The Harvard Double Standard - "One way DEI efforts affect speech is by defining as microaggressions speech that many don’t view as problematic, such as statements like “I think the best person should get the job,” or “America is a melting pot,” and many others. Such speech is clearly protected under the First Amendment and cannot justify suppressive actions. Required “trainings” impart specific views on microaggressions and other topics, though their validity and efficacy have not been established; most evidence suggests no benefit or even harm. Skepticism about these approaches among many faculty is rarely publicly expressed, for fear of reputational and career damage catalyzed by activists on social media and through other means (“how can you be against diversity—you must be a racist”) and even formal discipline... Harvard should conduct an objective, data-driven review of DEI policies and administration as they have existed and evolved over several decades. The goal of the review would include identifying those elements of DEI programs that remain faithful to the broadly accepted goals of both making Harvard diverse across many dimensions and a creating a welcoming community of “inclusive excellence,” an inspiring vision. The review should also identify whether some elements of existing DEI programs are ineffective or harmful to the goals of inclusive excellence and academic freedom. Elements to be examined should include whether there is an excessive focus on the roles of racial, sexual, and gender identities as opposed to emphasizing commonalities across difference that should promote inclusion and community; the role of DEI-related speech codes; the requirement for diversity statements in faculty hiring and advancement that can be seen as a form of compelled speech, including how they are used and their real-world consequences; and the status of DEI “trainings” whose benefits are difficult to identify and may even cause harm."
Opinion | Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, should resign now - The Washington Post - "Acknowledgments are the easiest, and most fun part, of writing a book, the place where you list your sources and allies and all the people who helped you get the manuscript over the finish line. Why not come up with your own thanks? What does it say about a person who chooses to appropriate another’s language for this most personal task... Most of the scholars involved told the Harvard Crimson that they were untroubled by the conduct. Really? Here’s what Harvard tells its students. “Taking credit for anyone else’s work is stealing, and it is unacceptable in all academic situations, whether you do it intentionally or by accident.” And: “It’s not enough to have good intentions and to cite some of the material you use.” And this: “When you write papers in college, your work is held to the same standards of citation as the work of your professors.” Which raises the question: Is the university president’s work being held to the same standards? It sure doesn’t look that way."
Claudine Gay and My Scholarship - WSJ - "When one follows in the footsteps of a more senior scholar, one is expected to acknowledge the latter’s contribution to the field and how one’s own research and ideas refute, affirm or expand knowledge in the area. Ms. Gay ignored the substantive importance of my research, which she should have acknowledged and engaged. A single citation or two wouldn’t usually be considered intellectually honest. When scholars aren’t cited adequately or their work is ignored, it harms them because academic stature is determined by how often other researchers cite your work. Ms. Gay had no problem riding on the coattails of people whose work she used without proper attribution. Many of those whose work she pilfered aren’t as incensed as I am. They are elites who have benefited from a system that protects its own. Even aside from the documented instances of plagiarism, Ms. Gay’s work wouldn’t normally have earned tenure in the Ivy League. Tenure at a top-tier institution normally demands ground-breaking originality; her work displays none. In a world where the privilege of diversity is king, Ms. Gay was able to parlay mediocre research into tenure and administrative advancement at what was once considered a world-class university. Harvard can’t condemn Ms. Gay because she is the product of an elite system that holds minorities of high pedigree to a lower standard. This harms academia as a whole, and it demeans Americans, of all races, who had to work for everything they earned."
