I can't believe she's still there.
- I know how bad the university system is in America, but still.
- I know that the Ivy League embodies the kind of arrogance that would scoff at the notion common sense should prevail within their hallowed halls, but still.
- I know that former President Barack Obama lobbied quietly on her behalf, but still.
I can't believe it's all become this political and this corrupt.
The Harvard Crimson announced earlier this month that their embattled, plagiarizing president, Claudine Gay, would be holding onto her lucrative position, "with the support of the Harvard Corporation - the University's highest governing body."
This is despite the fact that, as The New York Times reported, it puts the school in a tenuous position trying to enforce its own plagiarism code on students.
It's a common warning for high school teachers like me to give our graduating senior class each year. "Colleges let you get away with a lot of stuff these days, but don't plagiarize. What gets you an F here, can get you expelled there."
It seems a caveat will need to be added: "Unless you get accepted at Harvard… then you're good."
How embarrassing for what some still consider the nation's premier post-secondary school. So embarrassing, in fact, that Harvard has been facing a devastating loss of donor dollars in recent weeks. And yet they and their supporters persist in defending the indefensible no matter how silly they look.
In this particular effort, the take of author and climate alarmist Genevieve Guenther may be the funniest. There's no way you'll see the twist coming at the end of this thread.
Though she has limited replies on this saga, I'm still concerned she may do the wise thing and delete it. I've saved screenshots of all the tweets in case she decides to do so, but in the meantime, here is the full text:
One of the most powerful English professors of the past 40 years stole an argument I made in a seminar presentation, turning it into the core of his next book. The week after my presentation, he came into the classroom and and he read a conference paper he was going to deliver at the Shakespeare Association that month, re-articulating exactly what I had said about the same material the week before. The 15 or so grad students around the seminar table were dumbfounded. Jaws on the floor.
It was the classic Trumpy move: do something illegal, but be so blatant about it, trusting that your power gives you immunity, that somehow committing the criminal act manages to normalize it simultaneously.
I will say, proud of my early-20-something grad-student self, that I went up to him after the seminar and said "I think we may have a problem." To which he responded: "oh no, there's no problem. Hamlet is a big enough play for us both to work in. Give me a hug." And then he proceeded to wrap me into his arms and give me a full-body, pelvis-to-pelvis hug, which of course made me freeze, Jean E Carroll style, and then just smile weakly at him when he let me go, patted me on the shoulder, and breezed off down the hallway.
At post-seminar drinks that evening (the class would always go out for beers after), the other grad students, still shocked, kept asking me what I was going to do. I think I just shrugged it off, because I soon decided that I would just let him have my idea. I had chosen Berkeley over other graduate programs not just because it was the best in my field, but also because this guy was there and I wanted him to be my dissertation supervisor. If I had to give him one of my ideas so that he would see I was smart, so be it.
Yes, I realize that this is abject and not the way it works, and the whole story is a symptom of pre-#Metoo workplace politics, but I had no power and he had all the power and I thought he was brilliant. (I want to hug my first-year grad student self).
Anyway, the seminar went great, although I wasn't able to publish the paper that came out of it because, well, this professor had already circulated my argument. But again, I thought his plagiarism was a down payment I was making on an investment which would bring big returns. And he did favor me all year, in various ways. But then, over the summer, it was announced that he was leaving for Harvard. Which he must have known all along. But of course never told me, leading me on all the while. I never spoke to him again.
Since then I've heard from many trustworthy sources that this guy has plagiarized arguments from multiple graduate students both at Berkeley and Harvard — AND that his (second) wife got the topic of her second book from one of her graduate students's [sic] seminar papers.
Again, the person I'm talking about is perhaps the most celebrated scholar in the field — and a hugely successful crossover author. And EVERYONE KNOWS HE'S A PLAGIARIST.
So if there are any doubts over double standards — comparing one white professor stealing whole arguments to a black grad student repeating banal phrases, performing "scholarliness," in her f***ing acknowledgements, which are not even ideas — let this anecdote help put them to rest.
The right is going after Gay because they don't want the kids at Harvard to have any sort of an anti-racist education and they're not even trying to hide it. DON'T FALL FOR IT, FFS. Support Gay. Support DEI. Support anti-racism. whatever the number is now, I forget.
And, yes, US right-wing politics are so dangerous right now that I feel like I have to defend the president of f***ing *Harvard*, which is absurd, but that's the power of today's white supremacists, to make *Harvard* a bastion of racial sanity. What a time to be alive.
I'm sorry, what?
Conservative writer Mary Katharine Ham described that bizarre rant this way:
This lady is having a heck of a race, cruising through the last lap at Daytona, all alone, running smooth, comes out of Turn 4 and just turns that car directly into the wall and becomes a fireball.
