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Harvard President Claudine Gay Resigns, Shortest Tenure in University History (www.thecrimson.com)

submitted 11 months ago by macarthur_park to c/news

66 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Gay’s resignation — just six months and two days into the presidency — comes amid growing allegations of plagiarism and lasting doubts over her ability to respond to antisemitism on campus after her disastrous congressional testimony Dec. 5.

Gay weathered scandal after scandal over her brief tenure, facing national backlash for her administration’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work.

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[–] dpkonofa 131 points 11 months ago (47 children)

It’s sad to me that simply bringing enough negative attention, whether it’s warranted or not, is enough to get organizations to cave. They had a third party investigate her writing and they found it didn’t fall to the level of plagiarism. The people she supposedly plagiarized all agree that the technical nature of what she was summarizing wouldn’t make it plagiarism. The majority of students support her and the work she was doing.

I’m curious if any other Harvard President has ever had this level of scrutiny on their work come years after the fact. Feels like it’s people dishonestly taking objection just because they want to see her removed and now they’ve succeeded.

[–] Lev_Astov 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (19 children)

I'm pretty sure the flimsy plagiarism matter is just the lever used to oust her after her poor handling of the students calling for genocide. That looked real bad for the school in the congressional hearing. That or a way to oust her without appearing to pick a side in that whole mess.

[–] ethan 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

It's absolutely not flimsy- she's only written a dozen articles and there's been concrete examples of plagiarism in at least of a quarter of them. Here is one of 40+ examples of the plagiarism found:

Swain in her article:

“the statistical correspondence of the demographic characteristics and more “substantive representation,” the correspondence between representatives’ goals and those of their constituents.”

Gay in her article:

"the statistical correspondence of demographic characteristics) and substantive representation (the correspondence of legislative goals and priorities.”

Swain in her article:

“Since the 1950s the reelection rate for House members has rarely dipped below 90 percent”

Gay in her article:

"Since the 1950s, the reelection rate for incumbent House members has rarely dipped below 90%”

She never cited Swain in any way until she was forced to do so this year by the review board. If I pulled this in college in more then 25% of my essays I'd most certainly be in front of my department head in a very serious conversation, looking at suspension at least.

Edit: Lol, late breaking news! As of today plagiarism allegations now cover 50%! Half! of her papers as even more examples have come out literally a few hours ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/us/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism.html

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And yet Swain seems to care about other things than the claimed plagiarism, which she didn't even mention in her call to have Gay fired. No, she cares a lot more that Gay wasn't vociferously pro-Israel and didn't expel the students for their pro-Palestine speech.

[–] ethan -3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It doesn't matter one single bit what the people who she plagiarized think about her, if they're upset by it or not, or if they think she's a good person or not. That's not what plagiarism is.

She directly took language from the work of others without prior permission and claimed it to be her own. That's all the context that is taken for academic dishonesty- if I was accused of plagiarizing my friend's essay by my department and countered with "but my friend thinks I'm such a good person", I'd be laughed out of the room.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The examples you gave are also incredibly minor. I've taught students and dealt with plagiarism for years. Single sentence or partial sentence pieces like that are a minimal issue and, if considered one by the author, easily fixed with some quotation marks.

It's very obviously looking for a problem because it isn't the claimed plagiarism anyone actually cares about, but exists as a convenient excuse attempt.

[–] ethan 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Single sentence and partial sentence is a minor issue and totally understandable if it happens a handful of times (everyone forgets citations one point or another). But if it happens nearly 50 times in less then a dozen articles it's a very consistent pattern of academic dishonesty.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So, single or partial sentence issues less than 5 times in each article. Articles that are many, many pages long, as such published articles are wont to do, yes? Again, this just sounds like an "you should extend a reference to cover this as well" sort of suggestion and not a major issue.

[–] ethan 5 points 10 months ago

So would you think it were a big deal if it were longer then a single sentence? Say like:

Bradley and Voss:

.. the average turnout rate seems to decrease linearly as African Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct's racial mix, which is one description of bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot (resulting only when changes in one race's turnout rate somehow compensated for changes in the other's across the graph).

Gay:

The average turnout rate seems to increase linearly as African-Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct's racial mix, which is one way to think about bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatterplot. A linear form would only result if the changes in one race's turnout were compensated by changes in the turnout of the other race across the graph.

Or like:

Canon:

The central parts of the VRA are Section 2 and Section 5. The former prohibits any state or political subdivision from imposing a voting practice that will "deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color." The latter was imposed only on "covered" jurisdictions with a history of past discrimination, which must submit changes in any electoral process or mechanism to the federal government for approval.^3

Gay:

The central parts of the measure are Section 2 and Section 5. Section 2 reiterates the guarantees of the 15th amendment, prohibiting any state or political subdivision from adopting voting practices that "deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color." Section 5, imposed only on "covered" jurisdictions with a history of past discrimination, requires Justice Department preclearance of changes in any electoral process or mechanism.

[–] rambaroo 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Neither of those cherry picked quotes are egregious at all. They're one sentence long.

[–] ethan 2 points 10 months ago

They’re not cherry picked, I’m just not going to list all 47 (as of today, more keep being discovered) instances of plagiarism here. The ones I gave aren’t even the close to the most egregious!

Would you prefer these:

Bradley and Voss:

the average turnout rate seems to decrease linearly as African Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct's racial mix, which is one description of bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot (resulting only when changes in one race's turnout rate somehow compensated for changes in the other's across the graph).

Gay:

The average turnout rate seems to increase linearly as African-Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct's racial mix, which is one way to think about bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatterplot. A linear form would only result if the changes in one race's turnout were compensated by changes in the turnout of the other race across the graph.

Gilliam:

Historically, politics has been a vehicle for upward mobility among racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Minority political incorporation and the redirection of public resources that is hypothesized to come with it, should alter how people evaluate and relate to their local governments.

Gay:

Historically, politics has been an important vehicle in the mobility (and "mainstreaming") of racial and ethnic groups in the United States. As a consequence, minority office-holding should alter how people evaluate and relate to government

[–] canihasaccount -1 points 10 months ago

The general rule of thumb is that five words, even with paraphrasing, of unquoted or uncited text is plagiarism:

https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/ParaphraseStrategies

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