Geoffrey Miller on X - "What universities are facing now: The SCOTUS decision this June (Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. vs President & Fellows of Harvard College) struck down racial preferences ('Affirmative Action') as unconstitutional for undergraduate admissions. (Yes, the Supreme Court ruled that the President of Harvard violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment in thousands of admissions cases. Which IMHO is worst than plagiarism.). This makes the debate over DEI especially timely, for a reason that non-academics might not realize: Most university departments this month are right in the middle of faculty hiring & graduate admissions (selecting masters and PhD students) for fall 2024. Many faculty meetings are having to discuss whether the SCOTUS decision should also apply to faculty & grad students (which IMHO it obviously should). Differences of opinion about DEI and 'Affirmative Action' will be harder to sweep under the rug. The faculty who have stayed silent for years can finally say 'Look, you can talk about 'diversity' all you want, but racial preferences in hiring and admissions are unconstitutional. Deal with it.' However, the SCOTUS decision will really only have teeth if the gov't withholds federal funding from universities that violate it. Otherwise, they'll just invent subtler new ways to impose racial discrimination and undermine meritocracy."
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ on X - "Thirty years ago, the dean of Boston University was forced out after plagiarizing language in a commencement speech. Claudine Gay's violation of academic standards is much worse, by comparison. She needs to follow his example: resign as president, retain a faculty spot."
If Harvard Doesn't Want Congress to Ask It Questions, It Can Stop Taking Money from Congress - "At CNN, Stephen Collinson reluctantly reports on the Claudine Gay situation at Harvard. I write “reluctantly,” because, upon reading it, it becomes clear that Collinson has been told both to relate the details of the story and to convey to his audience that the whole thing is really about the boundless treachery of the Republican Party. “Elite academia,” Collinson explains at the beginning, “appears to be playing directly into the hands of ex-President Donald Trump’s populist Republicans.” And from there, that’s his pattern. Fact, followed by dismissal, followed by fact, followed by dismissal, and so forth... “Republicans,” “Trump,” “the GOP,” “Trump,” “the right,” “higher education.” That’s a ratio of 5:1. What a mystery it is that “the media” is being “denigrated”!... Why are members of Congress “probing Harvard”? Because Harvard receives hundreds of millions of dollars from Congress, that’s why. Per Harvard’s own financial reports, the college was given $625 million by the federal government in 2021 — a number that “accounted for approximately 67 percent of total sponsored revenue.” Between 2018 and 2022, records show, Harvard was handed more than three billion federal dollars. If Harvard wishes to be completely “independent” of Congress — as, say, Hillsdale is — then it must also become completely independent of Congress’s wallet. It cannot pick and choose. With subsidy comes oversight. That isn’t a threat to “our democracy”; that is our democracy... As PEN America records, “private institutions that receive federal funding must also adhere to federal anti-discrimination laws, such as those applicable under Title IX.” Is that “meddling”? Or does that term only apply when Congress asks questions that Ifill doesn’t like? Where’s her limiting principle? It is interesting that Ifill mentions “aid to Ukraine” in her list of things that Congress should be doing instead. Does she think that Congress should write a blank check in that realm, too? Do questions asked of those beneficiaries represent a challenge to the “core element of our democracy,” or, perhaps to Ukraine’s sovereignty? Or do these standards apply to Harvard alone? From my vantage point, Ifill seems emblematic of the enormous number of people within the contemporary American progressive movement who believe that the role of the voting public is to hand over money to a certain group of institutions, and then to go away. We see this in the rejection of the claim that the bureaucracy ought to be under the control of the elected executive; we see it in the way that bodies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are deliberately structured to avoid democratic accountability; we see it in the debate over public education, in which school boards, parents, taxpayers and others — that is, the people who are forced to pay for and use the schools — are cast as busybodies, irritants, and interferers who are getting in the way of the process; and we see it here with Sherrilyn Ifill, for whom it seems the only “shocking and dangerous” uses of Congress’s powers are the ones that its members are indisputably within their rights to perform."
