The Claudine Gay Cancellation

[laughing dog]

As an aside, did it strike anyone else as interesting that the only 3 presidents of prestigious institutions of higher learning that Congress could get to "testify" were women?

Maybe there are a disproportionate number of women leading these "prestigious institutions of higher learning" because they practice hiring based on race and gender more than by qualifications and competence.

That is certainly one possible explanation. My first instinct was that the Republicans wanted some meat to throw to the bigots and misogynists in their base.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

As an aside, did it strike anyone else as interesting that the only 3 presidents of prestigious institutions of higher learning that Congress could get to "testify" were women?

Maybe there are a disproportionate number of women leading these "prestigious institutions of higher learning" because they practice hiring based on race and gender more than by qualifications and competence.

Or maybe there isn't a disproportionate number of women Presidents in Colleges. This is like any time a blockbuster movie has a female lead. All of a sudden people come out whining about gender and race being shoved down their throat. When in reality, it isn't remotely accurate.

Gay got McCarthy'd by the GOP and their alt-right operatives. They tried to make her look like an anti-Semitic monster. The GOP politicized a national tragedy in Israel for 10 seconds of partisan gain.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

It must be very scary to see numbers of women of color leading these institutions go from 5% to 6%.

 

[ZiprHead]

They're at it again.

Not Just Claudine Gay. Harvard's Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized and Claimed Credit for Husband's Work, Complaint Alleges

It's not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own...

freebeacon.com

While I have little college experience, can someone explain how it is plagiarism for her husband, a co-author on the second paper using the same words he used on the first paper?

 

[Playball40]

They're at it again.

Not Just Claudine Gay. Harvard's Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized and Claimed Credit for Husband's Work, Complaint Alleges

It's not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own...

freebeacon.com

While I have little college experience, can someone explain how it is plagiarism for her husband, a co-author on the second paper using the same words he used on the first paper?

He plagiarized his own work!!

 

[ZiprHead]

He plagiarized his own work!!

While it's funny, yes, but how does that work exactly?

I also note that both people charged in this right wing campaign are black women.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

They're at it again.

Not Just Claudine Gay. Harvard's Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized and Claimed Credit for Husband's Work, Complaint Alleges

It's not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own...

freebeacon.com

While I have little college experience, can someone explain how it is plagiarism for her husband, a co-author on the second paper using the same words he used on the first paper?

Yes, plagiarizing your own work is considered wrong. But using the same words doesn't always make it plagiarizing--you think like you think, faced with the same thing it's not exactly shocking that someone might write the same thing again unconsciously. I would thus put a high burden on proving self-plagiarism.

 

[lpetrich]

How it started:
5 takeaways from college antisemitism hearing - POLITICO - 12/05/2023 - "Nearly half a dozen times, lawmakers deferred the rest of their time to Elise Stefanik, who proved to be the leader of Harvard’s toughest critic on the panel."

Several lawmakers piled onto Gay, Harvard’s first Black woman leader, pressing her to outline her stance on Israel’s right to exist and whether student calls for “intifada” or “from the river to the sea” chants on campus violate the school’s code of conduct. She was also asked if she believes “calling for the mass murder of African Americans” is protected free speech, and if she has expelled or fired anyone on her campus in response to explosive demonstrations.

Democrats slam Harvard, MIT, UPenn presidents after Stefanik grilling - POLITICO - "Harvard President Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and MIT President Sally Kornbluth faced an extended grilling from lawmakers."

Some Democrats are publicly blasting the presidents of three elite colleges for refusing to say “calling for Jewish genocide” is classified as bullying, harassment or violates their school policy.

...
Now the presidents are facing the fallout due to some of their answers to questions from Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who demanded the college leaders outline whether pro-Palestinian student protestors’ calls for “intifada” or “the genocide of Jews” violate their codes of conduct on bullying or harassment.

“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct, yes or no?” Stefanik asked Magill at a Tuesday House hearing on campus antisemitism.

To which Magill responded: “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.”

Stefanik slammed the response, saying: “Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide? The speech is not harassment? This is unacceptable.”

Each of the presidents were asked the same question and responded similarly. They also said while they personally did not agree with the rhetoric used by those students, they are committed to preserving free speech on campus.

