Plagiarism at Harvard

[Langue_doc]

Update: Harvard President Resigns

Here's the link to the gift version:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/02/us/claudine-gay-harvard?mwgrp=c-dbar&unlocked_article_code=1.Kk0.kM5L.One99tWkOJVq&smid=url-share

ETA: Lightning, I hit the post button before seeing your post. From the article:

Here's what to know about Claudine Gay's resignation.
Faced with a new round of accusations over plagiarism in her scholarly work, Harvard's president Claudine Gay announced her resignation on Tuesday, becoming the second Ivy League leader to lose her job in recent weeks amid a firestorm intensified by their widely derided congressional testimony regarding antisemitism on campus.

The resignation of Dr. Gay marked an abrupt end to a turbulent tenure that began in July. Her stint was the shortest of any president in the history of Harvard since its founding in 1636. She was the institution's first Black president, and the second woman to lead the university.

"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," Dr. Gay wrote in a letter to the Harvard community.

Over the last month, plagiarism accusations had surfaced against Dr. Gay, the president of Harvard, signaling that the attacks on her qualifications to lead the Ivy League university are continuing, and miring the university deeper in debate over whether Harvard holds its president and its students to the same standard.

The latest accusations were circulated through an unsigned complaint published Monday in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online journal that has led a campaign against Dr. Gay over the past few weeks. The new complaint added additional accusations of plagiarism to about 40 that had already been circulated in the same way, apparently by the same accuser.

Support for Dr. Gay's nascent presidency began eroding after what some saw as the university's initial failure to forcefully condemn the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and some pro-Palestinian student responses. The caution outraged some Harvard supporters — outrage that grew in early December, after Dr. Gay gave what critics saw as lawyerly, evasive answers before Congress when asked whether calls for the genocide of Jewish people were violations of school policies.

Dr. Gay appeared at a hearing along with two other university presidents, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the hearing, Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, pelted the presidents with hypothetical questions.

"At Harvard," Ms. Stefanik asked Dr. Gay, "does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?" Dr. Gay replied, "It can be, depending on the context."

That exchange, and a similar back and forth between Ms. Stefanik and Ms. Magill, rocketed across social media and infuriated many people with close ties to the universities. Ms. Magill, whose support had already been shaken in recent months over her refusal to cancel a Palestinian writers conference, resigned as Penn's president four days later.

Dr. Gay moved to contain the fallout with an apology in an interview that was published in The Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper. "When words amplify distress and pain, I don't know how you could feel anything but regret," she said.

One week after her testimony, the Harvard Corporation, the university's governing body issued a unanimous statement of support — after meeting late into the night before — saying said it stood firmly behind Dr. Gay despite the pressure from major financial backers, prominent Jewish alumni and lawmakers calling for her ouster.`

At the same time, the university acknowledged that it had received accusations of plagiarism in three academic articles by Dr. Gay. It said a review had determined that she had not violated the university's standards for "research misconduct," but that the investigation "revealed a few instances of inadequate citation," and that Dr. Gay would request four corrections to two articles.

Then on Dec. 20, amid continuing allegations of plagiarism driven by conservative media, the university said that it had found two new instances of insufficient citation in Dr. Gay's work — this time in her 1997 doctoral dissertation. Harvard described the issues as "duplicative language without appropriate attribution" and said that she would update her dissertation to correct them.

Dr. Gay, who earned her doctorate in government from Harvard in 1998 and returned eight years later to teach government there, found her support — already on shaky ground after the uproar over antisemitism — evaporating as the plagiarism allegations and findings by the university continued to mount.

The accusations also drew more unwelcome attention from Congress, when a committee investigating Harvard sent a letter to the university demanding all of its documentation and communications related to the plagiarism allegations.

Altogether, the charges circulated by conservative media, including in an article by the activist Christopher Rufo and in reporting by The Washington Free Beacon, accuse Dr. Gay of using material from other sources without proper attribution in about half of the 11 journal articles listed on her résumé, in addition to her dissertation.

The examples range from brief snippets of technical definitions to paragraphs summing up other scholars' research that are only lightly paraphrased, and in some cases lack any direct citation of the other scholars. In one example that drew particular attention and ridicule online, the acknowledgments of Dr. Gay's dissertation appear to take two sentences from the 1996 book acknowledgments of another scholar, Jennifer L. Hochschild.

As allegations mounted, faculty members at Harvard and scholars elsewhere offered varying assessments of the severity of the infractions, with some seeing a disturbing pattern, and others calling them minor or dismissing them as a partisan hit job.

But to some, the issue was plain: Dr. Gay had committed plagiarism — a word which does not actually appear in the Harvard board's initial statement on Dec. 12 — and Harvard should admit it.