This sort of motivated reasoning is also why they dismissed covid vaccines when Trump was in office, then villified anyone who doubted or refused them once he was out, even though the vaccines hadn't changed
Weird how liberals normally claim that accepting even $1 of government money means you need to play by the rules (not least not discriminate, as per the original probe). Democratic oversight is bad when it threatens the liberal agenda
wanye on X - "It’s wild that so many of these people are willing to say publicly that they are completely-captured partisans who judge the merits of a story by who is pushing it and who seems to benefit from it"
Austrian business school cuts ties with Harvard University ‘in solidarity with the Jewish student community’ - "The Lauder Business School in Vienna, Austria, has severed ties with Harvard University"
Harvard professors risk university's wrath by taking on woke cancel culture - "Going against the “woke” grain isn’t a recipe for job security at Harvard, but some prominent faculty are bucking the tide as they seek to pull the university out of its downward spiral. As the Ivy League school wrestles with a leadership crisis, a handful of Harvard professors have gone public with their criticisms of a repressive campus culture that prioritizes diversity, equity and inclusion over academic freedom. Harvard may look like a left-wing monolith from the outside, but in reality “there are many faculty who are concerned about what recent events say about Harvard’s integrity as a place of scholarship,” said Mark Ramseyer, professor at Harvard Law School. “They’re worried, they’re troubled, they’re concerned,” Mr. Ramseyer told The Washington Times. “Harvard is also divided between those who see the school’s role as understanding the world, and those who see its role as changing the world. Recent events have brought this last tension more closely to the surface.” Mr. Ramseyer drew attention last week for his stunning critique of Harvard’s slide. He placed the blame squarely on faculty members — himself included — who saw what was happening as an illiberal DEI culture proliferated, but failed to speak up... All three academics belong to the Harvard Council on Academic Freedom, an organization of current and former Harvard faculty formed in April whose mission took on new urgency with the rise of campus antisemitism spurred by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians... Calls for Ms. Gay to resign are mounting, but Mr. Pinker said “firing the coach” won’t fix the ingrained institutional woes that beset Harvard and other universities... The public criticism by eminent faculty would be notable at any university, but especially at Harvard, which has dealt sharply with those who deviate from the left-wing party line. Take Carole Hooven, who posted Mr. Ramseyer‘s email with his permission on X. The evolutionary biologist was demonized on campus for asserting in 2021 that there are only two sexes — on “Fox & Friends,” no less — leading her to leave the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology after nearly 20 years as a lecturer. She is now an associate with the psychology department."
Some people still stick their head in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the claims that biological sex is a myth
Harvard President Claudine Gay Hit With Six New Charges Of Plagiarism - "Harvard University president Claudine Gay was hit with six additional allegations of plagiarism on Monday in a complaint filed with the university, breathing fresh life into a scandal that has embroiled her nascent presidency and pushing the total number of allegations near 50... In a 2001 article, Gay lifts nearly half a page of material verbatim from another scholar, David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin. That article, "The Effect of Minority Districts and Minority Representation on Political Participation in California," includes some of the most extreme and clear-cut cases of plagiarism yet. At one point, Gay borrows four sentences from Canon’s 1999 book, Race, Redistricting, and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts, without quotation marks and with only minor semantic tweaks. She does not cite Canon anywhere in or near the passage, though he does appear in the bibliography. Beyond that, Gay’s first two footnotes are copied verbatim from Canon’s endnotes... The discrepancy raises troubling questions not just about the scope of Gay’s plagiarism, which appears to afflict half of her published works, but also the thoroughness and seriousness of the Corporation’s probe, which the board described as "an independent review by distinguished political scientists."