The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education.
Claudine Gay’s resignation Tuesday followed weeks of mounting accusations that she lifted language from other scholars in her doctoral dissertation and journal articles. The allegations surfaced amid backlash over her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus.
The plagiarism allegations came not from her academic peers but her political foes, led by conservatives who sought to oust Gay and put her career under intense scrutiny in hopes of finding a fatal flaw. Her detractors charged that Gay — who has a Ph.D. in government, was a professor at Harvard and Stanford and headed Harvard’s largest division before being promoted — got the top job in large part because she is a Black woman.
Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the effort, celebrated her departure as a win in his campaign against elite institutions of higher education. On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote “SCALPED,” as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans.
“Tomorrow, we get back to the fight,” he said on X, describing a “playbook” against institutions deemed too liberal by conservatives. His latest target: efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in education and business.
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Yeah. I feel like this is a more logical reason:
Her resignation came after calls for her ouster from prominent conservatives including Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Harvard alumna, and Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has donated millions to Harvard.
Colleges are all about the money, even when theyre like Harvard and literally don’t need it.
I’m sure lots of other donors weren’t happy a Black woman was president. Enough of them saying they won’t donate, and the board offers the president a chance to resign before their forced out.
even when theyre like Harvard and literally don’t need it.
Thafuq are you smoking, son? 🤣
Harvard could stop collecting tuition, double everyone’s salary, and still “live” off their endowment interest.
They literally have no need for money, but still bend over backwards for donors because at the top of the food chain they still want to see numbers go up just for the sake of numbers going up.
Harvard has the definition of “fuck off money”.
It’s just capitalist momentum means they’ll never have “enough” to be satisfied
I assume it’s a reference to Harvard being the richest university in the world, sitting on a roughly $51 billion dollar endowment.
Probably referring to their ~$50B endowment.
Always has to be at least one idiot trying to play the race card, lol
Yeah. She quit because lying conservative pundits got their base riled up with the mere idea she committed plagarism that they made enough of a stink to pressure her or the school.
This is the right-wingers favorite play: Cancel Culture. They harass, pressure, send death threats and swat anyone they don’t like for any perceived fault. More often than not, those targets just quit to get away from the harassment or magnifying glass their life comes under as a consequence. Everyone has shit in their past they aren’t proud of and with that much attention it’ll be brought out and made a much bigger deal of than often warranted.
It almost always boils down to projection with conservatives. I think it’s the levels of selfishness and inability to consider the experience of those who are not like them, so they must apply their own experience and by extension how they would deal with a given situation, to everyone else around them, to make the world make sense to their narrow minds.
The same reason they latched onto the term “virtue signaling”. They can’t comprehend doing something that doesn’t provide them with a benefit, therefore the people who are being altruistic must be doing it to get recognition and gain “points”.
They call it that, because when they do it, that is why they are doing it. They just assume the other side is doing it even more, not realizing how exausting it would be to keep it up if it was fake. If it was possible to fake it as much as they think dems are, wouldn’t at least one conservative be doing it? They love “points”, if they could earn as many “points” as they see democrats earning, they would be all over that. But because it is an act to them, they can’t keep up.
It’s exhausting when it’s real. The amount of effort required to tell people they are being shit heads everyday is staggering. So of course they don’t get it. They barely put in that much effort when it benefits them. They couldn’t comprehend doing it for no personal benefit.
This shit has been a thing in Germany for a while. Usually the controversy around the accusations of plagiarism cause enough trouble for the accused person, even if after investigation the claims turn out to be bogus.
Huh. So it’s like accusation of sexual stuff but specifically about academics.
It’s shocking that some of those Harvard profs said it doesn’t amount to plagiarism. Verbatim copying without attribution is plagiarism. University standards are all very clear about that, and undergrads are routinely disciplined for similar infractions. If the university president gets off the hook, it totally undermines all efforts to instill students with a sense of academic integrity.
It’s too bad that this plays into the hands of right wingers, but at the end of the day the blame lies squarely at the feet of Claudine Gay. She should not have plagiarized.
It doesn’t. Everyone is missing the fact that plagiarism requires an intent to mislead. It’s not plagiarism if you cite the authors in the same paper or even paragraph and then don’t quote something they said in a technical summary.
If I find a line in a book that I think is profound and use it as the basis for something I write with modification, it’s not plagiarism unless I’m attempting to pass that off as my own thoughts or attempt to mislead people into thinking that it’s my contribution to the body of knowledge related to the topic. That’s why the board didn’t agree with plagiarism and why none of the authors that were supposedly plagiarized (with one notable, political exception) felt it was plagiarism.
There’s a reason it’s being determined as “negligence” and corrections are being allowed as opposed to plagiarism and malice.