Carol Swain, a political scientist who retired from Vanderbilt University in 2017, said that she was "livid," both at Dr. Gay's use of her work — Mr. Rufo cited at least two instances of Dr. Gay using Dr. Swain's work with no citation — and at Harvard's defense of her.

But Steven Levitsky, a government professor at Harvard, said the passages in question seemed to mostly be "mild sloppiness."

Many, he said, appeared to occur in sections of the papers dealing not with Dr. Gay's core claims, but with summaries of methodologies and of previous scholarship.

"She's a quantitative scholar," he said. "She cares about the data. These guys don't spend time fussing about their literature reviews."

Dr. Levitsky had organized a faculty petition in support of her that had urged the Corporation to "resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard's commitment to academic freedom."

[Parasaurolophus]

But Steven Levitsky, a government professor at Harvard, said the passages in question seemed to mostly be "mild sloppiness."

Many, he said, appeared to occur in sections of the papers dealing not with Dr. Gay's core claims, but with summaries of methodologies and of previous scholarship.

"She's a quantitative scholar," he said. "She cares about the data. These guys don't spend time fussing about their literature reviews."

I wouldn't exactly call that much of a defence. More of an indictment of the field, really.

Besides which, it's true of all our plagiarising students, too: they care about X [where X is not one of the values attached to the class]. They don't spend time fussing about their literature reviews (or whatever). And yet, we still give them 0, don't we?

[Hegemony]

It's really unfortunate that the plagiarism question became so entangled with the political question.

[Langue_doc]

From The Atlantic Daily:

Tom Nichols
STAFF WRITER
Claudine Gay engaged in academic misconduct. Everything else about her case is irrelevant, including the silly claims of her right-wing opponents.
When Truth Comes From Terrible People
Faced with a new round of accusations over plagiarism in her scholarly work, Harvard's president Claudine Gay announced her resignation on Tuesday, becoming the second Ivy League leader to lose her job in recent weeks amid a firestorm intensified by their widely derided congressional testimony regarding antisemitism on campus.

The resignation of Dr. Gay marked an abrupt end to a turbulent tenure that began in July. Her stint was the shortest of any president in the history of Harvard since its founding in 1636. She was the institution's first Black president, and the second woman to lead the university.

"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," Dr. Gay wrote in a letter to the Harvard community.

Over the last month, plagiarism accusations had surfaced against Dr. Gay, the president of Harvard, signaling that the attacks on her qualifications to lead the Ivy League university are continuing, and miring the university deeper in debate over whether Harvard holds its president and its students to the same standard.

The latest accusations were circulated through an unsigned complaint published Monday in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online journal that has led a campaign against Dr. Gay over the past few weeks. The new complaint added additional accusations of plagiarism to about 40 that had already been circulated in the same way, apparently by the same accuser.

Support for Dr. Gay's nascent presidency began eroding after what some saw as the university's initial failure to forcefully condemn the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and some pro-Palestinian student responses. The caution outraged some Harvard supporters — outrage that grew in early December, after Dr. Gay gave what critics saw as lawyerly, evasive answers before Congress when asked whether calls for the genocide of Jewish people were violations of school policies.

Dr. Gay appeared at a hearing along with two other university presidents, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the hearing, Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, pelted the presidents with hypothetical questions.

"At Harvard," Ms. Stefanik asked Dr. Gay, "does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?" Dr. Gay replied, "It can be, depending on the context."

That exchange, and a similar back and forth between Ms. Stefanik and Ms. Magill, rocketed across social media and infuriated many people with close ties to the universities. Ms. Magill, whose support had already been shaken in recent months over her refusal to cancel a Palestinian writers conference, resigned as Penn's president four days later.

Dr. Gay moved to contain the fallout with an apology in an interview that was published in The Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper. "When words amplify distress and pain, I don't know how you could feel anything but regret," she said.

One week after her testimony, the Harvard Corporation, the university's governing body issued a unanimous statement of support — after meeting late into the night before — saying said it stood firmly behind Dr. Gay despite the pressure from major financial backers, prominent Jewish alumni and lawmakers calling for her ouster.`

At the same time, the university acknowledged that it had received accusations of plagiarism in three academic articles by Dr. Gay. It said a review had determined that she had not violated the university's standards for "research misconduct," but that the investigation "revealed a few instances of inadequate citation," and that Dr. Gay would request four corrections to two articles.

Then on Dec. 20, amid continuing allegations of plagiarism driven by conservative media, the university said that it had found two new instances of insufficient citation in Dr. Gay's work — this time in her 1997 doctoral dissertation. Harvard described the issues as "duplicative language without appropriate attribution" and said that she would update her dissertation to correct them.

Dr. Gay, who earned her doctorate in government from Harvard in 1998 and returned eight years later to teach government there, found her support — already on shaky ground after the uproar over antisemitism — evaporating as the plagiarism allegations and findings by the university continued to mount.

