December 12, 2023
"Claudine Gay will stay on as president of Harvard University, the school’s governing board announced on Tuesday, despite an uproar..."
"... over her evasive answers at a congressional hearing about campus antisemitism.... 'As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University,' said a statement signed by all of the board members other than Dr. Gay. 'Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.'
The statement goes on, however, to acknowledge that Dr. Gay had made mistakes, including in her initial reaction to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.... About 700 members of Harvard’s faculty, and hundreds more alumni, came to her defense in several open letters. One of the letters, from Black faculty members, called the attacks on the president 'specious and politically motivated.' The letter, which was drafted and signed by some of Harvard’s most prominent professors, said that Dr. Gay 'should be given the chance to fulfill her term to demonstrate her vision for Harvard.'"
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114 comments:
She should not be referred to as Dr. Gay if she plagiarized her dissertation.
The letter, which was drafted and signed by some of Harvard’s most prominent professors..
Can you imagine the empty credentialed arrogance of "some of Harvard's most prominent professors? I'm sure they are all male and female Karens like Elizabeth Warren.
Harvard and Gay: Perfect together
Of course she's the right gal for Harvard:
1. DEI appointment - check
2. Questionable scholarship (plagiarism accusations; low publication in peer reviewed journals) - check
3. Victim mentality views - check
4. Commitment to fewer whites at Harvard - check
She's just what the leftists want.
I love this. Give her a raise for sticking it to the "man". The divide between good and evil broadens. Crack becomes major donor.
I guess they didn't see the whole plagiarism scandal yet.
Can’t fire a POC even if a POS
No mention of the plagiarism accusations.
Fools and knaves.
Good news for Harvard students caught plagiarizing.
Can’t decide whether Gay is Harvard’s Dylan Mulvaney or its Commodus. Might be a difference without distinction. Harvard’s greatest strength is its brand.
Good. Now they know where to look next as they try to salvage what they can of Harvard's tattered reputation.
Was this affirmation of support made before or after the plagiarism allegations?
When the donations dry up will Harvard wilt? Money seems to be the only leverage that can be used against the academic bubble.
Did anyone expect otherwise?
Sounds to me the board doesn't want to admit they made a mistake in choosing her earlier this year. How is what she said much different than what Magill of Penn said -- and look what happened there.
A preview for Democrats about the threatened backlash over removing Kamala Harris from the 2024 ticket?
“President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.”
Nothing about education, of course, just the social justice mission.
All the plagiarism will just be forgotten because of social justice.
No word on her plagiarism?
She's black - she can do what she wants. she can say what she wants. and she can preside over a hot-bed of woke DEI BS and historically insane anti-antisemitism and harassment of Jews. Because of her skin color.
The rot goes throughout the campus. She is the product of and exemplifies DEI to the core. No other ideology better demonstrates the Peter Principle and unfortunately there is no worse way to promote Truth (veritas), Knowledge and Beauty.
White woman fired, black female plagiarist retained despite both saying that advocating genocide is contextual. What better example of the DEI scam than this.
Unsurprising. And I am not sure she should she be cast out.
But people who pay for Harvard should start seriously considering other options. And not just because of their support and excusing of Hamas butchering. But because of their now, laughable record of free speech (FIRE has them rated as the worst of over 200 universities and colleges, setting a record low score for free speech). And because of their approach to education by color, their pursuit of bizarre 'social justice' education versus intellectual pursuit.
The reputation of Harvard was gained over literally centuries. It has taken only a couple of decades to make it a laughingstock, the butt of jokes. Hell, large legal offices are now actively looking to not interview Harvard grads. This is going to spill out into other industries, if it hasn't already.
Let Gay stay as President. And let Harvard stew in it's own shit. There is a world of other options for a good education. And frankly, given the number of Harvard grads currently running this country and its various departments, I'd say its well past time to get some new thinking in there. Perhaps a few people from the Midwest could bring some new perspectives?
The plagiarism is referenced in the Harvard board's letter, I see. I must correct my prior comment.
The fools and knaves part did not adequately characterize the board that has chosen to apply the lowest possible standards to the person holding the top job at the university.
I would add pathetic, destructive and cowardly.
