Harvard President Gay resigns after rocky testimony, plagiarism allegations
reuters.com
reuters.com
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/25/harvard-threat... ("A Law Firm Said Plagiarism Allegations Against Harvard President Gay Were ‘Demonstrably False.’ Then She Submitted Corrections.")
A hearing doesn't imply that they thoroughly checked.
Also bear in mind that Harvard tried to stick by her and even excused her congressional testimony and after investigating the initial plagerism instances. At a certain point the plagiarism instances just became way to numerous (50?) to reasonably explain them away by carelessness.
Imagine chaos that Google could cause if it looked for common phrases across its corpus of sites/books/papers.
Harvard should already have been doing that, but it's clear the board who hired her had no real interest in verifying her credentials.
Seems like she stayed clear from raising suspicions (by simply not publishing more and going into administration instead) but now she made herself some serious enemies willing to do the work.
The consequences are a matter of trust: A simple office clerk with no scientific training going through the ranks at Harvard growing into "President of Harvard", on the understanding that they "merely" ensure that the business chugs along (and with a proven track record in doing that) while keeping a large part of such administration work off the backs of the scientists and teachers is a better fit than somebody who's demonstrated disregard for the tenets of scientific work.
It doesn't matter why President Gay's works were scrutinized right now, the loss of trust is still real.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/16/us/jews-harvard-antisemit...
- "Disgraced former Harvard President Claudine Gay is finally back picking cotton where she belongs"
- "I think the black students should be picking cotton, not studying at Harvard"
Those quotes are also protected under the 1st amendment. Regardless, they're so unbelievable vile, and the merits of the expression are so vacuous that it has virtually no value for mind-expanding endeavors that universities claim to be for. Similar to calling for a genocide.
The interactions that people got mad at were part of a longer exchange of wordplay set up by the congressperson.
The hearing was not in good faith.
I know that at least one of the universities (Penn?) they otherwise suppressed pro-Palestinian speech, including banning groups and presentations.
Of course the premise is that the answer must be one of the two, but you need to establish that premise. It's the claim of a heavily polarized group (which doesn't make it false, but I'm not taking it at face value either).
Is there evidence of it? In all the claims I've seen, I haven't seen evidence.
There is a long tradition of permitting academics to say things that we wouldn't normally allow people to say. The people saying these things normally need to back up their words in a long written argument with citations, etc, and do so in a fairly passive way (IE, publish it as an article in a journal, rather than an op-ed in a newspaper, or during a protest). Even then there can be a firestorm (see the response to The Bell Curve).
I'm pretty sure if we look back we can see historically that academics called for violence against Jews, Asians, Muslims, and many other ethnicities. At times, people have completely supported academics in their privilege, typically when the statements align with their own philosophies. Imagine what people said right after Pearl Harbor.
University presidents want to keep everybody happy- that includes professors, students, and people outside the university. A president like Gay probably thought that by making the statements she did, she was pissing off the fewest people- preserving academic freedom for professors while also carving out a space for protestors to say rather violent things. That sort of subtlety doesn't work when you're being grilled in front of congress- they want you to say "yes or no" (notice all three presidents were asked, and confirmed, their believe that Israel has a right to exist) with no context. If Gay had said "no it's not OK" then she would have returned to a firestorm by students on her campus, and if she said it was OK, then she would have returned to a different firestorm on campus.
I think a lot of the news coverage around this has unnecessarily heightened the level of severity in the claims of the protestors. I imagine many people who called for intifada didn't realize that some folks would perceive that as a direct attack on their lives. We already know many students don't know which river, or which sea is being referenced.
Of the three presidents, Kornbluth of MIT is the only one who will survive this. She has an excellent publication record, the full and total support of her institution, she is much smarter than Stefanik, and it helps that she's Jewish, because people levelling "antisemitism" claims against her just look kind of silly.
If I were doing their media prep, I would tell them to just ignore the questions and launch into fiery monologues about freedom of speech, liberty, American values, etc instead. Maybe accuse one of the unfriendlies of antisemitism and political grandstanding.