The vast majority of undergrad plagiarism, which students are rightfully disciplined for, falls into this type.
The student copies some text verbatim from a source, changes a few words so that it is not so obvious, then the source is buried somewhere in the references without any indication that text was copied verbatim from it.
The way to avoid getting tripped up by this is to just avoid copying what other people wrote, and write things entirely in your own words. Undergrads are held to this standard, so a university administrator (let alone a president) cannot to held to a looser standard.
It’s entirely on Gay that she did this, and on most of her papers too.
then the source is buried somewhere in the references without any indication that text was copied verbatim from it
This is where you got it wrong. There were citations earlier in the technical summaries as she was referencing the summaries from those papers. That’s why she’s being allowed to correct her citations. She mentions the author and the source document/book/article but then did not use quote marks to denote that follow-up statements were also quotations. That’s why it “didn’t rise to the level of plagiarism” and was instead judged to be insufficient citation.
It doesn’t rise to the level of plagiarism if you look at it like a lawyer doing everything you can to defend a client.
If you look at the statements in question in context, even if she had put the quotation marks there, it would have been really weird to have quotations there. For the stuff she was writing about, a scholar would have been expected to write in her own words instead of copying what someone else wrote (with or without quotations). University educators fight a constant battle to get undergrads to understand this principle, and students get disciplined over such practices all the time, and rightly so.
Or, apparently, as an independent board trying to determine if someone plagiarized…
Setting up an “independent board” that won’t rock the boat is the easiest thing in the world. And in this case, the report was tying itself in knots to avoid saying Gay copied. “Duplicative language” has the same vibes as “enhanced interrogation techniques”…
Agreed 100%. It’s not some evil conservative weapon, it’s simply don’t quote others without attribution. Don’t give them that weapon against you, it’s crazy someone would think this wouldn’t come back to bite them.
Undergrads get held to this standard, so should all academics.
She stepped down because she refused to denounce calls on her campus for genocide of Jews. No one at Harvard cared about her bad citations, and she was investigated by them and found that her dissertation did not rise to the level of punishable content.
The entire reason she is stepping down is that there is violent rhetoric going around on her campus that she is not only doing nothing about, but rather went before Congress and wouldn’t condemn.
It’s also worth noting that no one is forcing her resignation. She thinks it will be the best thing for the school to put these events in the rear view mirror.
This article is incredibly misleading. Here’s a much more factual one
this is what I thought as well. this is the first time I see an article saying pressure for resignation came from plagiarism.
We must not stop until we have abolished DEI ideology from every institution in America
— Christopher Rufo (via X formerly Twitter)
And this is the whole thing. Republicans talk a big game about meritocracy, but they themselves do not believe in it. There’s a lot of the Dunning–Kruger effect within Republican ranks, this is why they rely so heavily on grifting. They are for the most part faking it till they make it (or most likely get called out). George Santos is like the extreme end of this.
So the question is why does this ideology contrast so heavily with things like DEI? And the reasons are to promote keeping a silent status-quo. White guys hire white guys, that’s just the straight and narrow about it. And folks like to push, “Oh well I’m judging them based on merit!” That’s where that Dunning-Kruger effect comes in, because there’s a lot of blatant faking it going on.
I mean, we joke, but white guy saying the internet is a series of tubes is likely faking knowledge, just kind of calling as I see it. And there’s a lot of that. Not just lawmakers, I see it in IT all the effing time. Like my previous employer, it didn’t go without notice how the backend development group was a guy’s club. And they may say “Oh well it’s all based on merit”. Nah, friend, we had at least two “Postgres Devs” who hadn’t the faintest clue about what an Index is. It’s a hard sell on the merit thing.
And I see that a lot. And I’m not one to judge on folks who are missing some knowledge, I’m not holding a bar at folks being able to recite from memory how to do a red-black tree in C++, that’s not really important. But what I do have issue with is when there’s an almost implicit grant for men on knowledge. Because one of those devs that didn’t need to be there was in the running with someone else who happened to be a woman, and we just happen to hire a guy who was actually good at spitting bullshit. Perhaps that’s the manager that hired the person’s fault or whatever, but it gets into that silent status-quo. Like, maybe the manager wasn’t actively thinking in their mind, “this person has a vagina, there’s no way I believe them!” But he totally was like “Oh man this guy is funny as shit and brings a special energy to everything”.
