Ruth Marcus did a pretty fair-handed opinion article in WaPo (paywalled). I was prepared to give Gay the benefit of the doubt, but it seems clear she had a conscious and widespread pattern of using others’ words without attribution, presenting others’ analysis with minor tweaks as if it were her own novel analysis.
Let me stipulate a couple of things here:
I believe this only came to light because of politically motivated investigations.
I don’t think she’s the only professor out there who’s done this, I think this kind of behavior has become normalized.
That being the case, the examples I’ve seen are fairly egregious. This behavior is not compatible with keeping one’s position as Director of Admissions at Podunk State, let alone staying on as President of Harvard University.
It’s a damned shame the academy didn’t take care of its own corruption until someone else found it. Now conservatives will be walking the halls collecting scalps at their leisure, racking up easy points in their anti-education culture war.
I saw some article that listed all the things that were plagiarized (sorry, I can’t remember where I saw it – if I find it again, I’ll link it) and looked at them. (This was a while ago, so I think there have been more since then.) I honestly would call it less plagiarizing than I would “not citing her sources properly” – the vast majority of the cases seemed like things like, she would have a paragraph of background that paraphrased someone else’s content, but then not cite that person. If she’d done it once, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought and just assumed it was carelessness. The number of times she seems to have done it… is not great.
(Occasionally, there’s something like, she has similar wording in her acknowledgements to someone else’s acknowledgements. Ehhhhh that bothers me very little. So what if she saw someone else’s acknowledgement section and thought it was cool and wanted to say something similar in hers.)
So… to me, it’s not as bad as plagiarizing paragraphs from another novel (if you were a novel writer) or plagiarizing someone else’s original research and passing it off as your own. Both of those I would consider grounds for firing from a professorship or a job. But if she were working under me and I realized a given paper of hers had this not-citing-sources issue, I’d just ask her to put the cite in before submitting the paper; I wouldn’t consider her in trouble or anything.
To me the issues are a) the number of times this seems to have happened – it’s sort of like when you have enough misdemeanors, it makes it a felony; and b) when you’re president of Harvard, you rather have to have impeccable scholarship and avoid even the relatively-minor sins of not citing your sources properly. (Again, if it had been once or twice, well, even the president of Harvard might overlook something once or twice. The number of times it’s happened… oof.) I am relieved that she resigned.
(Note though that I haven’t read any of her content in context. It could be that she is also claiming to have had ideas that she didn’t have, which would be much more damning. That didn’t seem to be the case from what I’d read out-of-context, but I think I’ve read that other people who have more context say differently.)
I agree she flubbed her testimony to Congress. I’m less convinced that she flubbed the job of actually protecting students. Maybe she did, but what’s the evidence?
The woman made a public statement on TV in front of a US House of Representatives committee stating that chants threatening Jewish students may or may not violate Harvard’s Code of Conduct depending on context. That’s the evidence.
I’m not one to see antisemitism beyond every bush. I’m annoyed at people locally that want to deport people waving Palestinian flags on overpasses, I understand freedom of speech and freedom of association. And I say this as someone who sat on the board of the League for Human Right of B’nai Brith Canada, our version of the ADL. I saw some bad shit back in the earlier days of the Internet.
Failing to loudly and clearly proclaim that threats against students of ANY religion due to their religion are unacceptable and this was a dereliction of her duty.
I’m assuming your position is that it depends on context, I’m personally not playing that game today. This is not about one phrase. It was against a culture of fear felt by Jewish students at Harvard.
From her own mouth (or her new publicist):
“What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged,” Gay said.
From the River to the Sea means ethnically cleans all of the Jews to enough people, whether it’s outright or coded, that it should violate any code of conduct and I will not be lectured in any way by a non-Jew about this. They don’t have that privilege.
You don’t seem to understand this is not about Israel vs. Palestine. This is about attacking Jewish students for being Jewish.
Do you believe it’s against the Harvard Code of Conduct to threaten any other member of the Harvard Community due to their religious beliefs? This is a yes or no kind of answer.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, this is kind of what I was looking for. It absolutely was politically motivated to bring her down this way, but, well, they wouldn’t have been able to do that if she hadn’t plagiarized others’ work.
Jewish students absolutely should not be attacked for being Jewish. These are things that should absolutely be against the code of conduct.
Two of the examples of Jewish students being attacked for being Jewish bought up in the hearing were the phrases “from the river to the sea” and “free Palestine.” Both are relevant here, especially when we are talking about context.
The question in the hearing was ““At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment?” Stefanik asked.”
And in the context of the hearing, “from the river to the sea” was regarded as a call for genocide. Is this something you agree with, or do you think it could depend on context?
Because my answer to “do I think it’s against the Harvard Code of Conduct to threaten any other member of the Harvard Community due to their religious beliefs” is yes. Do I think “from the river to the sea” is threatening other members due to their religious belief? I think it depends on context.
It is is intended as a threat, so yes I do, but again this is not what the discussion is about. Its is about generalized threats against Jews. Either it is acceptable or not, I say not.
There is distinct lack of comprehension here. Does “from the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be From Hamas at Harvard” make any sense whatsoever? Or do you think Hamas as an organization that puts Palestinians at risk while they rob Gaza blind of aid supplies supposed to be funny? Again, I sense a hijack of the topic, but I’m not going to junior moderate.
In my opinion, given how much federal funding they take, these sort of universities should adopt the standard of the first amendment as interpreted by courts. By that standard, you can be required to have a parade permit. And you won’t be given a parade permit to disrupt class instruction, or late at night when most people want to sleep. As for threats, it depends. Generally, you can threaten a group, even with genocide, but not individuals.
I think the real reason for these hearings is that the Republicans, who organized them, feel that right-wing students do not get the same freedom to express themselves as do others. Despite reading a fair amount about these issues, I am still not sure whether this is really true.
Its about Claudine Gay’s response during the hearing, that was full of bad faith posturing and “gotcha” questioning. Her answer was bad. Unquestionably bad. But in context, she was talking about statements used in the hearing that included “from the river to the sea.”
I’m talking about the hearings. “From the river to the sea” was mentioned multiple times as a genocidal phrase used to attack Jewish students. Go read the transcripts.