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It appears my choice to start a thread on this topic turned out to be quite timely/prescient, eh?Much can be shared here since the last post in this thread. I've no inclination to provide a full accounting (to the remaining contingent here that may find time to peruse it), but will share a few noteworthy breadcrumbs/recent updates, though this topic remains 'developing'.
First, a piece direct from the NYTimes on the recent Gay resignation, which all started by claims of plagiarism leveled against her by Rufo (mentioned in a prior post above); those claims were later substantiated, with more evidence of additional instances piled on. Exacerbated by the recent claims of "antisemitism on campus" and Gay's recent commentary on such claims during Congressional testimony:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023 ... .%E2%80%9DScreenshot of an excerpt (I do not have a subscription and the article is behind a paywall):
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/06/busi ... board.htmlHow Harvard’s Board Broke Up With Claudine GayFacing intense pressure, it went from standing behind her as the university’s president to pushing her out within weeks.
A bit of added context on Gay's highly privileged background:
@jeffreyatucker
I'm all for wealth accumulation, capitalism, and sharing fruits with children to ensure their success. Fine. But I did not know until yesterday that Claudine Gay, despite making a career out of victimhood, is more privileged than 99.9999% of the rest of the US population. Again, nothing wrong with wealth and privilege, but it helps to understand the context. Story in Atlantic
https://archive.is/R9VFz.
And see NPR here too:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ... =122937646
One of the loudest (and wealthiest) critics of Gay's plagiarism endured quite a bit of blowback (ironic, perhaps, but not surprising), in merely one example of the elites devouring themselves in full public view:
@boriquagato
this is about to get very interesting.
we now have the tools to take a real look at the scale of the higher education/publication fraud.
let's scrape off the rust and see if there is even still a boat left underneath the shell of what was has been passing for academia.
@BillAckman
Last night, no one at @MIT had a good night’s sleep.
Yesterday evening, shortly after I posted that we were launching a plagiarism review of all current MIT faculty, President Kornbluth, members of MIT’s administration, and its board, I am sure that an audible collective gasp could be heard around the campus.
Why? Well, every faculty member knows that once their work is targeted by AI, they will be outed. No body of written work in academia can survive the power of AI searching for missing quotation marks, failures to paraphrase appropriately, and/or the failure to properly credit the work of others.
But it wasn’t just the MIT faculty that did not sleep last night. The @Harvard faculty, its governing board members, and its administrative leadership did not sleep either. Because why would we stop at MIT?
Don’t we have to do a deep dive into academic integrity at Harvard as well?
What about Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Penn, Dartmouth? You get the point.
While we are going to do a detailed review of plagiarism at MIT, we are not going to be the only ones who do so.
Every college and university in the world is going to have to do the same for themselves. They will do so because they will need to validate all plagiarism accusations, or someone else will do it for them.
The best approach, however, is probably to launch an AI startup to do this job (I would be interested in investing in one) as there is plenty of work to do, and many institutions won’t have the resources to do it on their own. Perhaps more importantly, the donors are going to demand that the review is done by an independent third party.
For who today is going to trust higher education to review itself?
Consider the inherently irreconcilable conflicts of interest. Would you trust today’s university president to do an examination of their faculty? What are the chances that the reviews would be weaponized to go after faculty members whose politics were not favored by leadership?
We have seen this before with other tools used by university presidents and their deans. Consider the weaponization of MeToo accusations, speech codes, and the other tactics of cancellation that have destroyed free speech on campus, and many faculty members’ reputations, careers, and their families.
By analogy, who would trust even our most credible corporations with auditing their own financial statements? There is a reason why all public companies have independent auditors who are carefully examined by regulators to ensure they maintain quality, standards, accuracy, and independence.
And what if a plagiarism review turned into an incredible embarrassment for the entire university? It could lead to wholesale firings of faculty. Donors terminating their donations. Federal funding being withdrawn, and a massive litigious conflagration where faculty members and universities sue one another about what is plagiarism, and what is not. Think about the inevitable destruction of the reputations of thousands of faculty members as it rolls out around the country, and perhaps the world.
And maybe that’s a good thing.
...
@Mteuzi
Here's the rundown of the unfolding drama:
- Bill Ackman led the charge against Claudine Gay, Harvard's president, over plagiarism, resulting in her resignation.
- Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor, is now accused of plagiarism in her 2010 dissertation and other scholarly works.
- Business Insider reported multiple instances of unattributed content in Oxman's work, paralleling the scrutiny Gay faced.
- Despite criticizing Harvard's diversity efforts and alleging anti-white racism, Ackman's tone softened when addressing his wife's plagiarism.
- Ackman vows to lead plagiarism reviews at MIT and against Business Insider's staff, which reported on his wife.
- The controversy follows Ackman's resentment over his donations to Harvard not translating into influence, as reported by the New York Times.
- Oxman also faced criticism for accepting a donation from Jeffrey Epstein and subsequently sending him an art gift.
- Oxman had left MIT by 2020, moving to New York to launch her company, Oxman, amidst the unfolding plagiarism allegations.
Read the full article below.
https://theguardian.com/education/2024/ ... ccusations---
Mike J
@mbjdc3
·
No the Ivies are just burning down and it’s great to see
This is now getting to the 'post-satire' phase, as the masks come off and veils (however semi-transparent) are lifted:
@JWMoons
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Jan 6
I’ve been laughing all morning. This Rufo guy has somehow managed to get Harvard alum, staff, and supporters to come out and slam the extension program, which all extension students can see, despite Harvard openly advertising it as Harvard. They’re getting dogwalked.
@Jenniferhochsc2
·
Jan 5
On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students
@jimmygandhi
@Jenniferhochsc2: Your gripe should be with Harvard Extension School which goes to great lengths to emphasize to applicants that it is a real Harvard degree and equivalent to other schools in Harvard.
@wrong_speak
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"Listen. We went to Harvard for status and sure, we let those 'outsiders' get a piece of our stuff but you ain't one of us. Know your place."
Benjamin B@dejo
@benjamin_bdj
Professor Hochshild (@Jenniferhochsc2): if you do not retract your ill-advised statements about Harvard Extension School, some HES students who paid for their studies with federal student loans will formally apply for Borrower Defense Loan Discharge (as in, formally dispute their obligation to repay their loans) via the official @usedgov Borrower Defense process, citing fraud. They will use your tweets as evidence, and they will win.
Jennifer hochschild
@Jenniferhochsc2
Rufo could have proudly and honorably said, "I pulled myself up by bootstraps;to prove it I have master's degree from Harvard extension school, along with other smart and gutsy students."Instead he used weasel words to try to attach himself to Ivy status and prestige. Insecurity??
@DanielHadas2
Harvard: Dismantling Structural Inequalities by trash-talking their own night school.Jennifer A. Frey
@jennfrey
The Harvard extension discourse is revealing. For all its patina of progressivism, Harvard knows that it's a gatekeeper. The extension school threatens to widen the gate a bit; hence the need for the "real degree" crowd to signal the difference in their social status.
...
@julesgmanresa
·
It’s really nasty gatekeeping all the way down
Etc, etc.