And that’s that meritocracy Republicans want to preserve and DEI seeks to introduce an element that’s outside of that silent status-quo. Suddenly, these managers can’t look at that “special energy” the same way as they used to. There’s other things that they have to measure along the way. And don’t get me wrong, hiring someone for the sole reason “they are a black woman” is not correct, but Claudine Gay’s ascension is not strictly because of that. And the fact that Christopher Rufo attempts to surmise it as such is a big display of this faking knowledge. Because the hiring her is way more complex than Rufo can actually comprehend, he’s just faking his “knowledge”. Much like his Master of Liberal Arts ass trying to surmise CRT, literally nothing he has said on CRT bears any kind of actual knowledge behind it, it’s all surface level musings that he panders as “fact”. And Claudine Gay’s resignation is complex too. So the folks saying she’s being bullied out of her spot are glossing over a lot of the complex interactions in politics and money that Universities do actually have.
Gay is returning to her position as faculty and Dean of Social Studies which she has enjoyed since 2015, of which she obtained that position through a very complex history of academic excellence. The plagiarism claims were reviewed by independent bodies at Gay’s request and their findings were summarized by the Harvard Corporation here. In which they found two things indicated by omission from citation, but those omission from citation did not rise to the standard routinely used by Harvard for plagiarism. But no one mentions this, that it’s been looked over and she did not meet the criteria for plagiarism and that finding absolutely played a role in considerations.
But more importantly this. Gay is not leaving Harvard, in fact, I would argue that she’s moving back into a position where she can do more work than where she was. Harvard is clearly not ready to advance outside of their own silent status-quo, there’s a lot of “traditionalist” who form the bulk of Harvard’s philanthropy. And Gay may have looked over the sentiment and come to the conclusion that now was not the time to push on that from the position she was in at that time. It’s fairly complex and until she actually spills beans about it, we can only at best speculate. But yeah, the poor performance before Congress played a role, President’s from Universities have a very big PR role they fill and poor performances play a role in that.
I think that’s what people dislike the most. That Stefanik used her massive amount of bullshit to false dilemma Gay into a bad PR light. But Stefanik is also alumni of Harvard, in fact she was at one point VP of Harvard’s Institute of Politics. She’s got skills to pay the bills, especially when it comes to the way faculty speaks at Harvard. Gay walked right into it and that’s something she should have seen coming. That’s part and parcel, as much as we like to bemoan it, of politics. Perhaps one day we will reach a political climate where we frankly and openly discuss the woes of society and address them outright. But boy oh boy is someone fooling themselves thinking that day is today. Which as an aside is why I’ve always had issues with the mantra of “when they go low, we go high”. No call their bullshit out and stone their ass for going low, damn it!
People like Rufo will read into this as “it’s a win against DEI” but the reality is, this event is just one of many in a complex string of things that play into an over arching attempt by some to maintain the “good old boys” way of life. There’s multiple aspects of “good old boys” like “Make America Great Again”, “the war on Woke”, and what not. But there’s a need to remember that as much as these folks like to talk about meritocracy, that’s not actually what they want. Or at least they do a lot of things to demonstrate that, that is not what they want. And this whole episode of these President’s falling to the traps of Stefanik are just yet another demonstration that they aren’t after quality or work ethic, they are after preserving a way of life they feel is under threat.
expose the rot in the Ivy League and restore truth, rather than racialist ideology, as the highest principle in academic life.
— Christopher Rufo (via X formerly Twitter)
That’s what this ultimately plays out as. They’re under the impression that asking folks to equally weigh all factors in a position without undue passion is some form of racialist ideology. When in fact it’s just Rufo’s lack of knowledge at real world inequality. They’re not exposing rot, they’re just going after folks they have a grudge with. Stefanik wasn’t asking genuine questions to further testimony in collegiate response to a world event, she was just hawking got’chas and she’s insanely good at doing that.
Out of all of this, I think that’s the important aspects to see in this. It’s folks trying to preserve something that we should have in my opinion done off with already. But unfortunately the Associated Press has decided to write an article on the “munitions of the right” which is just more code for “let’s make left/right politics even more polar.” Stefanik is a demonstration of how Congress is becoming worse. She’s very smart and only really foolish people sell her short of that, but bullshit is selling like hotcakes in Congress right now. And to me the “why does bullshit and Dark Brandon sell” is a better question. Because if the goal is to actually reach that day where we talk frank about social ills and address them, we have gone into hyper reverse on reaching that goal. And this piece from the AP really smacks of the drivel that fuels that vehicle. I don’t think that should be our goal (or at least not the primary one, politics isn’t black and white for a reason), but for those who want that as a goal, this piece is classic anti-that goal with it’s quips that exist to only further polar opinion on the matter. When in reality, Gay likely going back to work in a position that she can sow seeds that may one day change the calculus of the traditionalist alumni that she faced as President. Yes, it is sad that it has taken Harvard this long to have a black person as President. Clearly the alumni of Harvard are having a hard time with it to the point that they are feeling fine to overtly suppress such. But the kids today are tomorrow’s alumni and sometimes taking the longer approach is better. Yes, it is shit. But the more I see the younger generation, the more I see a very clear change for the what I would consider better. And there is a lot of very unhappy people about that trend.
