In my view some will condemn her no matter the fact pattern. Regardless, no matter what their particular grudge against Dr. Gay, the bullies won. Of course this won’t satisfy them.
The most telling excerpt in this article is, “For decades, Harvard had been drifting away from being an educational institution devoted to truth and becoming an institution devoted to an array of statist beliefs. Gay was made president because the Harvard Corporation decided to go full bore on that.”
Again, putting plagiarism aside, I think Gay is a symptom of what ails Harvard, not the cause.
Or it could be considered a victory for academic integrity and personal accountability. Depends upon one’s perspective
Regardless if she was bullied or not, and regardless of the motives of those who did the bullying, the facts are what they are.
There is no dispute that she didn’t quote excerpts correctly and there is no dispute that Harvard students are punished severely for the same infraction. Why is it any more complicated than that?
I’ve put the thread on slow mode through tomorrow morning.
I don’t have a dog in the hunt here but it seems to me like they propped this person up, coached her on what to say (Lee’s law firm) She did a pretty bad job in front of Congress and the Corp let their hubris get in the way of firing her right away. Pride does funny things to people.
Yeah, but that’s not what did her in. She would have survived that.
It was the plagiarism.
It wasn’t just the alleged plagiarism. Culture warriors hated her appointment and they were determined to bring her down, no matter what. If this didnt’ work, they would have continued to throw mud until they got rid of her. My guess is unless Harvard appoints a more conservative and traditional choice, the mud throwing won’t stop any time soon.
By " a more traditional choice" you must mean a more qualified scholar with substantial academic publications which were not plagiarized? That would be a traditional choice based upon historic qualifications.
And culture warriors appointed her.
Takes two to tango.
How about a non-ideological appointment? There must be scholar-administrators out there without baggage and with an even-handed approach to their role. Some even at Harvard.
I’m available. I’ll wait by my phone in case Penny calls.
“Non-ideological” is usually double-speak applied to someone who agrees with one’s own ideology. Harvard’s Mission is an ideological one.
Harvard’s mission, one would have thought, is providing an education and producing knowledge. That’s ideology?
Harvard’s mission includes much more than that, and it always has. But you knew that already.
Here’s Harvard College’s mission . . .
Following the events at Stanford, UPenn, and Harvard, it’s very clear that search committee at these institutions will appoint a third party to completely validate the background and academic legitimacy of their candidates, which will likely include AI analysis for the sake of completeness.
In the case of both Stanford and Harvard’s presidents, the past search committees clearly have to bear some responsibility as the plagiarism claims pre-dated their selection decision. It’s therefore very unlikely that future search committees make the same mistake.
Reminder to not engage in combative dialogue. Feel free to use private messages if you want to elaborate on something, without monopolizing the thread.
While the mission is aspirational, these days Harvard (and its peers) seems to be mostly dedicated to turning out crops of financiers and consultants.
Where’s the “much more than that”? Here’s the basic mission statement in the opening sentence: “The mission of Harvard College is to educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society.”
The rest of it is vague and anodyne stuff in which the word “transformation” is repeated three times—along with “transformative” once—in the remaining 4 sentences. It’s all related to the individual.
And then they throw in a vague hope at the end that students will figure out on their own how to “serve the world.”
No one “won”. Seems like you will defend her no matter what the facts are. Your choice of course.