Stefanik, who previously called on Gay to resign, on Wednesday called for all three presidents to be fired.

“They don’t deserve the dignity of resigning,” Stefanik said on Fox News. “They need to be fired.”

Harvard, MIT, Penn presidents defend actions in combatting antisemitism on campus | AP News - 11:42 AM PST, December 5, 2023

In testimony before a House committee, the university leaders said there was a fine line between protecting free speech and allowing protests, while also combatting antisemitism.

“Harvard must provide firm leadership in the fight against antisemitism and hate speech even while preserving room for free expression and dissent. This is difficult work, and I admit that we have not always gotten it right,” said Claudine Gay, of Harvard. “As Harvard’s president, I am personally responsible for confronting antisemitism with the urgency it demands.”

 

[lpetrich]

Ivy League presidents face backlash over remarks on antisemitism | AP News - December 7, 2023

Facing heavy criticism, the University of Pennsylvania’s president walked back some of her remarks given earlier this week at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, saying she should have gone further to condemn hate against Jewish students.

...
Much of the blowback centered on a heated line of questioning from Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who repeatedly asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate each university’s code of conduct.

Magill said that whether hate speech crossed the line into violating Penn’s policies depended on context.

“If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” Magill said.

Gay responded to the question in a similar manner, saying that when “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.” Kornbluth responded that she had not heard calling for the genocide of Jews on MIT’s campus, and that speech “targeted at individuals, not making public statements,” would be considered harassment.

Magill expanded on her answer on Wednesday, saying a call for the genocide of Jewish people would be considered harassment or intimidation.

“I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate,” Magill said in a video statement released by the university. “It’s evil, plain and simple.”

...
“Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account,” Gay wrote Wednesday.

 

[lpetrich]

Harvard, UPenn and MIT fallout continues to grow after antisemitism hearing : NPR - December 12, 2023 11:08 AM ET

Over the weekend, Penn President Liz Magill resigned after calls mounted for her removal among students, faculty and donors. All eyes then turned to Harvard — which announced on Tuesday that its president, Claudine Gay, will keep her job amid intense pressure.

...
But not everyone is in favor of their departure. A growing number of students and faculty oppose the calls for the presidents to go, arguing that such measures go against school values around independence and freedom speech.

After exit of Claudine Gay, Bill Ackman paints bull's-eye on diversity programs - CBS News - January 4, 2024 / 11:37 AM EST

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, a ringleader in the campaign to oust former Harvard University President Claudine Gay, is fixing his sights on another target that he says has facilitated racism at universities and in corporate America: diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Ackman penned a 4,000 word takedown of DEI programs, which he posted on social media platform X following the departure of Gay, who resigned on Wednesday over controversial testimony at a Capitol Hill hearing on antisemitism on college campuses, along with allegations of plagiarism.

Harvard president Claudine Gay resigns amid controversy - CBS News - January 2, 2024 / 7:35 PM EST

"It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president," Gay wrote in the letter. "This is not a decision I came to easily. Indeed, it has been difficult beyond words because I have looked forward to working with so many of you to advance the commitment to academic excellence that has propelled this great university across centuries."

But she said that after consultation with members of the Harvard Corporation — the university's leading governing board — "it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual."

Keller: Self-congratulatory statement on Claudine Gay's resignation shows Harvard is clueless - CBS Boston

"These past several months have seen Harvard and higher education face a series of sustained and unprecedented challenges," reads the statement on President Claudine Gay's resignation from the Corporation, the university's ruling body. "In the face of escalating controversy and conflict, President Gay and the Fellows have sought to be guided by the best interests of the institution whose future progress and well-being we are together committed to uphold."

English translation: after initially circling the wagons around their poorly vetted choice for the presidency, the nabobs in charge of the world's most famous university are getting so much flak from wealthy alumni and donors and watching their corporate brand suffer so much damage that they decided to pull the plug.

Harvard professor says Claudine Gay was "brought down by a mob" - CBS Boston

Gay took the reins more than six months ago, becoming the first Black president in school history.

"It was good to have someone of a similar [ethnicity] to sort of represent," said Harvard student Afomia Hunde.

