Harvard University President Accused of Plagiarizing PhD Thesis

I have no idea what you are talking about. Dumb it down for me.

 

Rufo knows better. This is a guy who openly admits he lies about and misrepresents stuff if it advances his cause. That's what he's again doing here.

Stefanik asked her that question, and she tried to give the same answer, but Stefanik cut her off. The more you know. She gave the legally correct response if these universities are adhering to their professed free speech principles. Targeted threats and harassment are unacceptable. General statements of political views (assuming they are following time, place, and manner restrictions), even abhorrent ones, are protected expression.

 

I f I support the Israeli military action may I be accused of supporting Genocide of Palestinians

 

I didn't watch the hearing, but the calls for firings are interesting generally. I sensed that the right, in particular, was mostly of the view that universities should refrain from getting involved or punishing offensive speech, at least where the speech does not rise to the level of a true threat or other crime.

 

It was me nitpicking. A gotcha will suffice.

 

Conservatives have been attacking universities for years, particularly the more highly rated ones. The really wimpy answers that several of the presidents gave to Congress have made it a lot easier to do that. So they're going for blood, which is why Rufo is doing this.

But this plagiarism claim seems pretty weak.
@gatormonk, i'm curious if you think Rufo's claims are still valid.

 

Let's put this bone of contention to rest. I went through all the posts on pages 1-3 to check for any that contained no comment on the initial post's topic. There were several, not sure if it was 6, but there were two that seemingly violated the rule requiring a comment from the OP'ster along with material copied from another site or publication. One was posted by @Gatorrick22 and the other by @Trickster. Even Steven.

The other 4 or so with no comment from the OP'ster were first posted before the rule was written and placed in the list of rules back in January of the current calendar year.

 

I would like for our professor types on this board to weigh in with their opinions. I know @mutz87 and @docspor are published and I think also @GatorRade. Do you have the services of an editor when you are preparing to publish? On dissertations?

 

I don't know about the publishing world at large, but in my experience the Author, not the editor is solely responsible for plagiarism. When I publish, I sign a form stating that it is original, not published elsewhere & not plagiarized. Journal editors are not there even for grammar, typos etc. That too is almost entirely up to the authors who can pay to have things edited in the more traditional sense.

FYI, I have been accused - by a referee - of plagiarism. The source I was accused of plagiarizing was 1 of my own papers. I probably cut & pasted a paragraph & then changed some of the wording. There is a lot of redundancy when you research repeatedly on closely related topics. It gets frustrating having to find new ways to say the exact same thing. & wholesale quoting of paragraphs, etc is frowned upon.

 

Even with the people she’s accused of plagiarizing saying it’s not plagiarism?

 

One of the most cited papers in my field has a giant typo in its title. Some choose to correct it. I did not.

 

Do you ever read credible sources?

 

It is an absurd claim of plagiarism. I mean, the first claim is that the paragraph is lifted "near verbatim," which appears to be that the authors utilize the same concepts but uses their own words around those concepts to explain them. That is what you are supposed to do in a lit review. You are discussing their findings. You should use some similar language, you just need to change it up enough that it isn't a direct copy. But of course she said the same thing with similar wording. She is reporting what they did.

Just to demonstrate for people not wanting to click through, the claim is that the second sentence is plagiarized from the first.

1. "Under these conditions, the political reality model predicts that blacks will be more trusting than whites."
2. "The political reality model (or the "racial threat hypothesis" as applied to black elected officials) is not as powerful a predictor of white Americans' political behavior, as it is for African-Americans'."

Rufo claims that this is plagiarism because both used the phrase "political reality model," which appears to be the name of the theory and used variants of the word "predict" (utilizing "predictor" in the later work).

All of this was done with a proper citation 2 sentences later at the end of the discussion of this paper and theory.

That is simply not plagiarism, no matter how much somebody wishes it was.

 

I’d consider the actual sources who she is accused of plagiarizing coming out and saying it’s not plagiarism to be more valid than some random right wing dipshit who has a bone to pick because of her “anti-Semitic” comments.

 

Agree with doc that the responsibility lies with the author and not the editor. In addition, in my experience, there isn’t even a proper editor for a dissertation. It should be that the doctoral advisor, and maybe a committee member or two, read the dissertation, but these efforts are just supporting the author.

 

I'm your huckleberry.

Hadn't seen it since he's got me on ignore, but at your prompting, I read it. As usual, it's complete bullshit. He makes a clown of himself, while calling out this Rufo guy as "clown Rufo".

Rufo actually showed his work, and cited his authority:

Though Gay does provide a reference to the original authors, she uses their verbatim language, with a few trivial synonym substitutions, without providing quotation marks. This constitutes a clear violation of Harvard’s policy, which states: “When you paraphrase, your task is to distill the source’s ideas in your own words. It’s not enough to change a few words here and there and leave the rest; instead, you must completely restate the ideas in the passage in your own words. If your own language is too close to the original, then you are plagiarizing, even if you do provide a citation.”​

Is Claudine Gay a Plagiarist?​

Fits. Like. A. Glove.

Worse still, we're talking about her doctoral thesis (dissertation) here, not some throwaway paper. Most Ph.D's (even J.D.'s/long paper) will go through their thesis so many times in such painstaking detail, that they will have their own work memorized word for word. Hence when Rufo presented Swain with her work, I bet she instantly recognized her own words.

Now, admittedly, this is not the most egregious case of plagiarizing, but--using your own God given, University of Florida sharpened mind, read the comparable passages, apply the standard laid out above, and then tell us whether you think Rufo is the clown here...or the guy who called him such, is (guess whom I believe earned that title?--and clown for another reason I'll hold off on right now, but it's the reason he put me on ignore. LOL!).

Additionally, I'll reiterate what I insinuated upthread--as a stand alone issue, this doesn't move the needle much.

In the wake of her shit show public testimony before congress, in which she waffled repeatedly in calling out Palestinian sympathizers calling for genocide of Jews as 'harassment' (ie failed to call it out as harassment)--echoing her colleagues from UPenn and MIT--it was simply beyond pathetic. It was shitty.

...and the shittiness of it was amplified 1,000 fold, by the fact that her idiotic testimony actually reflected her actions (or lack thereof) wrt the Jewish students under her charge.

Jews throughout our nation, are genuinely, legitimately, justifiably, terrified on our college campuses.

...and when given the opportunity to be THE example that the nation was looking for, the uniquely prestigious Harvard, under Gay's leadership....chose to mince words, waffle, diddle, and play games.

Tell me what you come up with in answering this question, bc it is literally the defense she invoked in not calling the above conduct, harassment:

Under what circumstances--in what context--might publicly calling for the genocide of a people, NOT constitute harassment of said people?

Let's hear one. Because I draw a blanks when I try.