Scientist cited in push to oust Harvard’s Claudine Gay has links to eugenicists

Christopher Rufo in Sarasota, Florida, on 25 January 2023. Photograph: Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post via Getty Images

A data scientist promoted by the rightwing activist Christopher Rufo, the Manhattan Institute thinktank, and other conservatives as an expert critic of the former Harvard president Claudine Gay has co-authored several papers in collaboration with a network of scholars who have been broadly criticized as eugenicists, or scientific racists.

Rufo described Jonatan Pallesen as “a Danish data scientist who has raised new questions about Claudine Gay’s use – and potential misuse – of data in her PhD thesis” in an interview published in his newsletter and on the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal website last Friday.