The accusations also drew more unwelcome attention from Congress, when a committee investigating Harvard sent a letter to the university demanding all of its documentation and communications related to the plagiarism allegations.

Altogether, the charges circulated by conservative media, including in an article by the activist Christopher Rufo and in reporting by The Washington Free Beacon, accuse Dr. Gay of using material from other sources without proper attribution in about half of the 11 journal articles listed on her résumé, in addition to her dissertation.

The examples range from brief snippets of technical definitions to paragraphs summing up other scholars' research that are only lightly paraphrased, and in some cases lack any direct citation of the other scholars. In one example that drew particular attention and ridicule online, the acknowledgments of Dr. Gay's dissertation appear to take two sentences from the 1996 book acknowledgments of another scholar, Jennifer L. Hochschild.

As allegations mounted, faculty members at Harvard and scholars elsewhere offered varying assessments of the severity of the infractions, with some seeing a disturbing pattern, and others calling them minor or dismissing them as a partisan hit job.

But to some, the issue was plain: Dr. Gay had committed plagiarism — a word which does not actually appear in the Harvard board's initial statement on Dec. 12 — and Harvard should admit it.

Carol Swain, a political scientist who retired from Vanderbilt University in 2017, said that she was "livid," both at Dr. Gay's use of her work — Mr. Rufo cited at least two instances of Dr. Gay using Dr. Swain's work with no citation — and at Harvard's defense of her.

But Steven Levitsky, a government professor at Harvard, said the passages in question seemed to mostly be "mild sloppiness."

Many, he said, appeared to occur in sections of the papers dealing not with Dr. Gay's core claims, but with summaries of methodologies and of previous scholarship.

"She's a quantitative scholar," he said. "She cares about the data. These guys don't spend time fussing about their literature reviews."

Dr. Levitsky had organized a faculty petition in support of her that had urged the Corporation to "resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard's commitment to academic freedom."

[Wahoo Redux]

Someone on Reddit just suggested that Harvard should run Gay's resignation letter through TurnItIn.

[spork]

It's really unfortunate that the plagiarism question became so entangled with the political question.

If it were just the plagiarism, the headlines would be something like "Harvard Attempts Cover-Up, Threatens Media."

Here is the second statement by the anonymous whistleblower: https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf. Whoever the person is, they did quality work.

[Wahoo Redux]

It's really unfortunate that the plagiarism question became so entangled with the political question.

If it were just the plagiarism, the headlines would be something like "Harvard Attempts Cover-Up, Threatens Media."

Here is the second statement by the anonymous whistleblower: https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf. Whoever the person is, they did quality work.

From the linked document:

As for the remaining board members, they appear to have "unresolved personal, professional, or financial conflicts of interest" in this case because, as one Harvard Law School alumnus said to the Jewish Insider, "managing the public's awareness of their potential failures to do proper diligence" on Gay could potentially "impact their own continued tenures." Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Post, adds, "despite the scandalous plagiarism findings, the same people who picked her continue to protect her — and themselves. Because they did such a shoddy job of vetting her, the board members are refusing to honestly evaluate her history and performance because it would make them look bad for hiring her in the first place."

I'm just curious: has anyone ever done a plagiarism check on the scholarship of a faculty or administrative job candidate?  Was the search committee supposed to spot check Gay's work for plagiarism?

[lightning]

It's really unfortunate that the plagiarism question became so entangled with the political question.

If it were just the plagiarism, the headlines would be something like "Harvard Attempts Cover-Up, Threatens Media."

Here is the second statement by the anonymous whistleblower: https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf. Whoever the person is, they did quality work.

From the linked document:

As for the remaining board members, they appear to have "unresolved personal, professional, or financial conflicts of interest" in this case because, as one Harvard Law School alumnus said to the Jewish Insider, "managing the public's awareness of their potential failures to do proper diligence" on Gay could potentially "impact their own continued tenures." Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Post, adds, "despite the scandalous plagiarism findings, the same people who picked her continue to protect her — and themselves. Because they did such a shoddy job of vetting her, the board members are refusing to honestly evaluate her history and performance because it would make them look bad for hiring her in the first place."

I'm just curious: has anyone ever done a plagiarism check on the scholarship of a faculty or administrative job candidate?  Was the search committee supposed to spot check Gay's work for plagiarism?

I was just thinking along the same lines. My enemies could run my papers through the plagiarism checkers. Likewise, I can do the same to my enemies.

Although it has been several years, I've actually run all my papers through online plagiarism checkers, and I come out clean <Whew!>.

Regarding the political motivations, what ticks me off is if I uncovered plagiarism in the work of a noted conservative scholar administrator (e.g. Ben Sasse) and I found some dirt, do you think he would resign or be pressured to resign? Ha! No chance.

[larryc]

Only women of color who piss off the right are subjected to this level of scrutiny.