Plagiarism is okay when you are a woke black woman
Time for a quiet boycott, like what Marvel and Star Wars fans are doing to Disney now.
Don’t send your kids there. Don’t donate. Don’t hire their grads.
No marches or speeches. Just don’t.
I notice that NPR and the Progressive Support Network have been trying very, very hard to keep the conversation focused on the disastrous Congressional Testimony last week, and have not allowed a word to be spoken edgewise on the plagiarism issues with her doctoral thesis, or her lack of standing in research. I'm not sure how serious these issues are; Some of the examples seem a bit stretched, to me. But I'm not the style guide for Harvard University. What do the policies and rule-books say? I don't make the rules about plagiarism, but if those are the new rules, then we all have to live by them. Right? Right, Dr. Gay?
cassandra lite said...
"Good news for Harvard students caught plagiarizing."
Maybe. Or perhaps only good for Harvard's affirmative action students.
Never believe reports of a firing until they are officially denied.
I predict she is not there come January 1
Not as president.
I'll be happy to see her go. Not necessarily for this. And maybe she is a good president for Harvard. I don't know enough about her to say.
But I do know we have to start Alynskying all these schools. If she is collateral damage, tough shit.
It's peanuts compared to what her crowd is doing to my president emerotis
John Henry
People supporting Black don’t crack.
"No word on her plagiarism?"
Was it plagiarism, or "plagiarism-plagiarism?" It depends on the context.
it's Good to know, that academic competence means nothing at Harvard.
Plagiarism is Just fine! Just as long as you hate Jews
Dr. Gay 'should be given the chance to fulfill her term to demonstrate her vision for Harvard.'"
Well, mission accomplished.
Of course. She's female, black and her name is Gay. And it is clear that her perspective, her testimony and past and present wokism reflect the Harvard way.
These actions are more illuminating than the campus demonstrations and her disastrous appearance before Congress.
"Carol Swain: What is bothering me is not just that there’s passages she didn’t put in quotation marks. When I look at her work, I feel like her whole research agenda, her whole career, was based on my work. It bothers me because I know that my work was a big deal in the early 1990s. And I started falling out of favor in 1995 when I started criticizing race-based affirmative action. I thought affirmative action should be means-tested and race-neutral. When I started putting those ideas out, that’s when I started falling out of favor and getting labeled as a conservative, even while I was a Democrat, and blacks started attacking me, calling me a “sellout.”
Swain: It’s clear to me that standards were lowered in the mid-1990s, and the elites came together and decided that they were going to defend affirmative action. It’s clear to me that she was a beneficiary of that. I blame her committee, and I blame white progressives equally. She should have known what constitutes plagiarism. And I would say in particular about the articles that she published that went through reviewers and the people on her committee, I would’ve thought they would have noticed she was doing research that was building on my work, that they would have acknowledged that she was building on my ideas. I also have no doubt that progressives have always elevated people who fit the bill of what they’re looking, and they needed someone like her."
https://www.city-journal.org/article/white-male-would-probably-already-be-gone
Harvard, like Anheuser Busch, has so much money that it's not going anywhere.
But, Harvard has Bud Lighted itself by this escapade.
Harvard will continue to to be the biggest brand in American higher ed, but its products will no longer be considered elite. It will use its massive financial resources to buy big name faculty, and publish lots of "research," but little by little, the shine will be tarnished.
Inshallah.
This is brilliant..
IMAGINE if...
Temujin said...
But people who pay for Harvard should start seriously considering other options
one thing is for sure, there is NO POINT in GRADUATING from Harvard (or any other Ivy)
Of the famous Harvard students (Bill Gates, Zuckerburg, etc), NONE of them stayed longer than it took to make networking connections. This is true for MOST schools now
Sergi Brin? Elon Musk? How long DID Elon go to Stanford? Two days? (after being accepted)
She had to be fired for the plagiarism alone.
Harvard is supposed to stand for academic excellence. She failed. She's an imposter.
Two of my high school classmates are Harvard alums. In fact, I adapted for the screen his novel, "Frankenstein, Part II." It is available on AMZN via the Althouse portal.
He said the teachers at Harvard weren't that great.
I must correct my prior comment.
You certainly weren't the only one. I'm curious what gave people the impression the statement did not mention her copy/paste problem. I heard it reported (half-listening to wife's preferred morning news channel) but it seems some sources must have left it out.
