Claudine Gay’s ousting reveals that the messenger is still an easier target than the message | Kenan Malik
Claudine Gay’s ousting reveals that the messenger is still an easier target than the message | Kenan Malik
The head of Harvard’s fate was sealed when she became the focus of a culture war battle over antisemitism, plagiarism and free speech
What an interestingly middle of the road article.
It was kinda, like, the Republicans are terrible, bad faith racists. But also, despite not having good reasons, everything they're railing against right now is actually bad and should be reworked.
Nice to see an article promoted on here that isn't just circling the wagons on something just because the Republicans hate it.
It's not "middle of the road". He is a leftist, criticising liberal* identity reductionism and its inability to recall that class is part of the intersectional framework it has co-opted and abused beyond all meaning.
*in the true sense of the word, not the USian colloquial meaning
Agreed, but, like... that sounds pretty middle of the road to me?
Like, I think the majority of articles I've seen on this fall way left or right of the line taken in this article. It's either been "President Gay has done absolutely nothing wrong and this is just a racist witch hunt" or "President Gay wants to murder Jewish people."
This actually was a thoughtful review that could admit that both sides are right in some aspects and wrong in others with regards to her firing.
He is a leftist, criticising liberal* identity reductionism and its inability to recall that class is part of the intersectional framework it has co-opted and abused beyond all meaning.
Thanks for saving me the click on an article not worth reading.
She got caught blatantly plagiarizing her small body of research. That she is still faculty at Harvard is a disgrace.
Not quite, and the specifics can matter a lot in cases like this. The way it was explained to me that made the most sense, was to imagine if there were two types of plagiarism: felony and misdemeanor. Felony plagiarism is taking someone else’s idea and claiming it as your own, or directly quoting an original idea without putting it in quotes, and pretending it was your idea all along. Misdemeanor plagiarism is not properly citing someone else’s idea, or simply misattributing a quote or well-established concept. Not that hard to do to be honest, and while the latter is careless and shouldn’t ever happen, Gay was accused of what would be a misdemeanor plagiarism. She didn’t steal anyone’s ideas, she just did a bad job at attribution. The distinction matters, though what she did still isn’t good, to be fair.
If Lawrence Bacow got caught plagiarizing and told congress genocide doesn’t violate Harvard’s code of conduct he would’ve been out in a week.
In her PhD dissertation, and in around half of her journal articles she is alleged to have taken almost verbatim paragraphs from academic papers without acknowledging them as quotes or with proper attribution.
Plagiarism is no laughing matter, in academic circles. If a student did this they could not only flunk but be automatically expelled (depending on the rules of the University and/or Department involved), so why allow it from the literal President of the entire University?! Supposedly in at least one of these cases she later wrote to the journal and asked for it to be edited - but does that simply mean that she was caught and wanted to cover it up? Though it does not matter b/c regardless: why not be careful and precise and do the job correctly the first time, as is expected from a true professional, most especially an academic one? (correctness is kinda their whole schtick? at least usually)
This only gives the conservative media the win that they need to keep going, in pushing against DEI and other matters. It also subtly underscores another point that conservative media sometimes makes: how American universities have become profit-generation machines, at the expense of their prior role as sources of learning, i.e. since they apparently picked her over candidates who were legitimately qualified.
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