Everyone was fair game after the bungled Congressional testimony, and I suspect all of them were checked. If the Free Beacon found something on Sally Kornbluth as well, I am sure you would have heard about it (they probably stopped caring about Liz Magill after she agreed to step down).
And let’s not forget Claudine Gay’s heavy handed tactics of threatening the NY Post with a defamation lawsuit.
Maybe you should start another thread . . . (As you said, “If someone wants to create a “Why Claudine Gay Is Unfit Because of Her Congressional Testimony” thread, I will read it.”)
As to your suggestion that she was fair game because of the hearing, that isn’t why she was targeted. The partisan operatives at the Free Beacon have admitted they had been sitting on the plagiarism allegations and released them when they did to further capitalize on the moment. One need only look into their history to understand why she was targeted.
Now about those questions . . . Is there a reason you won’t explain your allegations?
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I agree with this 100%. The suggestion that a student’s (even a graduate student’s) academic career should be ended because of inadvertent citation errors is untenable. Moreso, if those mistakes aren’t uncovered until 30 years later. That is not how academia works. While intentional and purposeful deception is treated extremely seriously, mistakes are treated as mistakes and corrected. Intent matters.
Based on what? Just because people won’t let an issue die, does not make it a “pile on” if more facts are needed.
An article that was linked earlier but was not discussed so Ill post it again.
Does CNN have a right wing political agenda?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/business/harvard-president-claudine-gay-plagiarism/index.html
Since their change in management and editorial focus, with some culture war issues, the answer is very clearly ‘Yes.’ But that is an entirely different issue, and not directly relevant here.
The article hasn’t been discussed because it is a rehash of what has already been discussed. The idea that this person should lose their job based on unintentional, technical mistakes they made 30 years ago as a first year graduation student is, in my opinion, preposterous.
The article has varying opinions on what the punishment should/should not be based on the plagiarism which was part of the original discussion.
It is also, importantly, now picked up by the most mainstream news outlet there is, so the PR disaster for Harvard is seemingly growing exponentially.
But it turns out CNN is now, apparently, part of the right-wing apparatus, so nothing to see here.
I read the article. You (and others) suggest that the fact that CNN covered it somehow gives the claims more credence. I disagree. Whoever covers it at this point, the accusations are still a product of right-wing culture warriors.
Other than that the article is essentially a rehash churning clicks. You mentioned the need for “more facts” but the article doesn’t provide any new facts. There was a better, more balanced, and more complete article in Inside Higher Education, linked above.
I agree that Gary King is not a disinterested party, but the claims that Gay was passing off his work as hers in her thesis do not seem substantiated given her citations to his work, beginning in the very first chapter, and again several times later. I have not reviewed the claims regarding her other papers, but in her thesis, she was explicitly using his new techniques, which she attributed to him, to do the novel work of examining voting behavior in districts with Black congressional representatives. If one were trying to get credit for a method you did not create, would you cite the source of the method prominently in the first chapter, and again when you were calculating bounds etc?
Is it even plausible to claim that Gay was representing the ideas as hers when King’s book on Ecological Inference was an instant classic, with the NSF issuing a press release when it came out, and practically every major newspaper in the country reviewed and lauded it as the biggest advance in social science in 25 years? King was giving interviews throughout the country in the months after the book came out. He and his new method were not off the radar, slowly accumulating disciples; there was not a hiring committee in the country that did not know about this new method.
That said, I do not know the extent to which Gay represented other researchers’ ideas as her own. I am doubtful partly because of the response of some of the other people who were putatively plagiarized. If someone claimed my work was theirs, I would be unlikely to defend them, and I would not be their friend. (Swain fits this mold, but in Gay’s thesis Gay characterizes Swain’s work as largely anecdotal and descriptive, a characterization that would promote instant ill-will from Swain.) Nonetheless, given the prestige of Gay’s position (at least for now), maybe these people minimizing her transgressions are doing so to protect themselves in some way. I do not know. But I believe King genuinely finds the charges that Gay represented his work as hers in her thesis as ridiculous, as do I.
That’s strange way to characterize what looks to be a pattern of intentional instances of plagiarism. One can’t partially re-write sentences, repeat several long phrases verbatim, fail to cite properly, and then claim it was an “accident” or “inadvertent”. That just doesn’t fly.