I don’t mean this as a gotcha. When group X criticizes a member of group Y based on standards that group X doesn’t really care about, in order to gain an advantage for group X, group Y will tend to discount those criticisms to a varying degree.
Rules for the but not for me.
Larry Summers for example.
If anything, the Board resisted the mob pressure until it was clear that Gay had plagiarized.
More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38844980
seriously : if ANY student currently at harvard did the same as she did in plagiarism, that student would get, AT MINIMUM a 3 years suspension. if not getting expelled forever from getting a diploma from harvard.
why did she get that job ? her skin color, and her leftist politics. nothing else. her university and intellectual production is worth nothing, and she's clearly not the brighest lamp at harvard, by a very long shot.
it's too late. where i work, anyone from harvard gets ejected to the nearest trash bin if they try to get in. bosses told us they will never, ever, get someone from harvard as long they will be around, which is at least 10 years at minimum. and those big CEOs they all know one another, and talk with one another.
harvard students, good luck finding a job with your crap diploma.
But the premise of the question was nonsense[1], as Peter Beinart has made clear. The premise being „intifada“ meaning „an attempt at genocide of jews“ when it actually means „uprising“.
It was acutally about silencing the Pro-Palestinian support at American universities in light of wealthy donors threatening to cut funding.
[1] https://twitter.com/hahauenstein/status/1734608990628348303/
I found her testimony to be insipid and not worthy of someone who has the position of leader and president.
She should have clearly stated “if someone calls for violence or genocide of any people, that is against harvards code” (and if that’s not true then amend the code please). It should have been a lay-up.
Instead she kept saying “it depends on the context” which sounds like politician speech for dodging accountability. That’s fine for most people, but is this what we want from society’s leaders?
If there were questions about “intifada”, she should have said something like “I don’t speak that language, so I can’t tell you what it means, but calls for genocide are not okay”.
How much leeway do you give her for being out of her element? That's part of the point of these hearings, to put people under extreme pressure and play gotcha.
She tried to outplay the gotcha game, which is why she did poorly.
Instead she should have come in and said “At Harvard this is what we believe - …”.
Being able to state the values of your organization is core skill for the president and leader of the school. It should be down pat, a solid set of words that ring true and inspire. If you can’t do that, then let’s find someone who can. That’s the difference between leaders and managers.
Rules for thee, not for me, has been Ivy League's privilege for years now. She previously ran the DEI initiative that was found to discriminate against Asians at Harvard by the USSC. It's only equitable if some are more equitable than others.
That said, this will only further the restrictions on speech at universities, which has been weaponized to an almost inconceivable degree, as it was in this case.
That's the power of talking points. Once people internalize them, then the conclusions are inescapable. If you can frame the question, you've already won the debate. It's like calling abortion the murder of children - if you accept that, then the abortion debate is of course over for you.
The only protection is to question our premises. Did Gay say that? It would seem pretty odd ...
This is like people stating in 2000 that when Bin Ladin said Jihad against America, it didn't count - he was talking about Big Jihad and not small Jihad.
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Attitudes about Isreal, including using Intifada/armed uprising metrics: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestinians-attitudes-...
Could you point to where that very long survey supports your claim? I read and skimmed parts, and searched for some words, but didn't find it.
Such situations are tricky: If you dig through every aspect of someone's long career and life, there's a reasonable chance of finding something problematic or even serious [edit: also, in every field, the way sausage is made can be a little messier than the public's innocent, simplistic imagination]. On one hand, we want to maintain the integrity of the institutions and our society. On the other, we need to be careful about incidentally empowering political suppression.
I suppose part of the solution is not making it political, and not replacing people like Gay with their political enemies - ensuring there is no political benefit. Another part is to hold reactionaries and allies to the same standards; now egregious behavior and corruption is tolerated, and even encouraged as a way to flaunt power and disrupt order. (I don't mean that as whataboutism - if Gay did wrong, Gay should go.)
You don't have to question this - the guy who originally started the campaign against her literally stated that this was his plan on Twitter. Both his motives and his tactics were public record long before the mainstream media picked up the story.