I'll give her credit regarding her apology. at least she apologized.
The MIT cretin should be forced out.
Wendy - 8:49 - thanks.
[.... and the elites came together and decided that they were going to defend affirmative action. It’s clear to me that she was a beneficiary of that. I blame her committee, and I blame white progressives equally...]
yes.
Of course.
Stefanik is gross.
Cato,
Add "Black" but not ADOS to her qualifications. You know, the kind of black that some people find stylish. Kamala is another example.
Gay was born in NY to Haitian immigrants. That is certainly not a criticism by me. I am just pointing out that she is not ADOS.
John Henry
They are keeping her because thats what she was hired for.
Good news for Harvard students caught plagiarizing.
...as with all things Harvard, the view on plagiarism is selective...
...and as I mentioned yesterday when I said she would not be fired, the Harvard endowment is a big pile of eff you money other institutions do not have. Harvard can ignore the demands from big donor alums. Alum demands are merely suggestions.
...the alums they chose to ignore will continue to write the big checks. There are reasons why they write the big checks and it isn't necessarily so Harvard will do as they say...
~ Gordon Pasha said...
"White woman fired, black female plagiarist retained despite both saying that advocating genocide is contextual. What better example of the DEI scam than this."
The "Intersectionality" strain of "Principals, not principles".
If I were a Harvard student, I would probably be tempted to openly plagiarize just as a test of the system.
Given grade inflation and massive student loan debt, Harvard's only selling point in this modern world of higher education is the reputation and prestige of the institution that it has accumulated for centuries.
Institutions can coast on reputation and prestige for a long time. Once it is gone, the collapse can come quite suddenly.
Good luck.
Well, she was successful in stopping a mass expulsion from campus. By equivocating on the code of conduct q, she avoided the “so what is the consequence” q. And the follow through from there. Imagine the PR and legal nightmare of suspending and/or expelling hundreds of students of varying types. Many of which didn’t/don’t even know what they’re marching about, I might add.
25 years in corporate America, it is well known that black women need to have felony charges already proven before they can get fired
--- I'm curious what gave people the impression the statement did not mention her copy/paste problem. I heard it reported (half-listening to wife's preferred morning news channel) but it seems some sources must have left it out. [MJB Wolf]
Mike, I read the NYT article on "reader view." Maybe it was truncated. But what I read had no reference to plagiarism and still doesn't. It was only when I read the board's letter on a stand-alone basis that I saw the paragraph about her "writings."
Plagiarism? Dems call it presidential chops nowadays.
Usually a statement of support from the owner is the kiss of death for a pro sports coach. We will see if that becomes true here.
She is now revealed and defended as an affirmative action hire. The black faculty who support her were instrumental in the punishment of a brilliant black economist named Roland Fryer. He was punished because he told some inconvenient truth.
That’s led him to observations that were a bit unsettling to higher-education orthodoxies. For example, Fryer found that the academic achievement gap accelerates between kindergarten and eighth grade. He also found that, controlling for a few variables, the initial disparity disappeared.
“Black kindergartners and white kindergartners with similar socioeconomic backgrounds” achieved at similar levels. “Adjusting the data for the effects of socioeconomic status reduces the estimated racial gaps in test scores by more than 40% in math and more than 66% in reading.”
It's better that this unqualified, mediocrity, plagiarist, DEI hire remain in place. Any meaningful change at the most arrogant, self-important institution in the world is a long-shot. But it isn't going to happen because of money -- the only chance for turning things around is if Harvard's reputation continues to nosedive and it continues to be the butt of jokes and ridicule.
Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry), Equivocation, and Indoctrination (DEI) is a forward-looking Harvard brand.
The actual problem is not about allowing anti-semitism but that one can't even hint at any fault of women, minorities, gays, trans, or the covid dictatorship. They are trying to fire Amy Wax for reasonable comments. Profs have been fired and students expelled for mere accusations of racism/sexism. It is quite ok for blacks to threaten whites or palestinians to threaten Jews on these campuses. I don't mean rallies, I mean threats. But not a peep is allowed the other way.
As the entitled raise a large middle finger to the rest of us.
Larry Summers was unavailable for comment.