[Langue_doc]

The resignation letter glosses over the numerous instances of what would be considered plagiarism in Freshman Composition courses. Instead of gracefully stepping down, Gay claims that her committment to uphold academic rigor has been challenged, and laments that she has been "subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus".

For those of us who teach undergrads and are required to flag/report instances of plagiarism this seems to be the issue:

Over the last month, plagiarism accusations had surfaced against Dr. Gay, the president of Harvard, signaling that the attacks on her qualifications to lead the Ivy League university are continuing, and miring the university deeper in debate over whether Harvard holds its president and its students to the same standard.

Gay has far too many instances of missing attributions for such a small list of publications. One of the instances, according to the reports, is the acknowledgement in her dissertation which seems to have been copied from another source--disclaimer: I haven't been able to verify this.

[dlehman]

Sorry to be so negative just after the start of a new year, but this whole episode looks bad for everyone.  As many have suggested, it is unfortunate that politics and issues of plagiarism have become entangled - but that just scratches the surface.  Gay surely seems to have been treated differently than a student would have been treated.  The academic community has too many double standards and too much hypocrisy.  But to see that she is brought down by a political agenda is even more disturbing.  Equally troubling is the whole Congressional testimony episode - from the fact that Congress was involved at all to the pressure brought to force resignations because these presidents gave reasoned responses rather than just spouting the politically correct lines.  Bad examples of US politics, bad examples of US academia, bad examples of media coverage - I just don't see anybody coming out of this looking good.  And then I see examples in these forums where academics devote energy to discussing how much time to give students for each question on an exam.  No wonder the public has lost faith in higher education and students appear increasingly unmotivated.

Please excuse the rant.  I am getting older and nearing the end of my career.  These things have always bothered me, but never more than now.  While there are real struggles for food, health, and safety, humans appear to be self-destructing through our failure to be civil, responsible, or sensible.  I am really having a hard time finding anything to be optimistic about.

[Ruralguy]

I don't think its *only* women of color who get this level of scrutiny, though perhaps there are some who seem to have a bit more ghoulish delight in doing so. My guess is that there is someone right now looking at the CV's of all the past Harvard presidents, especially the living ones, to see if they can find something. I can imagine there are *many* who'd like to take a hit at Larry Somers for potential plagarism (although I doubt that was/is one of his foibles). 

[marshwiggle]

As for the remaining board members, they appear to have "unresolved personal, professional, or financial conflicts of interest" in this case because, as one Harvard Law School alumnus said to the Jewish Insider, "managing the public's awareness of their potential failures to do proper diligence" on Gay could potentially "impact their own continued tenures." Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Post, adds, "despite the scandalous plagiarism findings, the same people who picked her continue to protect her — and themselves. Because they did such a shoddy job of vetting her, the board members are refusing to honestly evaluate her history and performance because it would make them look bad for hiring her in the first place."

I'm just curious: has anyone ever done a plagiarism check on the scholarship of a faculty or administrative job candidate?  Was the search committee supposed to spot check Gay's work for plagiarism?

Good question. Is it likely, after this, that search committees will start doing this routinely with candidates? Given the amount of resources that go into senior admin searches, this would be a pretty economical procedure to avoid potential future embarrassment.

For that matter, wouldn't it make sense for it to be done by dissertation committees as part of the PhD process?

[Sun_Worshiper]

It's really unfortunate that the plagiarism question became so entangled with the political question.

If it were just the plagiarism, the headlines would be something like "Harvard Attempts Cover-Up, Threatens Media."

Here is the second statement by the anonymous whistleblower: https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf. Whoever the person is, they did quality work.

From the linked document:

As for the remaining board members, they appear to have "unresolved personal, professional, or financial conflicts of interest" in this case because, as one Harvard Law School alumnus said to the Jewish Insider, "managing the public's awareness of their potential failures to do proper diligence" on Gay could potentially "impact their own continued tenures." Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Post, adds, "despite the scandalous plagiarism findings, the same people who picked her continue to protect her — and themselves. Because they did such a shoddy job of vetting her, the board members are refusing to honestly evaluate her history and performance because it would make them look bad for hiring her in the first place."

I'm just curious: has anyone ever done a plagiarism check on the scholarship of a faculty or administrative job candidate?  Was the search committee supposed to spot check Gay's work for plagiarism?

I have never done that and doubt I ever would. Seems like journals should be doing a bit more of this though.

[kaysixteen]

Random questions:

1) Should a dissertation committee take reasonable steps to vet dissertations for plagiarism, esp since this can be done much more easily with computers/ internet, nowadays?   And when found, would there ever be a legitimate reason to show mercy to the candidate, and allow them to get rid of the plagiarism and resubmit?

2) Wrt candidates for academic positions, esp, ahem, the highest such position (uni prez), should this also not be done?

and

3) What other things should regularly be vetted by a search committee, for a candidate for a university presidency?