... The allegations filed Monday also include more material from Gay’s dissertation, which has already received three corrections. In one of the new examples, Gay, who works in quantitative political science, lifts a full sentence from her thesis adviser, Gary King, to describe a mathematical model. She does not cite King in parentheses or put his words in quotation marks. While some of Gay’s defenders have claimed that technical descriptions do not require attribution in the social sciences, since there are only so many ways to explain a method or a formula, a Harvard handbook from 1998—the year Gay completed her dissertation—says otherwise. "Citing tells your readers that the strategy or method isn’t original with you and allows them to consult its original context," the handbook states... The new complaint comes as an increasing number of Harvard students are speaking out against Gay, arguing that she has been held to a lower standard than the average undergraduate... "President Gay Plagiarized, but She Should Stay," read the headline of a Harvard Crimson editorial. "For Now." The paper says the allegations of plagiarism are focused on "her PhD dissertation and two of her 11 published journal articles," leaving out the many allegations relating to articles that were not peer-reviewed. The paper's qualified editorial position—"for now"—represents a shift in tone from the paper’s editorial board, which previously opined that—for the sake of a "free democracy"—Gay "must not yield" to "partisan attacks" in the wake of her disastrous testimony on anti-Semitism. Gay’s most outspoken defenders have been her faculty colleagues. Randall Kennedy, a Harvard Law School professor, told the New York Times that the plagiarism charges were ginned up by "professional vilifiers" and "bad faith" actors—and went on to suggest the university may not cooperate with the congressional investigation underway into its adjudication of Gay’s work. Another Harvard lawyer, Charles Fried, was more explicit, describing the allegations as an "extreme right-wing attack on elite institutions." "If it came from some other quarter, I might be granting it some credence," he told the Times. "But not from these people."... Omar Haque, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and a member of the university’s Council on Academic Freedom, said that the sheer breadth of the examples—especially those from the pre-word processor days—made it hard to fathom that everything was unintentional. "Gay's alleged plagiarism in the 1990s may be more serious than in in recent years," he told the Free Beacon, "because prior to the use of computers to highlight and copy/paste text in seconds, plagiarism was more likely to be non-accidental and intentional and reckless." Haque, who said he was speaking only in a personal capacity, added that it took "greater effort" to plagiarize with a typewriter... It also "threatened to use legal means to out who had supplied the comparisons," according to the paper’s reporting. That person, a professor at another university, whom the Free Beacon has identified and granted anonymity, is behind the Monday complaint to Harvard, as well as a separate complaint last month alleging around 40 cases of plagiarism. While several Harvard scholars have faced plagiarism allegations since the early 2000s, none have seen such a large percentage of their work implicated. Beyond outlining the new charges against Gay, the latest complaint—25 pages of which are devoted to outlining the various examples of Gay's alleged plagiarism—argues that Harvard’s legal saber-rattling violated its research misconduct policy for faculty, which forbids retaliation against complainants. "At one point Gay and Harvard asked the Post, ‘Why would someone making such a complaint be unwilling to attach their name to it,’" the Monday complaint reads. "I was unwilling because I feared that Gay and Harvard would violate their policies, behave more like a cartel with a hedge fund attached than a university, try to seek ‘immense’ damages from me and who knows what else.""
From 2024
Critics see ‘double standard’ in Harvard’s handling of plagiarism allegations - The Boston Globe - "“I think there’s a clear double standard,” said Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard graduate student who has sharply criticized Gay’s handling of reports of rising antisemitism on the campus in the midst of the war. Students are sometimes suspended for plagiarism, he said. But in Gay’s case, he said, “not only is there no discipline, but on the contrary the board unanimously expressed their approval and confidence in her.”... Maya Bodnick, a Harvard sophomore, said she doesn’t have a strong opinion about the plagiarism allegations but insisted that “it’s really important Harvard does not succumb to nefarious right-wing actors.”... Some of the accusations look “very credible,” and others “seem serious,” said Brendan Case, associate director of research at Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, which researches human well-being. He has been embarrassed by the Corporation’s response, he said, because it seems to undermine the school’s commitment to academic integrity. “Just speaking from my own corner of Harvard, there is no question in my mind [that] if we uncovered that pattern of academic dishonesty in any of our researchers, including myself, they would be dismissed immediately,” Case said. “It seems unavoidable to me that many people within and outside Harvard will infer they don’t take this kind of thing seriously.”... “There are few things more repellent than a top official getting and taking a pass for something they punish underlings for doing,” said Richard Parker, a Harvard Law School professor. He criticized the Corporation’s handling of the allegations as “irregular” and “opaque,” saying it was a departure from a typical plagiarism investigation. “The contrast exudes contempt for our students and faculty and for Harvard itself,” he said."