(Except he probably was available).
Black democrat female bigot stays on job after condoning genocide. Sounds about right.
She is black and Gay. Basically untouchable.
Even more proof that being black in this country today is a huge advantage.
Some blacks are smart enough to take advantage of it.
Try being a white guy looking to work for IBM these days...
There are chinks in her armor. I read her wiki page. She's married. To a man!....Can you believe it? The first female President of Harvard is not gay and this despite the obvious subterfuge of her name. Maybe she should leave her husband and come out as gay. I further recommend that she hook up with one of those Jewish activists who want to indict Netanyahu for war crimes. In these troubled times, you can never have too much intersectionality.
About 700 members of Harvard’s faculty, and hundreds more alumni, came to her defense in several open letters.
They are digging in. "How DARE you criticize us and tell us what to do". Life is good for Harvard Faculty.
They don't want to change anything. They will never admit anything is wrong with current University Culture. Their arrogance blinds them. Ivory Tower liberals. Worst people in America.
Now they are willing to even give Gay a pass on obvious plagiarism in her 1997 dissertation.
FYI: She’s not the first female president of Harvard…
(Catherine) Drew Gilpin Faust, 2007-2018, is a woman.
You can watch Claudine Gay's Harvard Innaugural address here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cld8LZ_Od74
Or you can do as I did and watch the expression of unbounded irritation and resentment on the face of Larry Summers, sitting behind her with other past presidents, and think about what is going through his head as he drums his fingers, crosses his legs and bounces his foot, and under-claps in appreciation of the new AA hire for the job he got kicked out of for speaking too freely.
"Gay Stays On"
Sure, why not? No sense in getting accused of being anti-Negro when the Negro you hired was through-and-through AA all the way.
It's been amusing listening to her proclaim that her "scholarship" supporting her degrees can withstand the criticism.
Aggie at 8:38 and Kai direct response at 9:30 provide the interesting clues as to who is excising the plagiarism from their "news" coverage. No surprise NYT and NPR popped up. No surprise at all. They should be called curation sources instead of news sources.
So all the world can see Harvard is led by a hateful weasel racist mediocrity (at best) and that the institution has lost its way. This is good! Preferable to the fake fix of firing her. Eventually its reputation will sink to its true level. It will deliver credentials rather than education and all will know it.
"To thine own self be true" is spoken by Polonius before a journey.
That said, President Gay is not going anywhere. She can wait all of you out, and she will.
Priorities. This incident reminds me, when thinking of the Harvard endowment, of Elon Musk's reaction to the alleged removal of Disney revenue from the site formerly known as Twitter. Like Gay, he is playing the long game. Penn can be moved by money, but Harvard is Harvard.
That's their story, and they are sticking to it.
Kamala Harris presented a Venn diagram. Factors: female, black, Gay (cough), AA hire, Commie. Gay was only one left.
"FWIW, the plagiarism charges look pretty minor."
You aren't allowed to quote verbatim the way she does in several instances without footnoting it. This is something you learn the first week in Composition 101, if you haven't learned it in high school. I knew someone who did exactly, at a state university, what Gay did- quote a few passages verbatim without footnotes (and only in a term paper, not a dissertation) and got tossed out of graduate school for that single offense.
I think that it’s perfect to have a plagiarist with a known fraudulent PhD as president of Harvard. Never change.
I think that it’s perfect to have a plagiarist with a known fraudulent PhD as president of Harvard. Never change.
Who knew that “minor” amounts of plagiarism were acceptable in the president of a university which has spent centuries building a reputation for excellence, but which the fascists have gutted and are now wearing like a skin while demanding the same respect. I guess when you think about it, it’s all pretty clear.
This is what the eleven other members of the Harvard Corporation had to say on the charge of plagiarism:
“With regard to President Gay’s academic writings, the University became aware in late October of allegations regarding three articles. At President Gay’s request, the Fellows promptly initiated an independent review by distinguished political scientists and conducted a review of her published work. On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation. While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”
But the plot thickens, Elise Stefanik is also being accused of plagiarizing her famous letter calling for the three university presidents to resign. The short story seems to be that Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Manning’s staff wrote a draft letter that Elise Stefanik edited in a way that Kathy didn’t approve of and then Elise passed the whole letter with these edits off as her own.
