In reply to: Useful review of how the rot set in at "elite" schools. posted by sorin69
Congress, while heavily criticized, was not incorrect.
I think the problem with her answers to Rep. Stefanik's questions regarding whether calling for genocide of Jews violated Harvard's conduct policies wasn't that the response itself is wrong - it really isn't - it's that nobody believes that Harvard would need "context" before punishing similar statements made about other groups on campus (and rightly so - nobody should believe Harvard would need context for other calls for genocide).
Another thing to keep in mind is that the plagiarism allegations were already percolating (and I think under investigation by the Harvard Corporation) *before* her Congressional testimony, I think as soon as late October.
the scrutiny they recieved. Nobody got tenure writing a good lit review or data and methods section. Almost all of her published work, including those appearing in APSR and AJPS, two of the most imprortant journals in the discipline, utilized a methodological approach called "Ecological Inference" that was developed by her Disertation chair, Gary King. It's not shocking that she used the same, even identicle, language used by King in papers and articles to describe the approach. Lit Reviews are really attempts to tell the audience why the thing you are going to do next is important and fits into a thematic narrative. I lean toward synthesis in my lit reviews instead, but I'm not super concerned with the allegations of plagerism in Gay's lit reviews.
You mention Stanford's president being forced out this summer. His research misconduct is far more severe (Gay's sins were more of the venial variety) as he fabricated data to support his conclussions. Those conclussions lead to people chasing down rabit holes on theraputics that weren't warranted.
And I actually agree with her final paragraph in the op-ed:
College campuses in our country must remain places where students can learn, share and grow together, not spaces where proxy battles and political grandstanding take root. Universities must remain independent venues where courage and reason unite to advance truth, no matter what forces set against them.I think it's relevant to mention where the plagiarism accusations started: Christopher Rufo. The same Christopher Rufo who made his bones whipping up hysteria about "critical race theory". How many other college presidents (or professors) has Rufo investigated for plagiarism? I'm sure it was just a coincidence that Gay was the first.
the NY Post about possible plagiarism in October (at the link).
I get that Rufo has an agenda, but I don't think it has any bearing on whether there was in fact plagiarism.
I think we can agree that the NY Attorney General dislikes/is biased against/is looking to damage Donald Trump, but only Trumpers claim that this somehow makes him less guilty.
Like I said, it can be plagiarism. Might even be plagiarism that warrants termination. But in the grand scheme, I do think how these investigations get started (or publicized) is relevant.
Responding to something you posted below: Activism/politics and academics shouldn't mix. Which I think was part of her point in the op-ed.
Plenty of misconduct in the world is brought to light by unsavory characters.
Mark Felt of Watergate fame became Woodward & Bernstein's source because he was pissed at Nixon for passing him over to be FBI director after Hoover died.
Does that cast doubt on Nixon's guilt or the information he gave to the Post? I don't think so.
(ETA in response to your addition: academics and politics have been mixing a lot lately - in both directions - academics doing politics and politicians getting involved in academics. But prominent university officials making seven-figure salaries cannot expect their published works will escape scrutiny by those who are inclined to publicize rather than bury potential misconduct)
inquiries (or litmus tests) in high-education are helpful. Maybe they are elsewhere.
If academic dishonesty is so critical, then all University presidents (or faculty) should be subjected to said investigation. Not just when someone decides they don't like their politics.
There are plenty of examples of academics being fired for being dishonest. Now, you may not consider plagiarism to be comparable to falsifying data on the scale of which is worse. However when publishing, they are both material violations of professional standards.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/07/20/florida-state-fires-professor
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184289296/harvard-professor-dishonesty-francesca-gino
https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/university-of-michigan-researcher-quits-after-publishing-falsified-data/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-university-of-illinois-professor-fired-20181214-story.html
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/stanford-president-resigns-over-manipulated-research-will-retract-at-least-3-papers/
I'm aware.
Were they all fired after appropriate institutional investigations? Or did any of them get canned because they had outside actors trying to get them fired because they didn't like their politics? Were Christopher Ruffo et al. going to stop taking shots if Harvard ran an investigation that determined she plagiarised, but that it didn't rise to the level of being removed as President?
