Gay even plagiarized her acknowledgments.
snip
Wash/Post Associate Editor, Ruth Marcus, points out in a 12/23/23 op-ed.....”In her 1997 doctoral dissertation, for example, Gay quoted from a paper by Bradley Palmquist and D. Stephen Voss, then her colleagues in the Harvard political science department, about turnout rates among Black voters. “This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias,” they wrote. “If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct’s racial mix, which is one description of bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot (resulting only when changes in one race’s turnout rate somehow compensated for changes in the other’s across the graph.)”
Gay’s dissertation — which nowhere cites Palmquist and Voss — contains nearly identical language. “This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias,” she wrote. “If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct’s racial mix, which is one way to think about bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot. A linear form would only result if the changes in one race’s turnout were compensated by changes in the turnout of the other race across the graph.”
That’s not sloppiness. That’s plagiarism.
snip
MARCUS-—I take no joy in saying this, but Harvard President Claudine Gay ought to resign. Her track record is unbefitting the president of the country’s premier university. Remaining on the job would send a bad signal to students about the gravity of her conduct.
snip
EXCERPT——Harvard said it launched an inquiry into Gay’s conduct after being contacted by the New York Post in October about plagiarism allegations. It said an independent panel of three respected political scientists with no ties to Harvard had examined Gay’s published works and found instances of “inadequate citations” that, “while regrettable, did not constitute research misconduct” because there was no evidence of intentional deception or recklessness.
It said Gay had submitted four corrections to two articles and, after questions were raised about her dissertation, promised to update that document as well to fix “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.” 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.
Good points, well summarized. Thank you.
These are the people who consider themselves our ‘betters’................