"...given the chance to fulfill her term to demonstrate her vision for Harvard."
She just did, and it's not good.
That place really is broken innit?
There is no mistake.
These elite are absent any core values. The have no firm ground to stand, when faced with seemingly intractable conflicts.
WWJD may sound trite, But it far exceeds mumbling the murder of Jews need context. (on National TV)
I wont judge your core values, I will judge that you have none.
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
CK Chesterton
FWIW, the plagiarism charges look pretty minor.
No no, she's only a little bit pregnant!
She is black and Gay. Basically untouchable.
Have you seen any of the pictures of her? Nobody would want to touch it; who knows where it's been?
I haven't done a detailed analysis of all the parts of the dissertation that are in question, but--assuming that what Rufo and others have highlighted is the most damning material--I don't see anything that is actual plagiarism. More like shoddy, sub-standard writing and poor research practice (though I have to confess to having trouble telling "good" social science writing apart from "bad" social science writing; often what seems bad to me is perfectly fine in the eyes of social science faculty on thesis committees, etc.).
In the material that Rufo tweeted out, Gay actually cited the people from whom she got the text. She doesn't seem to be claiming results or ideas as her own. What she seems to have done wrong is to fail to mark exact quotations, so that they appear to be paraphrases even though they are still substantially in the words of the original authors.*
If a student did this on a paper submitted to me I would bounce it back without a grade and require a re-write, with the maximum grade being pre-emptively lowered, but I wouldn't automatically fail it and refer it for plagiarism. I only start up Academic Honesty proceedings when the student quotes or paraphrases and DOESN'T cite the source. THAT is trying to take credit for work you didn't do, and you have to come down hard on that kind of dishonesty, even though usually it is not malicious, just a desperate, last-minute bad decision. I repeatedly warn students about that danger, but some don't listen, to their (and my) sorrow. Honor Code boards are miserable experiences for everybody involved.
I am by no means defending Gay on ANYTHING else, and I have major questions about how someone with such mediocre research output could earn BOTH tenure and promotion to full professor. But at least what I have seen so far doesn't rise to the level of plagiarism: the deadly serious academic crime of trying to pass off someone else's work as your own.
Conflating sloppy work with dishonest work--although it might be helpful in politics--is NOT helpful to those of us trying to teach students the importance of research integrity. "The purpose of citation isn't to avoid plagiarism charges, but to bolster the authority of your argument and to help subsequent researchers in their own scholarship" already falls on too many deaf ears. This will only make things worse.
*If I had to guess what happened, I would venture that her advisor told her that she was over-quoting and said "Put this in your own words," and then she--rushing, like all Ph.D. students always are in the revision stages of the dissertation--started re-writing passages without going back to the sources back up. A sloppy, un-meticulous person would, after a short time, end up just deleting quotation marks and dropping in an extra word or two somewhat haphazardly, not remembering where the quotes had been. The result: a bunch of very near quotations treated as paraphrases, but with correct citations. My guess is that the advisor never re-read the changed material and that the committee had no idea, because they didn't see the original. The fact that one of the people she supposedly plagiarized is her dissertation director strongly suggests laziness / rushed work rather than malfeasance as the cause.
I am not surprised that Claudine Gay plagiarized parts of her dissertation. I am shocked that her dissertation committee either didn't notice (revealing their incompetence) or didn't care (revealing their DEI commitment).
Having a blatant plagiarist as President of an academic institution is a permanent stain against Harvard's reputation.
I really don't give a shit if Harvard, Penn, and MIT lose credibility. They sell fake prestige.
It'll even the playing field for kids that don't want to go into debt and skip college.
Businesses are realizing University output has become a joke.
I'd rather recruit for Waukesha Community Technical College over the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
Although University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh; also known as "Sloshkosh" will always get my enthusiastic sympathy. I would highly recommend a mid range state party school for anyone. I had a blast at Eastern Illinois University in the early 90's.
There's an article at the 'Harvard Crimson' that shows a side-by-side comparison of Gay's work and the plagiarized work...there is not a doubt in the world that she tried to slide by.
@Breezy: Thanks for the correction. This proves that Harvard indeed struck a Faustian bargain when they decided to go Gay.