Which is my point below on how this should be handled. It's possible that Gay committed plagiarism, but that the circumstances surrounding how it played out are problematic.
We don't want McCarthyism, but can still be concerned about Communist infiltration into our institutions. So one can consider the motivation of the whistleblower, and the severity of the matter being investigated.
It's similar to an argument many of us have had with Trumpsters, including within my own family. Yes, I have no doubt some of the investigatory vigor directed at Donald Trump is politically motivated. That should be addressed and called out. But that doesn't mean it's OK for him to do the things he does.
My wife has a PhD, so I was subjected to five years of discussions about publications and life in the lab.
Digging into someone's background to find dirt is fairly standard practice in politics. Like it or not, when you take overtly political positions, someone on the other side is going to come for you.
I do agree that the practice of digging up dirt is problematic, I just don't think that the practice is unique to what happened to Gay. It is SOP in politics (which is why most normal people don't want to run for office) and some form of vetting is usually done for executive level positions in corporate America. While the motivations of her accusers should be taken into consideration, the fact remains that the accusations are valid. Given this, the motivations don't really matter all that much.
It does seem strange that none of this was identified before. How many levels of review did her work go through prior to being finalized?
I'm sure if you fed a lot of old work through modern plagiarism finding software that you'd turn up a lot of dirt on a lot of people. There's software now that's good at catching human generated data in experiments that's led to some retractions.
I'm just surprised it's not SOP to do this before hiring a president or giving someone tenure.
It was before the AI boom, but not that long ago.
That seems to be in the early years of software.
hard time - I presume that you mean the early years of the type of software used to check references in papers and such.
I was talking about my wife. Sorry.
of the University of South Carolina for plagiarizing a piece of a commencement speech (not generally considered an academic work) in 2021.
members of their own club.
Wasn't the president of Stanford just ousted over research misconduct?
I guess my point is, if the misconduct is there, then I don't really care who brings it to light. Human nature suggests to me that critics or competitors are more likely to (a) go looking and (b) go public if they find wrongdoing.
(ETA: Should the Michigan cheating scandal be discounted because Ohio State was first to raise the alarm?)
I have no problem with that. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Perhaps Harvard should've done their homework during the hiring/search process - this could have been avoided.
Going back to the original point of the thread and dealing with "rot" at academic institutions, I don't think supporting politically-targeted investigations to get rid of people we don't agree with is going to solve the problem.
EDIT: And as to why they don't "investigate their own", it has little to do with the Ivy league specifically. I'm sure they all know that if people looked hard enough, they'd all be guilty of similar attribution errors.
EDIT2: And to be clear, I do think the examples are plagiarism. So then what to be done about it? Well, it should have been handled by the same processes which govern all other academic misconduct at Harvard, including students. The result of that investigation may have warranted termination, or maybe it would have warranted something less severe.
is to stop looking for it and/or to put primary importance on the personal politics of those who uncover the misconduct?
That would seem to make the problem worse, not better.
handle it by processes that apply to all other faculty and students. And not let decisions on how it should be handled be driven by activism from those with ulterior motives.
resignation (she wasn't fired) beyond their ability to comment in the public arena.
Again, I don't see how that's a bad thing. I assume she could have demanded a formal review process beyond the secret anonymous panel the Harvard Corporation initially propped up to look at the first round of accusations (which were pretty weak in my view, in contrast to the later stuff that came out). She didn't. I assume there was a reason for that as well (the reason being she gets to keep her $900K a year professor position in Cambridge).
But if academia is going to take the position that the only allegations of misconduct that may be considered are those that (a) come from academics, and only from academics who (b) friends or allies of the subject of the investigation, then I think that says much about the quality and ethics of the academy.
Sure, they don't make the decisions. But they can certainly continue to beat the drum and stir up negative publicity to the point where she gets asked to resign (but isn't fired).
I think academia should take the position that people can be investigated and punished, but that the corrective action should not be based on whether the public perception of said correction is "sufficient".
