why wasn't Stefanik willing to admit her work wasn't original, even if by accident? It might just be because she attacked Gay for... plagiarism. It also does not help that in the parts of the two letters that WERE different, Manning was focused on combating antisemitism, while Stefanik was focused on forcing the resignations of the three presidents. As Manning put it yesterday:
When I shared my letter with @RepStefanik to try to make this a bipartisan effort, she made it clear with her "edits" that she didn't care about protecting Jewish students. All she cared about was calling for the resignation of university presidents to score political points.
Seems like we've heard that before.
Anyhow, Stefanik is now playing defense and, on top of that, Harvard has already announced that Gay will remain in her post, while MIT has signaled that a similar announcement about Kornbluth is imminent. What a difference a day makes. (Z)