McWhorter wrote some very personal essays last year about his experience at UC Berkeley as a black associate professor where he felt totally unqualified. He realized he was selected solely on race. It’s a very moving opinion piece.
No, he’s not progressive at all. And his Washington Post piece on Claudine Gay is very effective. He only wants her gone now, in light of sustained plagiarism.
Here’s what the editor at the “Plagiarism Today” website wrote specifically about Harvard’s so-called investigation [my emphasis]:
“…what was needed, more than anything, was a thorough and transparent review of her work. However, it appears unlikely that happened. That’s because as a new round of accusations have come to light, these involving Gay’s 1997 dissertation and a magazine article she wrote as a student before that. These have resulted in three more correction requests, all relating to her dissertation…”
“However, what’s most worrisome about this, to me, is that these allegations should have been detected by any investigation that Harvard did into Gay’s work. This is particularly true with the passages from her dissertation.
It’s clear that Harvard’s independent review of the allegations did not involve an investigation into her other works. Most likely, it was an examination of the allegations, not a full independent investigation.
Harvard knew about these allegations in October and had ample opportunity to get ahead of any new allegations. They chose not to. While a month and a half is a tight time frame for a full evaluation of someone’s academic career, it is possible to at least get initial findings.
Instead, Harvard seems content to allow the members of the public to perform the investigation and simply respond to allegations as they rise. This harms both the school and Gay by ensuring that this controversy continues to stretch out…”
“What has changed in my mind is Harvard itself. When the school said that they had investigated Gay’s work, it’s clear that they had not. Though even the best plagiarism analyses can miss things, the issues in her dissertation are precisely what I would have expected such a check to find.
What we need is a full, transparent evaluation of Gay’s work. As Harvard’s president, she should be held to the highest standards and the issue isn’t that her record has blemishes, it’s that we don’t know how serious or how numerous those blemishes actually are.”
Thanks for the link. This paragraph towards the end is pretty brutal: when half of her small list of publications have plagiarism issues, that’s a big issue! (And maybe the rest do too—there hasn’t been a compete investigation conducted):
“The plagiarism allegations against Dr. Gay which span her dissertation and about half of the 11 journal articles listed on her résumé, range from brief snippets of technical definitions to lightly paraphrased summaries of other scholars’ work without quotation marks or direct citation. In one example that drew ridicule, Dr. Gay appeared to borrow exact phrases from the acknowledgments section of another author’s book to thank her mentor and family in the acknowledgments section of her own dissertation.”
I hadn’t previously seen the issue with the acknowledgments section. Yikes.
To me, this calls into question the academic advising and training she had received at Stanford and Harvard, as well as the peer-review publication process later. Why did she think this was acceptable, and how did she get away with it for so long?
Leaving aside the plagiarism allegations and considering only her performance on the job, do you think Dr Gay has done a fine job and should continue as President or should step down?
Exactly. Some attempted to downplay this by saying each of her papers has several thousand words, so what’s the big deal when only less than a hundred of which have issues. Well, that’s not how it works. It’s like saying you should let me go when you caught me stealing a small item from your store because it’s just a small item and because the other half of the time I was in your store I didn’t steal.
When you are a mid-career academic and have published “only” 11 journal papers of which nine were single-authored, you were not in a rush and you had full control over the text. You can’t blame it on carelessness.
Yes. And the background/literature review section is typically the only place in social sciences papers where there would be plagiarism “opportunities” (sometimes the methodology section also, to a lesser degree). That makes up a small portion of overall paper length—roughly 15-25% of total word count usually.
I disagree. If someone is fired for lying or plagiarizing long ago they are fired because they are a liar or plagiarist. There is no statute of limitations on professional integrity.
The way to avoid being classified as a liar or plagiarist is to stop lying or stealing others thoughts and words while correcting the record in advance of detection if these digressions were committed at an earlier less evolved state of morality.
Leaving these flaws unchecked or corrected in the hope of going undetected is in many ways worse than the initial act as it shows a continuous disregard for professional standards.
