And top HS students can vote with their applications, which apparently they have with Harvard EA applications down 17% compared to last year.
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Is Ruth Marcus at Wapo a culture warrior?
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Ruth Marcus isn’t the one who made the claims to which I was specifically referring (those from Gay’s 1993 paper), and she herself indicates that all the accusations were the product of culture warriors.
Marcus really doesn’t like that there were two sentences that were the same in Gay’s acknowledgements as in someone else’s acknowledgement. To me this is one of the least compelling passages in that it has absolutely nothing do with the substance of her academic work, that there is little or nothing original about the sentiment or its presentation, because Gay believes it herself, and because extensive citations don’t really work in acknowledgements for common expressions of gratitude.
It is the acknowledge equivalent of common knowledge.
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Another writer in the NYT said:
" But there are two problems here. One is Harvard’s plagiarism policy for students, its veritas image and other standards of integrity and conduct. Second is the sheer amount of the plagiarism in her case, even if in itself it is something less than stealing ideas. If the issue were a couple of hastily quoted phrases in one article, it would be one thing. But investigations have shown that this problem runs through about half of Dr. Gay’s articles, as well as her dissertation. We must ask how a university president can expect to hold her head high, carry authority and inspire respect as a leader on a campus where students suffer grave consequences for doing even a fraction of what Dr. Gay has done.
That Dr. Gay is Black gives this an especially bad look. If she stays in her job, the optics will be that a middling publication record and chronically lackadaisical attention to crediting sources is somehow OK for a university president if she is Black. This implication will be based on a fact sad but impossible to ignore: that it is difficult to identify a white university president with a similar background. Are we to let pass a tacit idea that for Black scholars and administrators, the symbolism of our Blackness, our “diverseness,” is what matters most about us? I am unclear where the Black pride (or antiracism) is in this."
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Ruth Marcus says…
“She plagiarized her acknowledgments. I take no joy in saying this, but Harvard President Claudine Gay ought to resign.”
Ruth Marcus seems to have moved on from how did this come to light and she is hardly a right wing social warrior. She is calling for Dr Gay to resign.
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From the “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry” files:
After an internal investigation, the Harvard Corporation referred to Gay’s malfeasance as “dulplicative language without proper attribution”. I guess at Harvard an armed robbery would be described as “a distribution of wealth without proper approval”.
Gay plagiarized large sections of another academic’s acknowledgements word-for-word. Think about that - she couldn’t even say “thank you” without stealing.
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The elephant in the room
That was John McWholter, an NYTimes Opinion writer, and staunch political opponent CRT, with with Dr. Gay is portrayed as being closely associated, and a fellow at the same right wing think tank as the culture warriors who came after her in the first place.
And it has already been repeatedly posted and addressed above.
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What is the elephant in the room? That she is black? That many assume that because she is black her hire must have been unearned, and therefor want to get rid of her? That those like McWhorter who despise CRT want to get rid of her because of her supposed world view?
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Or perhaps that a middling academic with few publications became president of Harvard without the standard qualifications for the job, leading to the natural question of why she was selected?
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Roycroftmom beat me to it, and phrased the response much better than I would have.
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I actually wonder what gives with such a dramatic drop of EA applications. It was probably too early in the year to be affected by the plagiarism scandal, and in terms of campus protests, MIT had its share of bad publicity, but it didn’t seem to affect their numbers.
MIT EA:
11,964 apps vs 11,392 last year
5.5% admit rate vs 6% last year
Harvard EA:
7,921 apps vs 9,552 last year
8.74% admit rate vs 7.56% last year
It could simply be that last three years were an anomaly for Harvard (due to going test-optional?), and this year being more normal, but it’s not clear what caused the partial reversal:
Also, wow, I didn’t realize Harvard EA admit rate used to be well into double digits. Probably athletes and legacies - and that got masked by a higher number of apps over the past three years.
But all in all, this scandal can’t be good for Harvard whatever way you slice it. The worst thing they could do is nothing.
To say that Gay’s work was “acceptable” because it was actually accepted would be a meaningless tautology unless the reviewers and advisers who did the accepting not only knew of these passages but did not consider them plagiarism or even worth the effort to re-write or supply quotation marks or attribution. I suppose that is where the assertion that standards were not the same then as now comes in. Speaking as someone who toiled in the vineyards writing a Ph.D. dissertation long before Gay wrote hers, I can say that this is arrant poppycock.
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That you feel qualified to pronounce her “a middling academic” who was unqualified for the position is interesting. Are you active in her area of expertise? Are you well situated to second guess Harvard’s hiring decision? For that matter, are you well situated to second guess Harvard’s independent investigation, or their conclusion?
I do not have extensive expertise in her area of expertise, but just recently had a conversation with an academic active in her area who hasn’t been closely following this situation. They indicated that she is well respected. Also, her position requires more than just academic expertise.
Personally, I find the second guessing of Harvard’s hiring to be extremely offensive. This wouldn’t be an issue were she a middle aged white man with an orthodox “liberal” perspective. It further highlights that the only reason we are having this conversation is because she was targeted by political activists to try to get rid of her. That they found a receptive audience doesn’t change this.
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Well, since she’s making corrections now, they obviously missed things in their review.
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Yep. And she is making corrections. But the bullies won’t be satisfied until she is gone.
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The President of Harvard shouldn’t have to be making corrections to work where she’s effectively plagiarised accidentally or intentionally.
She should resign simply because it’s clear that she’s lost the respect that one would normally give the President of Harvard.
The President of Harvard has a voice that matters in public policy and among the general public on higher education issues. But nobody will give Claudine Gay the time of day to listen to her now - whether this is her fault, the fault of others, or whoever else, this doesn’t change that fact.
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Those who won’t give her the time of day in the future are largely the same people who wouldn’t give her the time of day before.
Abandoning its own process driven result and bowing to culture war bullies will not garner Harvard any respect. It will anger a different group of people and further erode its institutional integrity.
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I’m sure @mtmind doesn’t mean to refer to anyone on this board as a bully, but, speaking for myself, I don’t desire President Gay’s resignation. Harvard bulks way too large in the consciousness of all of us; the present debacle can only diminish its outsize and undeserved importance. More importantly, while she remains as its President, she may feel the need to actually apply the principles of free speech she is now on record as espousing. And I know this is a reach, but I dare to hope she may even curb the excesses of DEI. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but it leads me to join @mtmind in shrugging off the unfortunate cribbing of a few passages in documents no one will read anyhow. There are bigger fish to fry.
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Not sure @mtmind would agree with you on the reasons you’re giving for her not to resign.
You’re approaching it from the point of view that her not resigning continues to damage Harvard’s reputation while mtmind is arguing the opposite.
There were people who were against her from the beginning and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But she practically gave her critics plenty of ammunition and then some.
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