MARTIN HACKWORTH: Some bells you can’t un-ring: The tragedy of the Claudine Gay saga isn’t plagiarism; it’s that she was the president of an Ivy League school in the first place. “The academy is on life support if Gay is, indeed, supposed to be among the cream of the crop.”

The academy survives on prestige, and she’s dealt it the single worst blow it’s ever received. Even the celebrity admissions scandals carried the subtext that maybe these institutions were corrupt, but look how badly people wanted to get in. Now it’s like why would you want so badly to get in?