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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@lemmy.world 131 points 6 months ago

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@lemmy.world 21 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

[-] canihasaccount@lemmy.world 18 points 6 months ago

Eh, us professors care pretty deeply about the plagiarism she did. Intent or even knowledge of plagiarism isn't necessary for disciplinary action in plagiarism cases at major research universities. Any one of these examples would be enough for my university's academic integrity committee to rule that plagiarism occurred:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/us/claudine-gay-harvard-president-excerpts.html

And in the case of a dissertation, plagiarism is an automatic expulsion and degree retraction from my university. At the PhD level, students certainly know that what Dr. Gay did is plagiarism (a good rule of thumb is that five sequential words, even with paraphrasing, without citing the source, is plagiarism), and that plagiarism is completely unacceptable.

I already know of a student who made the argument that their plagiarism wasn't as bad as Dr. Gay's, so because Dr. Gay wasn't penalized, they shouldn't be penalized. Had she not stepped down, that line of argument likely would have snowballed out of control. The professors I know think her comments to Congress were out of touch, but all of us had been livid that she and Harvard were saying that she didn't plagiarize--any professor who looks at those examples will tell you that she did.

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this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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