Except, looking at the examples provided, Gay obviously wasn’t trying to intentionally and deceptively take credit for the writing of another. There is no indication of academic dishonestly, as that phrase is usually used. And, so far as I know, there has been no serious allegation by anyone that her mistakes were an intentional attempt to steal the writings of someone else.
Sure one can. Sometimes these sentences come out of notes taken, and the writer doesn’t even realize the notes were more verbatim than thought. Sometimes the passages are edited multiple times and yet someone the write falls back on similar language. Other times there is an attempt made to rewrite so as to avoid using too much of the others material, and those attempts fall short. Sometimes the student doesn’t think it is required. @ProfandParent is instructive on this, in their description of requiring students to edit language the students presumed to be “boilerplate.”
That’s why it’s basic Writing 101 advice NOT to do these things in the first place. It doesn’t absolve anyone from the results.
That’s quite a stretch. It doesn’t just “happen” like that. If there was a valid paraphrase to begin with—in which the writer used their own words and structure—there would be no way that somehow the final edited product would revert back to the original.
That’s the very definition of patchwriting/mosaic plagiarism! It’s obvious in many of the examples discussed here that Gay made extremely poor attempts to rewrite things using minimal effort, intentionally subbing in words here and there. The giveaway is that she felt the need to replace words occasionally—that doesn’t happen by accident.
Let me be clear, I am not arguing what does or doesn’t qualify as plagiarism. I am addressing whether an instance of “plagiarism” (under some definitions) is necessarily intentionally deceptive and dishonest. Because not all technical plagiarism is intentionally deceptive and dishonest.
For example, poor note taking/writing skills may make plagiarism more likely, but don’t necessarily demonstrate intentional deception or dishonesty.
Likewise, “intentionally” trying to put something one’s own words may (or may not) lead to mosaic plagiarism, even when the actual intention is to abide by the rules and avoid plagiarism. Surely we can agree that trying to avoid plagiarizing someone’s work isn’t intentionally deceptive or dishonest.
Isolated instances of accidental plagiarism within larger documents happen more than academics like to admit. This is especially true before software checks existed.
Let me be clear: my responses were based on your characterization (and attempted minimization) of the instances of plagiarism as “inadvertent citation errors”. That’s not what they were. There is a clear pattern demonstrating intent and terrible academic writing practices. This doesn’t happen by accident.
[ETA]: we could debate intentionality until the dancing angels on the head of a pin collapse from exhaustion, or the proverbial cows finally all return home, or—more likely—until the moderators shut things down, but IMO claiming nonintentionality verges uncomfortably close to an “ignorance of the law” defense, and raises perhaps even more questions about Gay and the training/advising/oversight she received.
Congress just expanded its probe to include Claudine Gay’s plagiarism, and whether there is a different standard for her compared to Harvard’s students.
For those that haven’t followed the link, Congress will be investigating if any students who have been disciplined since 2019 have committed lesser infractions than Claudine Gay.
Harvard has to respond by Dec 29th. I feel sorry for the poor admins who have to work over Christmas.
It is near impossible to not find one student in four years to have committed lesser infraction than President Gay.
At this point, I don’t think I can keep track of all of the allegations, but these appear to be from a different new source:
“The 37-page document compiles dozens of cases where Gay, a political scientist, allegedly quoted or paraphrased authors without proper attribution in her academic works, going against the Ivy League school’s strict rules, according to the document, which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The outlet reports it independently verified the veracity of the allegations along with the identity of the author — a respected professor at another university, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.”
Is this really how Harvard wants to be seen?
She should do the only honorable thing and step down for the good of the institution.
I believe the customary reason to give would be something about becoming a distraction.
I found the referenced document with the 40 allegations of plagiarism.
I haven’t gone through the document in detail, but interestingly the complaint suggests that threatening the Post as she did could itself be a violation.
Ignorance of the law? What are you talking about?
It has nothing to do with “ignorance of the law.” The determination of state of mind of the alleged wrongdoer is a core component of our legal system, and of most moral codes. Depending on the intent of the actor, the same action can result in anything from the death penalty to a commendation. The significance is about as far away from “dancing angels on the head of a pin” as could be.
And the idea that she should be fired and her career (and life) ruined without any examination of whether or not that she is intentionally deceptive or dishonest? It is preposterous.