The test will be her response to the next big pro-Hamas demonstration on campus.
She may need an even larger pair of glasses to see her way past that.
Mr. Chappelle had some advice for another fellow she might want to use:
"I denounce antisemitism in all its forms, and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community. And that, [Dr. Gay], is how you buy yourself some time."
n.n @0956: I hate to be pedantic, but you misspelled DIE.
Professor Drout, you may want to see this - What Constitutes Plagiarism?. Note particularly - "Inadequate paraphrase."
It's a rule, not a guideline.
I read that the count is now up to four of her papers that she had plagiarized material in.
I strongly suspect that none of the Harvard corporation members had the backbone to vote against a black woman. (Even though she has obvious ethical problems.)
Apparently, they knew about this plagiarism in October but only now asked her to re-write her papers to correct the plagiarism. (After it became public knowledge.)
"Fight fiercely, Harvard!"
See, even a person with a BA in theater from a state university like me knows how to use quotation marks.
The Crack Emcee said...
"Stefanik is gross."
Nice way to just hurl an insult instead of making any kind of logical argument.
There are parallels between the Stefanik event and the Stanford Law one this past Spring, I think. Both started a code of conduct vs free speech debate, both caught higher Ed in the nude vis a vis what’s going on on these campuses, both elicited firings, mea culpas, and letters of such-and-such won’t be tolerated on this campus (any longer, ahem). Public pressure works, but the barn door was already open, so we only get dribs and drabs of correction - here and there - no wide-spread “Holy Shit we need to fix our institution” kind of response from them. That will only come from economic pressure that only the Feds can bring to bear. Hopefully the good guys there will do so. Maybe start with saddling these institutions with any student loan relief that Slow Joe manages to dream up. And repeal tax exemptions via some formula that reduces ability for them to get distracted with issues that don’t progress actual learning and achievement.
It's been better than fifty years, but I still recall advice I got about "citing". It's a better look to have found the stuff, included it (with cites and quotes) because you are doing heavy work of research. Then you explain how it fits your purpose. Put it together.
Room for being a bit creative. You had to find the stuff in the first place. You were going to try to explain what your purpose was and...by golly, here's some top-end, approved by all the Big Guys, reinforcement.
And no risk of being caught.
Harvard just imitated Elon Musk and told the non elite peons to GFY. Not that we care. It’s surprising.
I predict this decision won't age well.
Now THAT'S black privilege in action.
I hate to be pedantic, but you misspelled DIE.
I'm trying to bridge the gap between the missing links in social progress and semantics. But, yeah, DEI is logically and practically a doctrine of the Pro-Choice [ethical] religion.
"help our community heal". From what, precisely? Being called out on your own bullshit? Painful, I am sure.
Hell, Doris Kearns Goodwin who is on the board is a plagiarist, too. Compadres, they are. Maybe it’s now required at Harvard for high office?
We get Harvard's alumni magazine - for years. Notable decline in content worthiness, now mostly self-congratulatory progressive DEI virtue-signals, page after page, and articles about fragile snowflake undergraduates navigating the hallow halls of Harvard.
Only the football team still seems to be composed of Real Men.
Most of the faculty and administrative positions are filed by DEI folks.
Endowment keeps growing, often beating Dow Jones Industrial index, billions of net worth and prime real estate, now fostering this DEI monstrosity of intellectual hollowness.
President Gay is unremarkable academic bolstered solely by her stellar DEI checkmarks and apparently a moral coward too.
I'm actually in favor of this. If she was tossed, there would be the appearance they did something to resolve the problem.
As is? Everybody can see and smell the stink that won't go away.
Good. Watch the money dry up.
I, for one, look forward to her reading of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address at her next public speaking event.
Yes, this was a very weak plagiarism joke. I'm having some bowel troubles and they seem to be filling my brain with crap.
"specious and politically motivated"
So why did Magill resign?
I don't think universities should give in to demands (from Congress or wealthy donors) to fire someone. If Gay resigns let her do so because she can no longer effectively lead the university in fulfilling its mission. I agree with Temujin. Let her stay. These university presidents are symptoms of a much deeper problem. What Bishop Robert Barron described as the "collapse of moral reasoning".
In the material that Rufo tweeted out, Gay actually cited the people from whom she got the text.