Blaming those who discover these transgressions is nothing but a subterfuge to avoid holding bad actors accountable for their actions.
This is actually NOT true in the two handfuls of termination cases I have been involved in professionally. One- a much beloved and highly successful member of the senior management team. But the falsehood on the resume wasn’t a a case of he started a job in September but wrote August because that’s when he resigned from his prior role. It was an untruth which could not be spun with forgetfulness, carelessness, etc. And if one reporter found it (without a subpoena, hacking a secure system or anything requiring much skill besides tenacity) others would follow. One- a rising star in the organization. A fake degree which was NOT required for his job/profession which was really the sad part. It’s one thing to lie about having a JD or passing the bar if you are a lawyer; but to lie about an ancillary degree which nobody except your mom would care about? Ugh.
So not a pretext. Not a subterfuge. Well compensated and successful people lying about something from decades back which finally came back to bite them. If you are going to claim you have an MA in French Literature from Stanford and graduated in 1998, you’d better pray you don’t end up working with someone who REALLY has an MA in French lit from Stanford and graduated in 1998-- and who goes to HR to say “There were 9 people in my program and he wasn’t one of them. You might want to check…”
9/11 and e-verify were game-changers in the background checking business. Once an organization had to verify that someone actually was who they said they were… and then there were howls that if you were checking the identities of the hourly employees who cleaned the executive kitchen, you darn well better be checking the identities of those executives. I don’t believe the terminations are pretexts or subterfuge. It is way too easy to terminate for other reasons!!!
I have no opinion on her “performance on the job,” but I don’t think she should step down based on culture war bullying. It would undermine Harvard’s independence and institutional integrity.
As for the other comments about resumes, Dr. Gay is not being accused of lying on her resume.
I was quoting YOU.
And I was addressing a question in another post. Regardless, Dr. Gay didn’t submit a false résumé.
None of the examples cited indicate that Dr. Gay is a liar. If they did, I’d see it differently
She plagiarized (you brought lying into the conversation not me). See your quote that I responded to.
A handful of users are repeating the same things creating a circular discussion. Slowing the thread
Not in reference to Dr. Gay.
Regardless, is she a liar or not?
I appreciate your not challenging my statement that she is a plagiarist.
No point in expanding the discussion to include lying (although you seem determined to do so). She is an academic meaning plagiarism is a cardinal sin.
Go back to what you posted and my response. I never mentioned Dr Gay but you brought up lying and Dr Gay.
Agreed, when it stops raining at the big H then changes will be made to find a more effective rainmaker. Right now they will weather the drought to save face to not appear that they are cowering to the plutocracy, but like all universities at the end of the day $$$ ultimately are what makes decisions.
Reminder that this is not the political forum and debate is not permitted. Repeating the same questions of other posters is going to result in this thread being shut down.
This was the explicit guidance in place at Harvard when she was completing her dissertation in 1997 [my emphasis]:
“Plagiarism is passing off a source’s information, ideas, or words as your own by omitting to cite them; an act of lying, cheating, and stealing.” From “Writing with Sources: A Guide for Harvard Students,” Copyright 1995, The President and Fellows of Harvard University.
This is also interesting context for how students at Harvard are treated:
“In a six-year high, 27 students were forced to withdraw from Harvard College during the 2020-2021 academic year [when Dr. Gay was Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences] due to academic dishonesty, according to a report released this month.
The Honor Council heard a total of 138 academic integrity cases during the school year…
Ninety-nine of the 138 reviewed cases resulted in a finding of responsibility, meaning that an academic dishonesty violation did occur. According to the report, students who are forced to withdraw must be employed in a full-time, paid, non-academic job for at least six months before they can petition for readmission to Harvard. The length of withdrawal is usually between two to four terms.
An additional 56 students were put on probation, a notice from the College that future violations may lead to more serious consequences. Another 10 students were admonished, a warning that falls short of probation. The Honor Council referred six students for a local sanction, meaning the faculty member leading the course decides the appropriate disciplinary action — for example, a grade penalty or mandatory tutoring.“