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She simply refused to make a blanket statement that would exclude all nuance.

She essentially refused to agree to zero tolerance policies. Which, you would think that people would be against.

But it was trap, and the media successfully branded it as condoning hate speech, when that's not at all what her refusal to take the bait was about.

Damned if she did, damned if she didn't.

It only looked bad because the question itself was dishonest and meant to make the school look bad. The students did not openly call for genocide. They called for another “intifada” and repeated the “from the river to the sea” mantra (or whatever you’d call it). Both of these things would be protected by a free speech policy that, as she stated, requires things to be targeted and actionable.

Eh, us professors care pretty deeply about the plagiarism she did. Intent or even knowledge of plagiarism isn't necessary for disciplinary action in plagiarism cases at major research universities. Any one of these examples would be enough for my university's academic integrity committee to rule that plagiarism occurred:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/us/claudine-gay-harvard-president-excerpts.html

And in the case of a dissertation, plagiarism is an automatic expulsion and degree retraction from my university. At the PhD level, students certainly know that what Dr. Gay did is plagiarism (a good rule of thumb is that five sequential words, even with paraphrasing, without citing the source, is plagiarism), and that plagiarism is completely unacceptable.

I already know of a student who made the argument that their plagiarism wasn't as bad as Dr. Gay's, so because Dr. Gay wasn't penalized, they shouldn't be penalized. Had she not stepped down, that line of argument likely would have snowballed out of control. The professors I know think her comments to Congress were out of touch, but all of us had been livid that she and Harvard were saying that she didn't plagiarize--any professor who looks at those examples will tell you that she did.

Her students were not calling for genocide and the questions were a trap along the lines of "when did you stop beating your wife?".

I think it's fair to say that she did not handle it as well as she could have done - directly calling out the nature of the question would have been better. But her refusal to throw her students under the bus is to be commended.

Harvard received the first plagiarism complaint in October. The investigation of the claims in that complaint came to its conclusion on December 9. Harvard said they supported her as recently as December 12.

Harvard University announced Tuesday that under-fire President Claudine Gay will keep her job — even after reportedly losing more than $1 billion in donations since her disastrous congressional testimony about antisemitism.

The Harvard Corporation — the university’s highest governing body — made its announcement Tuesday following night-long talks between Gay and university leaders, a source familiar with the decision told the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson.

"As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University. Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the group said in a statement.

https://nypost.com/2023/12/12/news/harvard-expected-to-announce-claudine-gay-will-keep-job/

The Harvard Corporation expressed concerns about allegations of plagiarism in University President Claudine Gay’s academic work Tuesday morning, even as the board declared its unanimous support for Harvard’s embattled president, providing Gay with a path forward to remain in office.

“As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University,” the board wrote in a University-wide statement on Tuesday. “In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay.” ... While the Corporation said it did not believe that the allegations amount to misconduct, it announced that Gay agreed to amend two publications.

“On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation,” the Fellows wrote. “While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/12/corporation-raises-plagiarism-concerns/

That said, two additional complaints were submitted in December. One complaint was submitted on December 18 and the other was on December 29. I think the last one just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

https://freebeacon.com/campus/fresh-allegations-of-plagiarism-unearthed-in-official-academic-complaint-against-claudine-gay/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/us/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism.html

It's absolutely not flimsy- she's only written a dozen articles and there's been concrete examples of plagiarism in at least of a quarter of them. Here is one of 40+ examples of the plagiarism found:

Swain in her article:

“the statistical correspondence of the demographic characteristics and more “substantive representation,” the correspondence between representatives’ goals and those of their constituents.”

Gay in her article:

"the statistical correspondence of demographic characteristics) and substantive representation (the correspondence of legislative goals and priorities.”

Swain in her article:

“Since the 1950s the reelection rate for House members has rarely dipped below 90 percent”

Gay in her article:

"Since the 1950s, the reelection rate for incumbent House members has rarely dipped below 90%”

She never cited Swain in any way until she was forced to do so this year by the review board. If I pulled this in college in more then 25% of my essays I'd most certainly be in front of my department head in a very serious conversation, looking at suspension at least.

Edit: Lol, late breaking news! As of today plagiarism allegations now cover 50%! Half! of her papers as even more examples have come out literally a few hours ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/us/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism.html

That’s what I’m saying, though… I don’t think anyone actually thought it was a problem until they decided they wanted her out. The supposed plagiarism was reviewed twice by independent bodies and they both said they couldn’t find an “intent to deceive or mislead”. They said that the quotations were negligent but wouldn’t be considered plagiarism in those instances and would typically be allowed to be submitted for revision.

If she was trying to pass off someone else’s words or thoughts as her own, that would be one thing. Missing a citation for a technical description doesn’t seem to fall under that umbrella.

I know your argument is of semantics but I’d say it's not relevant either way. The determination should be done by objective third parties.

While that is true, I don’t think she actually addressed the substance of the plagiarism claims. She just issued a blanket statement calling for her to be fired.