Did you read Harvard's policy on plagiarism that Rufo linked? Citing the source is not sufficient. If you use the source's words verbatim, you are obliged to use quotation marks. Alternatively, you can paraphrase. But you cannot do what she did, which is have lengthy passages that are word-for-word (or in some cases essentially word-for-word, with an occasional trivial substitution) from the cited source without quotation marks.
I do not know how that extra "anti" got in there - above.
I sense a future episode of "South Park" is developing. Dr. Gay would be too irresistible for Cartman. And Mikee, The Babylon Bee has beaten you to the punchline.
https://babylonbee.com/news/claudine-gay-responds-to-plagiarism-accusations-by-giving-inspiring-original-speech-called-i-have-a-dream
Having researched youtube interviews on the matter, Gay's problem is that she's not as good as she pretended to be, not that she used somebody else's work without acknowledging it. She still isn't any good.
As for the Carol Swain's work, Swain is miffed by the loss of citation counts in a work that seems to me to be crap anyway.
If you're any good, citation counts don't matter. Anything stolen will be replaced by something else that you do next.
GingerBeer said...
"I sense a future episode of "South Park" is developing."
And it will be just as effective as they were stopping Oprah, Scientology, etc.
South Park isn't meant to be "effective". It is meant to be funny. It succeeds at its goal.
"address the very serious societal issues we are facing."
How about teaching?
Why not try that since your product has less usefulness than a community college grad.
Having now seen the side-by-side comparisons of the two worst articles, I have to modify what I wrote above. I don't think what's in the dissertation is plagiarism in the sense that is widely held in academia*: trying to take credit for something you didn't do.
But the two journal articles in which people are basically quoted without being cited? That's traditional, old-school plagiarism.
And I think it's obvious that the Harvard "investigation" was a coverup. The "tell" is the part of the letter of support that says “any suggestion that her selection as president was the result of a process that elevated an unqualified person based on considerations of race and gender are specious and politically motivated.”
If that were true, the letter would go on to say something like "Her book _______ is a ground-breaking blah, blah, blah, and her article ______ is considered to be the field-defining etc., etc., etc."
Does that mean she was picked ENTIRELY on considerations of race and gender? Not necessarily, because there are other people with similar diversity scores in the administrative pipeline who weren't picked. More likely it's a combo diversity points and demonstrated loyalty and lack of independent thought.
(By the way, the ugly hands of the mutant Pritzker family seem to be behind a fair bit of what is going on here. Unearned money makes evil people).
* As someone above noted, according to Harvard's own definition of "inadequate paraphrase" it seems to be, and maybe you need rules like that now, but in terms of "traditional and accepted" understanding of plagiarism, I would still say "shoddy," not "cheating." But almost certainly Harvard faculty should be held to Harvard rules, and maybe overall we need new rules given new circumstances. When I wrote my diss, back in the Cretaceous period, it was more work to exactly quote phrases than it was to paraphrase them, so you people tended to direct quote only when the statement was pithy. Now, with easy cut-and-paste, the incentives seem to have changed).
According to the Dec. 12 New York Post, the paper received an anonymous tip in October listing 27 instances of academic plagiarism by Dr. Gay. It conducted its own review before contacting Jonathon Swain, Harvard's Senior Executive Director of Media Relations and Communications for comment on October 24th. Swain asked NYP for time to review the works cited. The next day, Swain told NYP that he's "get back in touch over the next couple of days." He never contacted NYP again.
On October 27th, NYP was sent a 15-page letter by Thomas Claire w/ the firm Clare-Locke, identifying himself as the defamation counsel for both Harvard and Dr. Gay.
So before the allegations of plagiarism against Dr. Gay were made public, Gay and Harvard had already hired legal representation, conducted a review, and prepared a response. To cite Lt. Frank Dreben......Police Squad: "Move on. Nothing to see here. Please disperse."
https://nypost.com/2023/12/12/news/harvard-secret-plagiarism-probe-into-president-claudine-gay/
Because of disparity of outcomes, it's not fair to hold blacks to the same standards of scholarly integrity as whites or Asians. Blacks should be allowed to rip off whitey scholars if that's what it takes to produce a dissertation that sounds like they actually got an education.
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