Harvard University President Accused of Plagiarizing PhD Thesis

A re-run for Rick -
The OP on this thread started by Monk was initially made without a comment. In post #8 City noted there was no comment included in the OP.

There are few more posts on this thread's 1st page from people who also noted that Monk's OP was posted without added comment from him.

Monk responded in post #20 that he had found at least 6 threads in the first 3 pages of the entire list of the Too Hot forum's threads that had been posted with no comment.

This thread was locked [post 21] and Monk was asked to add a comment. He edited his OP to make the required comment [post 22] and thread was unlocked.

Monk's charge concerned me so I went through the first pages of all threads listed in the first 3 pages of this forum's threads looking for confirmation. On the first 3 pages listing Too Hot's threads I found 2 threads that fell into that category and I posted the results of my search in post #49. You and Trickster had started threads with no added comment as required by Rule Q first posted in January, 2023, partially confirming what Monk had posted in post #20 of this thread.

This is yours - Netanyahu tells Israel ‘We are at war’ after Hamas launches an unprecedented attack, killing at leas - is a thread started this past October.

The 2nd thread in violation of Rule Q was started by Trickster earlier this same year. Both of them after the rule was posted on this forum last January. This is Trickster's.
The dire consequences of COVID school closings

There are other threads (6?) on the first 3 pages that were started without comment, but they are older threads first posted before the rule was made and posted last January, so technically they are not in violation of said Rule.

 

I think so. About Covid and consequences on children. I didn’t think anything else needed to be said.

 

I think so. About COVID. I didn’t think anything needed comment from me.

 

I really though I had posted my opinion with the op... Oops.

 

Ah well, wasn’t Einstein a plagiarist ?

 

Meanwhile in the real world:

Harvard’s Board Says President Will Stay, Despite Calls for Her Ouster

 

We'll see. The plagiarism might be smoke & you know what they say about smoke.

 

This looks normal to me. They're summarizing the same source (which both of them cited) with similar language (which is understandable when you're describing the exact same findings from the exact same source).

 

Thank you for trying to explain this to them. These plagiarism police are absolutely clueless.

 

Ahh, Representative Stefanik about that plagiarism….

 

Carol Swain, from whom Gay allegedly plagiarized, says “there is no question” the accusations are accurate. The Harvard Crimson reported the plagiarism allegations about Gay, which Harvard denies. #Harvard #ClaudineGay #Plagiarism​

‘No question’ Harvard president Claudine Gay plagiarized: Carol Swain | On Balance – NewsNation​

Not according to the victims of her serial theft.

Of course they don't. Her stealing other people's work and passing it off as her own, does.

​

In four papers published between 1993 and 2017, including her doctoral dissertation, Gay, a political scientist, paraphrased or quoted nearly 20 authors—including two of her colleagues in Harvard University’s department of government—without proper attribution, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis. Other examples of possible plagiarism, all from Gay’s dissertation, were publicized Sunday by the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo and Karlstack’s Chris Brunet.

The Free Beacon worked with nearly a dozen scholars to analyze 29 potential cases of plagiarism. Most of them said that Gay had violated a core principle of academic integrity as well as Harvard’s own anti-plagiarism policies, which state that "it's not enough to change a few words here and there."​

'This is Definitely Plagiarism': Harvard University President Claudine Gay Copied Entire Paragraphs From Others’ Academic Work and Claimed Them as Her Own

​

How about now?

I mean...Plagiarism IS A BIG @#$#&#&'n DEAL, right?

Surely you must now hold the opinion that *Dr.* Gay has no business staying no as President of Harvard?

 

Ahh, look at the echo chamber work on you. It is funny how effective it is on you after all your comments on snow globes.

Again, I am happy to look at the actual quotes. Since the only specific incident you brought up was Swain's work (the rest is just echo chamber stuff), let's take a look at it. Here are the two sentences in question in Rufo's claims, the first from Swain and the second from Gay.

1. "Pitkin distinguishes between "descriptive representation," the statistical correspondence of the demographic characteristics of representatives with those of their constituents, and more "substantive representation," the correspondence between representatives' goals and those of their constituents.

2. "To date, social scientists have concentrated their analytical efforts on the ambiguous link between minority office-holding and minority public policy agendas, between descriptive representation (the correspondence of demographic characteristics) and substantive representation (the correspondence of legislative goals and priorities) (Bullock 1975; Conyers and Wallace 1976; Welch and Karnig 1978; Preston 1978; Keller 1978; Karnig 1979; Welch and Karnig 1979; Karnig and Welch 1980; Dye and Renick 1981; Engstrom and McDonald 1981; Eisinger 1982; Meier and England 1984; Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984; Whitby 1987; Mladenka 1989; Hall-Saltzstein 1989; Parker 1990; Morris 1992; Macchiarola 1993)."

Now, let's examine the problems with a claim of plagiarism here.

1. The sentences are substantially different. Swain, in a literature review, presents how Pitkin "distinguishes" between the two concepts. Gay discusses how the "analytical efforts" in prior papers have focused "on the ambiguous link between minority office-holding and minority public policy agendas" (not discussed by Swain) and then defines descriptive representation and substantive representation utilizing definitions that are not copied from Swain (in fact, the definitions are worded substantially differently) but appear to exist in the field. Leading to...
2. It appears that Swain did not come up with those definitions, as she credits Pitkin. As such, unless Swain provides new information to those concepts, she is not entitled to a citation. And that is setting aside that Swain's literature review deals with the same concepts but does not deal with the way the concepts have been used, which is what Gay's sentence is doing.
3. Gay cites 19 different papers that have addressed the issues on which she is discussing, all pre-dating Swain's work. The sheer amount of different papers cited here shows intent, which is to analyze what the literature has done in terms of their analysis, rather than attempt to take a concept and pass it off as her own.

Again, there is not an academic body in the world that would find that sentence 2 was plagiarized from sentence 1. Sorry.

Now, let's look at the second example:
1. "Since the 1950s the reelection rate for House members has rarely dipped below 90 percent. For 1988 and 1990s it was 98.4 and 96.9 percent"
2. "Since the 1950s, the reelection rate for incumbent House members has rarely dipped below 90%. In 1994 it was 92.3% (Swain 1997)."

She clearly cited Swain here, but a different Swain paper. Was that statistic utilized in Swain's 1997 paper? Is she arguing that Gay cited her 1997 paper utilizing the same words as Swain utilized in 1995? Regardless, this is exceptionally weak when the citation is provided.

 

yeah?

 

Yeah. You actually should know this stuff better.

 

Yep.

 

Anyone that takes what Rufo says as the gospel truth has questionable taste. Full stop