Dr. Claudine Gay has resigned as president of Harvard University. A tepid nonresponse to congressional questioning about opposing antisemitism and calls for genocide of Jewish people on college campuses was enough to doom Liz Magill, former president of the University of Pennsylvania. But Dr. Gay survived that fray, only to be done in by evidence of multiple instances of plagiarism in her scholarship, including her Ph.D. dissertation.

In her resignation letter, Dr. Gay opted not to address the plagiarism (which the Harvard Corporation -- its governing body -- had referred to as "missteps," "inadequate citation," and "duplicative language") but defended her own academic standards and expressed hope for a brighter future in her continued role as a faculty member.

But the circumstances surrounding Gay's resignation seem more likely to expose the deep fissures between academia and the rest of society.

Some at Harvard had bitterly complained about the university's hypocrisy -- that the grace and forgiveness offered to Gay in the wake of her evident plagiarism would not have been extended to students under Harvard's own plagiarism policies. (Harvard's history of enforcing plagiarism standards against faculty -- even prior to the present controversy -- has been spotty.) Others are happy to see Gay go, assuming that the antipathy to Jewish students will abate now that she is out of the president's office.

Still, others admit but downplay Gay's plagiarism, bemoaning the fact that political conservatives exposed it. (Academic standards are........

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