She and her ilk set a double standard up on campus regarding speech, favoring certain groups over others. Anyone who is objective sees the double standard regarding speech on campus (what speech is considered "violence", heckler's veto for conservative speakers without any punishments), and she embarrassed her university by allowing and enabling this rot. This was all exposed and she subsequently resigned. You're probably right in that she was nudged to that position by people both inside and outside the university, but she certainly could have demanded a more formal process that may or may not have let her keep a high six-figure position. You don't like the politics behind one of the people who helped expose her plagiarism, ok. But that kind of stuff happens all the time, in the numerous examples above, not to mention politics invading our legal system as people search out grievances to sue over in order to make a political point (gay wedding cakes etc.).
Harvard is the most prestigious and well-known university in the country, I have no doubt there are plenty of qualified candidates out there who haven't plagiarized to the level she did and who would likely be more proactive in cracking down on obvious double standards for speech on campus.
she was plagiarizing, or because of (your assessment) of behavior with regard to speech on campus? And is it because of her specific actions/policies, or because you're just lumping in with "her ilk".
Your post is demonstrating my problem with the whole situation. Disagreeing with her politics, and then searching for a pretense to fire her is problematic. If you think she should be removed because of her policies related to campus speech, then make a case for that. As in Gay's case with plagiarism, "But that kind of stuff happens all the time" is rationalization, not justification.
I would agree with you but I doubt they are going to do that.
university, should not be a surprising first target.
I'm all for people digging into academic misconduct - if there's nothing there, then it doesn't matter who does the digging.
When academics and activism/politics mix, this is going to happen.
I just don't see why people leapt to excuse what seems to be pretty clear misconduct because they don't like the politics of the people who uncovered it. That seems to be counterproductive.
leading the charge (Ruffo)claimed to have a masters from Harvard when in fact he attended the Harvard Extension School.
I think this issue is an extension of cancel versus accountability. I may be wrong but suspect many of th folks who believe the good Dr. should have been fired do not believe the similar allegations against Justice Gorsuch were fair and should have been a part of his evaluation.
Is her demotion / firing justified based upon the issues discovered? I would say it probably is but I would also say she was not targeted for her plagiarism.
other than he's an anti-DEI pot stirrer and propagandist.
In this instance, however, the guy who went to the extension school did a better vetting job than the Harvard Corporation and its presidential search committee, and in less time.
And granting for the sake of discussion that the digging into Prof. Gay's publications was not motivated in the first instance by plagiarism concerns but by opposition to her real or perceived politics, it does not change the fact that real academic misconduct was found. The professor has nobody to blame but herself for that.
The lesson here may be that sometimes assholes are right.
Christopher Brunet (at the time a substack blogger and investigative journalist who follows academic stories - fraud, plagiarism, disputes on firing people, etc) was the one who raised it well before this fall. He was on to her flaws back when she was merely a Dean. But no one cared. A guy like Rufo simply expanded on and amplified what he had already done (Rufo probably now has access to significant resources). Brunet is a conservative Canadian, but not a widely read guy like Rufo. Ackman amplified what Rufo and Brunet subsequently collaborated on.
Interestingly, Ackman's current wife (2nd one) is Neri Oxman, a well known design guru / beautiful person who dated Brad Pitt before marrying Ackman in the last few years. Just today she was accused of plagiarism in her 2010 MIT PhD by Business Insider - problematic for her since she is currently a professor at MIT. [Edit: She left her MIT role in 2020, now running a design start-up...she has written her own response to Business Insider that people can review if they like]
The reality is that academia is rife with plagiarism and faulty data. Professors have the same cravings - fame, power, glory, etc - as anyone else and they cheat, lie, defraud, sexually harass at minimum at the same rate of the general population. Probably much higher given their ambition - so more like that of Wall Street types, Corporate Execs and high level Military and Religious figures.
The good news is the we are getting a bit of a Martin Luther moment here in terms of academia. Or at least we can hope. Time to clean out the Augean Stables of academia as they are rather polluted.
Should have done a better job vetting her tenure file ...
Once she was granted tenure based on the articles in question, it was off to the races.
likely correct.