Good write up, thanks. These low-quality people… Can’t believe they think they’re the good guys.
“SCALPED,” as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans
Maybe I’m showing my ignorance here but isn’t the author getting this backwards? I know, of course white people scalped their foes sometimes, but my understanding was that scalping was far more prevalent among native Americans.
Scalping happened world wide, earliest examples tho are Northern Europe.
However, scalping was so prevelant in America, because American colonies paid for Native scalps like animal pelts. Specifically wolve/Coyote pelts.
So while Natives might have taken scalps as a trophy from a mighty warrior they killed, it wasn’t exactly common.
Until they started coming across Native villages where everyone (including women and children) were scalped while alive and left to die slowly.
So the Natives started doing it back.
The reason we only heard about Natives doing it, is because America wanted Americans to think of them as violent savages. So a couple generations later, and we started getting people who believed like you do
Yeah, I was scratching my head at that as well.
While its true that some First Nation’s practiced scalping of defeated enemies for hundreds or thousands of years, it’s also true that some English Colonies had a bounty on dead First Nations to encourage genocide, and one way this was confirmed was with a scalp rather than full dead body or head.
It tended to be that Native Americans would do it in or after battle/fighting an enemy. But in response, colonists, particularly those “settling” the West, started offering standing rewards for every Native Americans scalp people could collect. Many white colonists then ended up scalping every Native Americans they could find, regardless of enmity, and even scalping others as well, such as railroad workers, in order to pass off their scalps as those of Native Americans. All to say that, yes, much like many things, scalping was a tradition of another culture that colonists adopted and took much further.
There were bounties paid for scalps of American Indians in colonial times.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education.
The plagiarism allegations came not from her academic peers but her political foes, led by conservatives who sought to oust Gay and put her career under intense scrutiny in hopes of finding a fatal flaw.
In another post, he announced a new “plagiarism hunting fund,” vowing to “expose the rot in the Ivy League and restore truth, rather than racialist ideology, as the highest principle in academic life.”
Gay didn’t directly address the plagiarism accusations in a campus letter announcing her resignation, but she noted she was troubled to see doubt cast on her commitment “to upholding scholarly rigor.” She also indirectly nodded to the December congressional hearing that started the onslaught of criticism, where she did not say unequivocally that calls for the genocide of Jews would violate Harvard policy.
In highly specialized fields, scholars often use similar language to describe the same concepts, said Davarian Baldwin, a historian at Trinity College who writes about race and higher education.
Without commenting on the merits of the allegations against Gay, President Irene Mulvey of the American Association of University Professors said she fears plagiarism investigations could be “weaponized” to pursue a political agenda.
The original article contains 1,144 words, the summary contains 224 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
the mastermind behind this attack, christopher rufo, has been relentless in his pursuit to dismantle leftist influences in academia, even going so far as to celebrate gay’s departure with a disturbing choice of words, “scalped.” such rhetoric only furthers the divide between conservative and progressive ideologies. rufo’s intentions are evident in his ongoing crusade against policies promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in both education and businesses.
plagiarism, however, can be seen as a necessity for marginalized individuals like claudine gay when navigating through these systems riddled with systemic discrimination. it becomes a tool in the fight against the historical suppression of non-white scholars. ultimately, what we are witnessing here is not a case of plagiarism, but rather the misuse of this term by those who fear the advancement of underrepresented minorities in positions of power. it’s time for institutions like harvard to stand up to this malicious campaign and recognize the value that people like claudine gay bring to academia, rather than succumbing to baseless accusations meant to silence them. only then will society begin to truly address and eradicate institutional racism from its core. it’s about time for change. it’s about time for inclusivity. it’s about time for justice.
Tom Nichols: “Claudine Gay engaged in academic misconduct. Everything else about her case is irrelevant, including the silly claims of her right-wing opponents.”
David French: “This is exactly the right call. Harvard can’t impose lower standards of academic integrity on its president than it imposes on its students. I could not have graduated from the law school with similar levels of plagiarism. She shouldn’t lead the institution.”
Jonathan Chait: “Claudine Gay’s resignation as Harvard’s president for having repeatedly engaged in low-level plagiarism is a strange and sad ending to her brief tenure as a symbol in the culture wars. The tragicomedy of it lies in the disjuncture between the picayune scale of her sloppiness and the broader ideological stakes she came to symbolize. On those stakes, Gay was right. But on the morally insignificant matter that doomed her — the discovery that she had violated rules of attribution in her academic work — she was frustratingly defenseless.”
picayune
Never heard that one before