"Her being the Harvard president was something that was momentous and historical, and I'm just sad she felt the need to step down," said Harvard Extension student Kimberly Thomas.

...
"She is someone who 17 times refused to call out under oath the extermination of the Jewish people," said Shabbos Kestenbaum, another Harvard student. "I hope this can be a moment of unity to come together and declare explicitly that all forms of hatred and oppression are not tolerated at any place of higher learning."

...
I think that backing remained until this day," said Harvard Government Professor Ryan Enos, adding that the pressure made it hard for Gay to lead. "I am saddened for Harvard and higher education. This is Harvard being attacked by mob rule and something we should be wary of."

...
"A lot of us were concerned about these accusations of plagiarism, as we should be, but we didn't even get a chance to deliberate that," said Enos. "Instead, she was brought down by a mob."

 

[lpetrich]

What goes around comes around. In this case, accusations of plagiarism.

Bill Ackman's Wife, Neri Oxman, Plagiarized in Her MIT Dissertation - Jan 4, 2024, 11:28 AM PST

• Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, resigned after conservative activists revealed she had plagiarized.
• The hedge fund manager and prominent Harvard donor Bill Ackman helped lead the charge against Gay.
• BI analyzed Ackman's wife's doctoral dissertation and found numerous instances of plagiarism.

...
Oxman plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation, Business Insider found, including at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation.

...
An architect and artist who experiments with new ways to synthesize materials found in nature, Oxman has been the subject of profiles in major outlets such as The New York Times and Elle. She has collaborated with Björk, exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and had paparazzi stake her out after Brad Pitt visited her lab at MIT in 2018.

In 2019, emails uncovered by the Boston Globe showed Ackman pressured MIT to keep Oxman's name out of a brewing scandal over an original sculpture she gave to Jeffrey Epstein in thanks for a $125,000 donation to her lab.

...
In Oxman's dissertation, completed at MIT, she plagiarized a 1998 paper by two Israeli scholars, Steve Weiner and H. Daniel Wagner, a 2006 article published in the journal Nature by the New York University historian Peder Anker, and a 1995 paper published in the proceedings of the Royal Society of London. She also lifted from a book published in 1998 by the German physicist Claus Mattheck and, in a more classical mode of plagiarism, copied one paragraph from Mattheck without any quotation or attribution.

Then giving several examples of NO's plagiarism.

Like Oxman, Gay was found to have lifted passages from other academics' work without using quotation marks while citing the authors.

Gay's plagiarism was seen by some academics, including many of those she plagiarized, as relatively inconsequential.

George Reid Andrews, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the people Gay plagiarized, told the New York Post that what Gay did "happens fairly often in academic writing and for me does not rise to the level of plagiarism."

"I am glad she read my work, learned from it, and recommended it to her readers," Andrews continued.

Seems like CG didn't mark out her quotes of GRA very well. NO may have been guilty of similar lack of marking out.

 

[lpetrich]

More and more plagiarism. Neri Oxman was worse than Claudine Gay.

Neri Oxman Plagiarized Directly From Wikipedia in Her Dissertation - wife of Claudine Gay dethroner Bill Ackman

In her response, Oxman described her mistakes as instances in which she "omitted quotation marks for certain work that I used." The cases she apologized for were similar in character to some cases that the Washington Free Beacon found in Claudine Gay's academic history — failures to use quotation marks around passages from works that were otherwise cited.

But a thorough review of her published work revealed that Oxman's failure to cite sources went beyond that — and included multiple instances of plagiarism in which she passed off writing from other sources as her own without citing the original in any way. At least 15 passages from her 2010 MIT doctoral dissertation were lifted without any citation from Wikipedia entries.

The instances of plagiarism BI found on Friday are closer to a more common definition of plagiarism — the use of someone else's words without any indication that you are passing them off as your own.

Then her plagiarism of Wikipedia. That's not what one would use for cutting-edge research, though it can be good for general introductions.

But Oxman never acknowledged having pulled from Wikipedia. She didn't just lift text, either: She also took an illustration from the article for "Heat flux" without citing a source, despite requirements in the image's Creative Commons license to credit where the picture came from.