She likely plagiarized and the effort to have her removed was not motivated by the plagiarism it was only an excuse. If the groups really care about plagiarism, they can look at a lot of folks but we know they dont.
I won't defend the people being questioned, but she is a clown who apparently got her pod person implant in the past few years. As usual, ken white probably said it better.
The academics I follow said the stuff Rufo released wasn't that concerning. It was stuff that got released after that Rufo hadn't released.
I think Harvard was looking to get rid of her, but didn't want to look too beholden to donors. Then stuff from the ongoing investigation got leaked.
the reasons why there was so much resistance to "owning" it. The writer is rightly critical of the hypocrisy of her defenders.
About outside critics: on the one hand, it is true that the motive of the messenger doesn't really matter to the truth of the accusation. I'm sure Rufo has what I would call malign intent. Ultimately irrelevant. Professional dishonesty in the worlds of science and scholarship can't be rationalized away, though there are doubtless degrees of gravity. On the other hand, it is alto true that universities -- and I don't just mean the Ivies plus Stanford -- are under severe pressures from the right wing to succumb to what the business world would call a hostile takeover attempt. It's a grave threat to their mission and must be resisted. Donors can't appoint faculty -- or remove them.
I started this thread not with plagiarism in mind but regarding why universities have fallen into a pit of their own making. The temptation to pontificate on the problems of the day, joined with pedagogical pampering and identity politics, explains a lot to me.
Ohio State, as much as we give them grief, is an actual institution and generally can be expected to follow large scale norms. I'm not a Mark Felt expert, but one would think he was a credible adult (albeit with an ax to grind).
Rufo is a poo-flinger that solely exists in the public eye to fight the culture wars and "own the libs". Alex Jones exists to sell fake supplements and stir up conspiracy theories. There is a reason we don't immediately give them the benefit of the doubt, and I would strenuously object to people who are shocked that we (at least initially) hold this person's statement as suspect.
Looking back to the famous Blind Man's Laptop Shop case, I think you can initially be forgiven for thinking that Rudy was a crank with a fantastical story. This is the guy, when confronted with an election case defeat, shouts "I have proof, you ain't seen nothing yet!". Why would you believe him when he said a local repair shop had the laptop of a famous person? Well sonovabitch, it was true. WHAT it meant was up for debate, but the fact that the laptop was there was true.
This is why there are positions of trust - if a fireman says my house is on fire, I believe him. If a raging drunk says my house is on fire, I'm going to be skeptical.
I think your article points out two important addtional stages:
1. If the information has been verified as true, it doesn't matter if it came from Satan himself - truth should be objective. You committed plagiarism or you didn't. It doesn't matter if the reporter is a student, a colleague, or a guy who spends his entire waking hours trying to bring you down. To deny this is to be partisan.
2. It should be ENTIRELY fair to ask that we expand such light shining to not just the foes of the reporter. Look back at "Hillary's Email Server" - rather than deny that, let's offer to expand such punitive searches to every politican. To only limit to one's political foes is, you guessed it - partisan.
I feel like some people are struggling with #1 in particular.
happen?
Saw an old Politico article online today and it appears very liklely Justice Gorsuch plagiarized in at least one article he wrote (i dont remember if they alleged more than one). I doubt Chris Rufo was upset with Gorsuch.
Take the example of Bill Ackman who was very outspoken toward the students who wrote letters supporting Hamas after 10/7 which is certainly his right and as I write back then I dont even disagree with his right to do that. Students took an action and should be willing to accept the consequences if they believe in what they did.
He set his focus on the the Harvard President after she testified before Congress. Again this is his right and is consistent with his views post 10/7. Having achieved his goal there has not turned his focus on the Harvard Board which for supporting the President.
Who didnt he go after for anti-semitic postings? Elon Mush who Ackan actually defended for antisemitic postings on X. OF course I am sure the fact he is an investor in X and likely other Musk companies is not why he views his statements differently.
The bigger problem for Musk may be at home as his outspoken view on plagiarism caused others to review his wife's dissertation and it appears she also has some problems.
based on a friend/foe analysis of the accused and accuser offputting.
