Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation followed weeks of mounting accusations that she lifted language from other scholars in her doctoral dissertation and journal articles.
From what I’ve read, she copied multiple things verbatim, or with tiny changes that would never have flown when I was in school to avoid plagiarism, nor that would seem to satisfy the standards in place at the time, much less now. I’d say that’s proven to the standard that would get students a 0 or other punishment, as reported by students from Havard in a recent school paper article. Hence my point that the issue to me isn’t what she did so much as the “rules for the but not for me” response from Harvard.
Of course, what I’d argue would be a better discussion is whether plagiarism (as defined in most schools now) is the huge issue academia makes it out to be. It seems like many (maybe most?) professors don’t think strict plagiarism is an issue, yet schools and colleges continue to use it as something they can “easily” check for via text scanning tools. I think the problem is how anal places have gotten over what they think constitutes plagiarism to be far less than is actually a problem.
And of course, I think this is actually all to get her on something for the horrible performance in front of Congress a la tax evasion for Al Capone rather than an actual moral panic about plagiarism.
Was it ever proven that she plagiarized?
From what I’ve read, she copied multiple things verbatim, or with tiny changes that would never have flown when I was in school to avoid plagiarism, nor that would seem to satisfy the standards in place at the time, much less now. I’d say that’s proven to the standard that would get students a 0 or other punishment, as reported by students from Havard in a recent school paper article. Hence my point that the issue to me isn’t what she did so much as the “rules for the but not for me” response from Harvard.
Of course, what I’d argue would be a better discussion is whether plagiarism (as defined in most schools now) is the huge issue academia makes it out to be. It seems like many (maybe most?) professors don’t think strict plagiarism is an issue, yet schools and colleges continue to use it as something they can “easily” check for via text scanning tools. I think the problem is how anal places have gotten over what they think constitutes plagiarism to be far less than is actually a problem.
And of course, I think this is actually all to get her on something for the horrible performance in front of Congress a la tax evasion for Al Capone rather than an actual moral panic about plagiarism.
No