by mcenedella on 1/1/24, 12:50 AM with 70 comments
by justinclift on 1/1/24, 2:30 AM
In order to protect the author from retaliation, and because the proceedings of the
Harvard College Honor Council are sensitive and confidential, we made the decision to
grant this author anonymity.
by thedailymail on 1/1/24, 2:39 AM
by Gimpei on 1/1/24, 3:42 AM
by craigdalton on 1/1/24, 5:19 AM
by armchairhacker on 1/1/24, 2:47 AM
> When my peers are found responsible for multiple instances of inadequate citation, they are often suspended for an academic year.
It would also help if the author or someone could give examples of specific instances and their punishments including this one (with the student anonymous and assignment vague enough that it's not identifying).
---
Accidental plagiarism is real plagiarism, but in practice, not a big deal. Even a few instances like "two sentences from the acknowledgement section of her dissertation", over a 100+ page dissertation and 11 journal entries, seem OK to me. I'm in academia, still I probably don't know very much, but my understanding is that individual violations like this often end up with lost points, not even a 0 on the assignment. The author mentions that repeat violations carry harsher penalties, but doesn't mention that the next violation is usually made after the student has been cited for the previous one.
On the other hand, just because someone went out of their way to hunt down an instance of plagiarism, doesn't mean it should be downplayed. If she ever intentionally plagiarized, then I agree with the author. Or even if she only accidentally plagiarized, but it was several egregious instances like paragraphs copied verbatim, I'm also inclined to agree (then she's not malicious, but incompetent).
by tzs on 1/1/24, 2:45 PM
If anyone is curious what Harvard's plagiarism definitions are, they seem to be in this: https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/what-constitutes-plagia...
by alkhatib on 1/1/24, 2:30 AM
by mcenedella on 1/1/24, 2:49 AM
by vecplane on 1/1/24, 1:11 AM
by RickJWagner on 1/1/24, 3:33 PM
Clearly, Claudine Gay does not represent academic excellence. She is personifying the 'diversity hire' and providing a true-life example that will set equality back decades.
Harvard can and should do much better.
It's time to do the right thing, fire Claudine Gay and find a worthy replacement.
by mcpackieh on 1/1/24, 1:07 AM
> She is accused of plagiarism in her dissertation and at least two of her 11 journal articles. Two sentences from the acknowledgement section of her dissertation even seem to have been copied from another work.
Presuming the allegations are true, I find it interesting that it went unaddressed for so long. The matter was seemingly systematically ignored for almost 30 years until she pissed off the wrong people by allowing students to protest against Israel. Then people went digging for something to use against her and found this plagarism. From the NYTimes:
> After weeks of tumult at Harvard over the university’s response to the Israel-Hamas war and the leadership of its president, Claudine Gay, there was no shortage of interest in a faculty forum with Dr. Gay this week.
> In a town hall held over Zoom on Tuesday with several hundred members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Gay focused on how to bridge the deep divides that had emerged on campus as a result of the war, according to two people who attended and asked for confidentiality because of the sensitivity of the situation.
> Faculty members who spoke up in the meeting were largely positive, and there were no questions about Dr. Gay’s academic record after public allegations of plagiarism. The matter wasn’t even raised, one professor said.
> But by Thursday, new questions surrounding Dr. Gay’s scholarship had shifted to the forefront, after the university said late Wednesday that it had identified two more instances of what it called “duplicative language without appropriate attribution,” from her 1997 doctoral dissertation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/us/harvard-claudine-gay-p...
by matthewdgreen on 1/1/24, 2:19 AM