...
In a footnote, she used 54 consecutive words without attribution from the website of the design-software maker Rhino to explain what a "Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline" is. She also used technical language about tessellations that matched language from the website Wolfram MathWorld — which, again, she didn't cite.

She plagiarized both before and after she received her Ph.D. in 2010. Of three peer-reviewed papers reviewed by BI, two — 2007's "Get Real: Towards Performance Driven Computational Geometry" and 2011's "Variable Property Rapid Prototyping" — also contained plagiarism.

...
The 2007 "Get Real" paper pulled language describing tensors — an algebraic concept that includes scalars and vectors — from an earlier-published work, the "CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics." In a 2010 paper, "Per Formative: Towards a Post Materialist Paradigm in Architecture," that was not peer-reviewed, BI also found another instance of plagiarism, with Oxman using chunks of language from publisher Da Capo Press' description of "The Modern Language of Architecture" by Bruno Zevi.

 

[lpetrich]

Bill Ackman's response:
Bill Ackman on X: "My wife, @NeriOxman, …" / X

My wife, @NeriOxman, was just contacted by Business Insider claiming that they have identified other plagiarism in her work including 15 examples in her dissertation where she did not cite Wikipedia as a source.

Business Insider told us that they are publishing their story this evening. As a result, we don't have time to research their claims prior to publication.

It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family.

This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews.

We will begin with a review of the work of all current @MIT
faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism.

We will be using MIT's own plagiarism standards which can be found here:

What is Plagiarism? | Academic Integrity at MIT

We will share our findings in the public domain as they are completed in the spirit of transparency.

I like this response:
Ben Anderson on X: "@BillAckman @NeriOxman Ah, I see what you’re doing here. ..." / X

Ah, I see what you’re doing here. Rules are good enough for everyone, except you and your wife. Gotcha. Seems a bit childish to now go after other people because your wife got caught doing the exact same thing you keep calling out everyone else for. Seems this article triggered you a bit, Bill. Maybe next time you’d want to make sure that your house is clean before going after others.

 

[lpetrich]

Media now in Bill Ackman’s sights after wife embroiled in plagiarism row | US news | The Guardian - Tue 9 Jan 2024 10.56 EST - "Billionaire vows to tackle ‘problems with how our media operates’ after Neri Oxman accused of plagiarism in PhD thesis"

Ackman said he and Oxman would conduct “an analysis” of the second report, which included the Wikipedia allegations, but generally responded with fury. On Friday, he suggested he would investigate Business Insider’s “reporters and staff”.

Later, on Monday, in a reply to an X post that criticized “child-abusing radical leftist losers”, Ackman wrote: “I will pursue these societally important issues including problems with how our media operates, the ideological takeover of our education system, discrimination in all forms, and free speech to the end of the earth. It is the most important battle I have ever taken on.”

Axel Springer, owner of Business Insider:

“While the facts of the reports have not been disputed, over the past few days questions have been raised about the motivation and the process leading up to the reporting – questions that we take very seriously,” Axel Springer said.

Business Insider's owners clash over plagiarism story | Semafor - "Business Insider’s parent company is divided over the publication’s recent article about plagiarism allegations made against the wife of businessman Bill Ackman."

"On Tuesday, it emerged that Ackman had spoken with senior figures at Business Insider and Axel Springer before the latter announced its process review."

The access and influence Ackman appears to have been able to wield troubled some.

“This is a very damning revelation about how a billionaire was able to pressure the parent company of Business Insider, Axel Springer, to publicly announce an investigation into the ‘motivation’ behind reporting that was critical of his wife,” Judd Legum, the founder of the Popular Information newsletter, posted on X.

The prospect of an ultra-wealthy campaigner attacking journalism and news organizations is a chilling one in an industry where a record number of people lost their jobs in 2023, and where an average of 2.5 newspapers closed each week over the past 12 months. The media are already dealing with one upset billionaire in Donald Trump, who has said journalists are the “enemy of the people” and whose ally, Kash Patel, said a second Trump administration would “come after the people in the media”.

 

[lpetrich]

We Live in a Golden Age of Crybullyism | The Nation - "Those in power, promoting austerity and war, no longer want us to fear them. They demand something much more sinister: that we feel sorry for them."

