Claudine Gay has resigned the presidency of Harvard University. The New York Times has extensive coverage.
When the charges of plagiarism against Gay became news, I recalled my theory of plagiarism: “plagiarism seems to be governed by a sliding scale, with consequences lessening as the wrongdoer’s status rises.” I thought she’d make it through. But no.
It doesn’t matter who brought the charges (in this case, people whose politics are abhorrent to me). Plagiarism — or research misconduct, or whatever one wants to call it — is a serious matter. Many an undergraduate has been penalized for far less than what appears in Gay’s scholarship.
I recall telling an undergrad who had lifted a single unattributed sentence from a news article, “You can't just take someone else’s words and put them in as your own.” I was cautioning that student: Please, don’t do this. Not good! Someone should have said something like that to Gay.
Tuesday, January 2, 2024
Claudine Gay has resigned
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Agreed. And I find it disheartening that her resignation letter (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/us/claudine-gay-resignation-letter-harvard.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LU0.C46r.awuAizWtufcM&smid=url-share) completely mischaracterizes the reason she was [most likely] ask to leave, and further, that she will keep her faculty position, particularly at the exorbitant salary that she will be paid.
I agree — her Times piece is incredbly self-serving. One of the details that most struck me in this fiasco is that the acknowledgments in her dissertation borrow phrasing from somebody else's acknowledgments. Who does that? I don’t know if it suggests deep insecurity or an utterly casual appropriation of other people’s words — or both.
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