Yeah, yeah, I know it’s all politically motivated, but objectively, I’m having trouble figuring out how far over the line she went. Is this the kind of plagiarism that typically results in expulsion? Is this something many scholars do and they just don’t get caught?
I never plagiarized myself, FYI. But it seems like lifting one paragraph out of an entire dissertation doesn’t necessarily call all of her scholarship into question.
Am I wrong? There are apparently forty different instances, so is this so far outside the norm, something oughta be done about it?
The cases cited in the article could have been in the category of unintentional, but also still indicating a lack of due care. That would not be that bad unless it can be shown this was a frequent problem with someone’s academic work. Gay also did something similar as a student in the 1990s. I don’t know the details, or if there are other cases of this. It’s not the 90s anymore though, any academic paper can now be checked for possible plagiarism very easily. Even if it reveals identical sentences in pair of papers it may be wording that any two people could have arrived at independently. It is still the responsibility of the author to make sure they didn’t inadvertently copy or forget to cite.
Serious plagiarism involves wholesale copying of words and concepts. Outside of wording it is not so easy to find copying of organization, abstract content, selection of data, and other higher level communication concepts that make a a paper look like a reworded Wikipedia article. IMO the value of academic papers is highly overrated. Unfortunately many of them only exist because of the ‘publish or perish’ attitude within the academic world.
I wouldn’t go that far, although certainly it’s been turned into a political football.
There have been other university/college presidents in recent times who’ve resigned under fire for incidents of plagiarism* that seem equally or less flagrant than what Gay’s been accused of. The president of the University of South Carolina quit after it was revealed that he had heavily plagiarized a commencement speech, of all things. And the Hobart president resigned over a plagiarized dissertation.
It’s hard to see how Harvard can seriously discipline students for plagiarism if the president of the university is essentially given a pass.
*gotta love Harvard’s new, softer term for plagiarism developed in the wake of the Gay controversy - "duplicative language without appropriate attribution.”
27 Harvard students were expelled in '20-21 for academic dishonesty, according to this article, with exam cheating and plagiarism being the top concerns in cases brought before the Honor Council (the article doesn’t specify the level of punishment for plagiarism).
That would be an excellent entrance requirement for all students. I don’t see how it applies to plagiarism and cheating violations unless it’s exposure to “don’t get caught” as practiced in the real world.
And fwiw, i supported her after her unfortunate congressional testimony. But plagiarism is a huge deal in academia, and this seemed really problematic in a university president.
The main issue I could envision is that everyone has feet of clay. If everything is open season opposition research, no one participates except the true reprobates who don’t care if the skeletons in their closets get exposed, because they’re used to outfacing that kind of thing and aren’t actually accessible to shame.
The only thing this has “proved” is that the academic community takes plagiarism as a more serious offence than a university president failing to protect their Jewish students who committed the offence of being Jewish on campus.
I’m not even aware of any extraordinary amount of speech attacks against Jews at Harvard. (And both Jews and Arabs on campus have had some issues recently, this is not one-sided.)
For comparison, while people were bitching about college presidents not giving strong enough statements regarding phrases like “from the river to the sea”, my temple was evacuated due to a bomb threat, and religious school and a large sale/fundraiser had to be cancelled.
Threats and intimidation are not protected speech. You have to remember that people of my parents generation were kicked out of schools in Europe before they were sent to extermination camps. It wasn’t that long ago.
Look, I think that Gay probably has an IQ about 75 points higher than Stefanik but she badly failed at a game of wits.
Her job was to make campus safe and welcoming for all students to achieve. And ensure the Harvard endowment grows every year. Mostly the second one. Her failure at the first impacted the second but what appears to be a fairly minor plagiarism charge is what brought her down.