Ackman had spent the better part of two months trying to get multiple university presidents fired as part of a crusade against both so-called “woke” academia and pro-Palestinian voices. Behind the scenes and on social media, Ackman was a central mover in the successful effort to push out Harvard President Claudine Gay under the auspices of plagiarism. So, when reporters did what reporters ought to do—hold a powerful man to his own standards—Ackman resorted to crybullyism; he became verbosely indignant, tweeting thousands of aggrieved words and distracting people from his own, initial, campaigns of intimidation.

Ackman defended his wife’s clear-as-day plagiarism, saying she was a “private person” and an “introvert,” and therefore not fair game for media scrutiny. (Oxman is famous enough to have been the subject of several media puff pieces in recent years.) He then made veiled reference to Business Insider’s reporting potentially driving her to suicide. “I have tragically seen too many suffer and even commit suicide in similar circumstances to the one Neri has experienced. These media tactics have to stop as they can destroy people or worse, well before they have a chance to defend themselves.”

After spending weeks trying to get several people fired over manufactured controversies and throwing his billions around to discredit powerless campus activists, Ackman says his wife is now the target of a media plot to “destroy her reputation” and drive her to suicide.

What a big baby.

Crybully - someone who is belligerent toward others, and when that belligerence is challenged, then whimpers about how persecuted they are, what victims they are. The article then cited numerous examples from recent years.

 

[Playball40]

They're at it again.

Not Just Claudine Gay. Harvard's Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized and Claimed Credit for Husband's Work, Complaint Alleges

It's not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own...

freebeacon.com

While I have little college experience, can someone explain how it is plagiarism for her husband, a co-author on the second paper using the same words he used on the first paper?

Yes, plagiarizing your own work is considered wrong. But using the same words doesn't always make it plagiarizing--you think like you think, faced with the same thing it's not exactly shocking that someone might write the same thing again unconsciously. I would thus put a high burden on proving self-plagiarism.

Nonsense. The definition of plagiarism is passing someone else's work off as your own.

noun

1. the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
   "there were accusations of plagiarism"

 

[Swammerdami]

I have NOT been following any of this at all. (And would like to see the EXACT context where Claudine Gay allegedly failed to condemn calls for genocide.)

BUT: Reading all this now confirms what we all already knew: American political and "intellectual" discourse have gone completely off the rails.

 

[Politesse]

He plagiarized his own work!!

While it's funny, yes, but how does that work exactly?

I also note that both people charged in this right wing campaign are black women.

Self-citation is a thing, an important consideration so the reader will be able to follow the publication history of the idea if they wish. I would correct this mistake on a student paper, for instance. But not take off points. It isn't a legal issue, purely stylistic. And of course, no one with a brain believes that what looks like a white supremacist juggernaut is really just a group of justifiably worried radio pundits concerned purely with academic decorum...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

They're at it again.

Not Just Claudine Gay. Harvard's Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized and Claimed Credit for Husband's Work, Complaint Alleges

It's not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own...

freebeacon.com

While I have little college experience, can someone explain how it is plagiarism for her husband, a co-author on the second paper using the same words he used on the first paper?

Yes, plagiarizing your own work is considered wrong. But using the same words doesn't always make it plagiarizing--you think like you think, faced with the same thing it's not exactly shocking that someone might write the same thing again unconsciously. I would thus put a high burden on proving self-plagiarism.

The only issue I can see is if she is barely publishing new work via repeating everything she already said. Otherwise, how is using your own words unethical. It'd be unethical to quote her own words under that of a third party, and using that third party as an authority.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

He plagiarized his own work!!

While it's funny, yes, but how does that work exactly?

I also note that both people charged in this right wing campaign are black women.

Self-citation is a thing, an important consideration so the reader will be able to follow the publication history of the idea if they wish. I would correct this mistake on a student paper, for instance. But not take off points. It isn't a legal issue, purely stylistic. And of course, no one with a brain believes that what looks like a white supremacist juggernaut is really just a group of justifiablt worried radio pundits concerned purely with academic decorum...

If she were citing her findings, I'd agree. If she is reusing it in a paper where it is useful, probably not nearly as important, again, assuming she isn't passing an old paper as a new one.