If a "nefarious right wing actor" makes a police report about a murder, this needs to be ignored because he is just weaponising murder
I Vote on Plagiarism Cases at Harvard College. Gay’s Getting off Easy. - "I have served as a voting member of the Harvard College Honor Council, the body tasked with upholding the College’s community standards of academic integrity. In my time on the Council, I heard dozens of cases. When students — my classmates, peers, and friends — appear before the council, they are distraught. For most, it is the worst day of their college careers. For some, it is the worst day of their lives. They often cry. It is because I have seen first-hand how heart-wrenching these decisions can be, and still think them necessary, that I call on University President Claudine Gay to resign for her numerous and serious violations of academic ethics. Let’s compare the treatment of Harvard undergraduates suspected of plagiarism with that of their president... What is striking about the allegations of plagiarism against President Gay is that the improprieties are routine and pervasive... Voting to suspend a peer with whom I might share a dorm, club, or class is not easy. We have even voted to suspend seniors just about to graduate. But strict sanctions are necessary to demonstrate that our community values academic integrity. Cheating on exams is not okay. Plagiarism is not okay... In a Dec. 12 University-wide letter, the Corporation described the alleged plagiarism as “a few instances of inadequate citation.” The letter lauded President Gay for “proactively” correcting her articles by inserting citations and quotation marks. By definition, Gay’s corrections were not proactive but reactive — she only made them after she was caught. And that the Corporation considers her corrections an adequate response is not fair to undergraduates, who cannot simply submit corrections to avoid penalties. When my peers are found responsible for multiple instances of inadequate citation, they are often suspended for an academic year. When the president of their university is found responsible for the same types of infractions, the fellows of the Corporation “unanimously stand in support of” her. There is one standard for me and my peers and another, much lower standard for our University’s president. The Corporation should resolve the double standard by demanding her resignation."
Harvard a synonym for antisemitism, says Diaspora minister - "“Universities that were unable to issue an unequivocal condemnation of Oct. 7 are in a colossal crisis from a moral point of view,” Chikli said in an interview with JNS. “Moral relativism has created a moral abyss. Truth has become a relative term.”... Chikli lamented the slide to “academic amateurism,” which, he said, was spurred by “a post-modernist progressive mindset, where equality and political correctness have overtaken merit, quality and basic truths.”"
Harvard professors say they know how to save university - "Just before winter break, four prominent Harvard faculty members met for a private dinner with two of the university’s most powerful leaders. Landing the dinner meeting was something of a coup for the faculty members who are co-leaders of a campaign, launched last spring, to reverse what they see as a rising culture of self-censorship, decreasing tolerance for dissenting views, and a tendency for the university to take official positions on the issues of the day. When it was launched in March, the campaign might have seemed quixotic, even contrarian. But in the midst of campus tumult in recent months with bitter debates over antisemitism, pro-Palestinian speech, and the future of the school’s president, Claudine Gay, their dinner engagement with Tracy Palandjian and Paul Finnegan, members of Harvard’s insular governing board known as the Corporation, was a sign that their views have taken on new relevance. It was a marker that such efforts are being discussed at the highest levels of academia as possible guidelines that schools could adopt. During the Dec. 19 dinner at Bar Enza in The Charles Hotel, the four faculty members — Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School; Steven Pinker, a psychology professor; Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard Law School professor; and Flynn Cratty, associate director of a Harvard research program — made the case for their platform. Harvard, the faculty members said, should abandon its practice of taking official positions on political or social issues, as it did during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and, more controversially, in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. It should foster an intellectual climate where dissenting viewpoints are better tolerated, the faculty members said, while describing two cases in which Harvard academics had faced backlash over their views on same-sex marriage and biological sex. The school, they argued, must recommit itself to free speech principles, while also setting — and enforcing — clear rules banning protest that disrupts the university’s functioning. And, they said, Harvard should rein in its diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy, which, they contend, launched with virtuous goals, but has since expanded to include influencing faculty hiring decisions and policing speech in ways that have damaged the academic enterprise... the two seemed sympathetic to the views of the faculty members, who are co-presidents of a group called the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, which now has more than 150 members... In November, the American Association of University Professors said that academic freedom was under attack by “powerful campus outsiders,” many of these coming from the political right, and condemned “attempts to silence people who express unpopular views on the current conflict in the Middle East.”"
