Plagiarism at Harvard

Politics aside, I'm stunned by the revelations around the Harvard president, Claudine Gay. Having just completed my dissertation, I am VERY sensitive to some of the rules of plagiarism and giving propers citations. To find out that she lifted MANY portions of her dissertation and of her subsequent articles from uncited and other sources without proper attribution is STUNNING to me. (I know, lots of caps, but I think this deserves that).

While writing my own dissertation, I was surprised by the amount of paraphrasing that was necessary. They do not want just a ton of quotes and citations. They want you to distill other scholar's thoughts and lift them up and use them, but not copy and paste them. If you do quote . . . cite properly. If you take a sentence from someone else, you can't just switch a word or two and cite them. Either quote, paraphrase completely, or don't use. 

I feel confident I followed these rules. There is no WAY, . . . none . . . that you could find what they are finding out about Gay in my work. Just none. 

One that I read included a paragraph that is supposed to be her own paraphrase. She cites multiple offers as having given her the ideas in that paragraph. The problem is, she cut and paste that paragraph directly from another source. AND she didn't cite that author in the list of authors she cited. 

To me . . . this smacks of "deliberateness." That technique makes me think she was trying to pass someone else's thoughts off as her own, AND deliberately hiding the citation among other works. 

What is worse than this?

What's worse is that the other professors and administrators at Harvard have signed a letter backing her up and NOT calling for her resignation. This is just absolutely beyond the worst thing to do in this situation. Gay was already in trouble over her unartful testimony to Congress, this plagiarism stuff should have been the out her bosses needed to get rid of her. 

So, the question becomes why not? The U Penn president, who is white, was asked to resign. Why not Gay? Is it a race problem? I hate to think it but it appears quite glaring. Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard was ousted for an inartful statement. He's a white guy. But, Gay? The plagiarist. She stays? Unfathomable. 

One of the researchers/academics who was plagiarised is stating just that about her see HERE.

I meant to write today about Kendi's stupidity. The other day I heard him quoted as having said, 

"I don't think white people worldwide have really reckoned with how much their own personal identity is shaped by their own construction of whiteness, and how much that construction of whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity. In other words, . . . recognizing. . . when you recognize that you are part and parcel of humanity, in other words you are not over humanity, it allows you to really to be able to connect to people who don't look like you."

I am not a Kendi fan. I think he is a new-era race baiter and hustler. I also don't think that this is the dumbest thing he's ever said. It's up there. It's a pretty stupid thing to think. But, this was supposed to be a post on scholarship and the PhD I just completed, and how it ranks within the world of academia and in the real world. 

I tell you what, in that vein, and thinking of Gay, anyone EXCEPT a college professor would recognize she needs to be fired. Anyone except a college professor would think that what Kendi said in that quote is ridiculous. Yet, somehow these nitwits are protected.