I haven't read the Politico article, but it seems Justice Gorsuch's work was scrutinized during the nomination process, and I assume the usual players made the usual noise about it. In other words, the misconduct was given attention by people with a partisan axe to grind, and dismissed by people on Gorsuch's side, and the chips fell where they did accordingly.
As for Ackman, I find it kind of funny that he's being portrayed as some kind of right-wing nut - from my read of him, that's not accurate at all, but again the friend/foe thinking means he has to be coded as right wing because he (a) criticized pro-Palestine protestors and (b) talked about Claudine Gay's plagiarism.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying about Elon Musk. He's a weirdo who owns a social media platform and a rocket company. He gets tons of criticism from lots of people. Not sure Ackman's voice adds much to that chorus of boos.
For your last sentence, I think it was Ackman's wife (not Musk's, and up to now a non-participant in this episode) who was scrutinized by Business Insider for her dissertation. It appears she has owned the mistakes she has been able to verify, apologized (a distinction with Prof. Gay, I believe), and sought corrections. She's no longer in academia, and owns her own company. I guess she could fire herself, but that seems unlikely.
I would not support her for president of Harvard.
Do you think the scrutiny of Ackman's wife because of Ackman's actions is motivated by ill intent? If so, should the alleged plagiarism be ignored, discounted, or otherwise diminished?
Again, I say let the chips fall where they may. I don't get the personal investment people have with uber-rich, privileged and powerful people they don't know.
That's my problem with it. It's a separate issue than "Was this plagiarism". There were people who were more interested in achieving a specified outcome (getting Gay removed), and were going to move whatever levers they could to make that happen. Take a look at Rufo's recent Q&A with Politico, which demonstrates that point.
As I've said elsewhere, it can be simultaneously true that Gay is a plagiarist and that the circumstances surrounding how that was discovered/publicized/adjudicated represent other relevant issues (that may actually be more important than this one specific instance of academic dishonesty).
I have no specific interest in Claudine Gay. I do have a specific interest when political activists try to insert themselves into the functioning of universities based on their preferred ideology (and yes, that goes "both ways"). Maybe we can agree that in the grand scheme, having people like Christopher Rufo running around is a net negative. Arguably a more significant net negative than whether or not Claudine Gay is a plagiarist.
sides do it. I will admit that while i try not to do that myself I am sure there have been times where i have fallen into the trap. I made a book recommendation above and one of the recurring themes is the Evangelical Church doing just that due to the tribalization / politicization of the church.
Sorry if I implied Ackman was some right wing nut because I did not intend to. For very obvious personal reasons the response to 10/7 is something he deeply cares about. The point I was attempting to make is while he feels very comfortable calling out the students and the University Presidents he was more than happy to defend Musk over tweets like the following
“Soros reminds me of Magneto,” comparing billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros to the Jewish supervillain from Marvel’s X-Men series
Musk posted “You have said the actual truth” to a person on X who had promoted the conspiracy theory that Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
Of course there are a number of other posts where he traffic's in anti-semtic tropes but for some reason Ackman does not feel the same way toward Musk as he does toward the Presidents who testified.
I did mean Ackman's wife and I would say yes it is ill intent because it was done for no reason other than to strike back at Ackman. I have never been in academics but I suspect there are a lot of people reviewing papers this weekend trying to see if they have potential problems.
Agree with your last statement. Makes not one bit of difference in my life if the Harvard President is demoted. As the father of a HS senior going through the admissions process right now I will say American Universites are not my favorite thing in the world right now.
I will say as a general principle I think the attack on anti-woke / anti-CRT attack educationover the past few years is not a positive development for our society but that is a different conversation.
Was that racism, too?
Below I wrote "Everything in the NYT is based on victimhood or identity politics" in response to a post about editorial boards.
I'm glad to see that some things never change.
the interim president is a dude. All part of the effort to remove women and blacks from any positions of power so white dudes can regain the power we never really lost.
So no need for that cushy job on the DNC.
stealing other people's work, still make more than the vast majority of humans on this planet at the same place. Man she's such a victim.