Academic freedom is only for the left, of course
Behind the Campaign to Take Down Harvard’s Claudine Gay - WSJ - "For years people who identify themselves as academics have aired their resentments and grievances toward Gay on publicly accessible chat boards like the econjobrumors blog and Political Science Rumors. As Gay rose in prominence the posts about her became more frequent and negative—but they also held some truth... Many of Gay’s supporters attribute some of the criticism to her race, and cite research that indicates there is a double standard for Black women in power. A 2022 McKinsey report said Black women leaders are more likely to have people question their competence compared with others. Over the past year, the accusations against Gay were a frequent topic of discussion including accusations that she is a serial plagiarist. “Whole sentences in her literature review lifted off original sources with no quotation marks,” wrote one person who called themselves Economist 1f7f on econjobrumors.com. The post is time stamped 11 months ago. Harvard’s recent findings of inadequate citation in Gay’s work have only fueled criticisms of its hiring process. “The corporation has to do their homework in the sense that when they make a choice for a leader, they have to look at the entire background of that leader,” said Avi Loeb, a professor of physics at Harvard and an outspoken critic of Gay. “That’s their responsibility because otherwise, you risk getting into a situation that we’re in right now.”... the board named Gay the next president of the university. It was the shortest selection process for Harvard in nearly 70 years, according to the Harvard Crimson. Penny Pritzker, who chaired the presidential search committee, described Gay as having a “rare blend of incisiveness and inclusiveness, intellectual range and strategic savvy, institutional ambition and personal humility, a respect for enduring ideals and a talent for catalyzing change,” according to a letter to the school community announcing the appointment. As Gay prepared to become president, criticisms swirled around campus. Alongside rumors of plagiarizing, critics condemned Gay’s publication record as too thin to have earned consideration for the presidency. She has published 11 papers and no books. Her H-Index, which attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar, is an 11, according to Elsevier, an academic publishing company. By comparison, Dartmouth President Sian Beilock, who is younger than Gay, has an H-Index of 54. Critics online and on campus took issue with her performance as dean of faculty, which began in 2018, with some saying she lowered Harvard’s standards by indulging a political agenda to attract more faculty of color. They also said she weakened Harvard’s position on academic freedom by censoring conservative points of view... “I think the entire corporation needs to resign as well as President Gay,” he said in an interview. “I would be happy to join the corporation to help turn it around.”"
If you question a black woman leader's competence, it must be due to racism and sexism. They must never be criticised
All but 3 of more than 100 high dollar donations from Harvard employees go to Democrats: report - "Two of the three Republican donations went to candidates trying to take down Donald Trump in the party’s presidential primary."
Bill Ackman Isn't Letting up on Claudine Gay Plagiarism Allegations - "Ackman in his New Year's Day posts further accused the board of attempting to "quash a legitimate whistleblower inquiry into President Gay's work by threatening the media with litigation if they published the whistleblower's allegations." Ackman, citing a whistleblower's report to The Washington Free Beacon, accused Harvard of violating its own procedures and policies when handling Gay's case. "I am sorry to say this, but in the event that any of the above is true, which looks increasingly likely, this is a scandal and a stain on the reputation of Harvard that goes far beyond President Gay," Ackman wrote on X. Ackman also called for an "immediate investigation" against the board by the "unimpeachable members of the Harvard Board of Overseers."... "Only sunlight will remove the stain on the University's reputation," Ackman wrote. "It is time for the sun to shine."... Harvard's lawyers said in a letter to the New York Post in October that the plagiarism claims were "demonstrably false."... "In her short tenure as President, Claudine Gay has done more damage to the reputation of Harvard University than any individual in our nearly 500-year history," Ackman wrote in his third open letter."