One wonders whether Harvard students are held to the same plagiarism standards as President Gay.
One supposes this will depend on their donorship records.
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I see her answer as hedging against exactly that kind of duplicity one woukd expect from the GOP in order to protect her students. It sounds very much like a gotcha lead-up question. If she had answered with an unequivocal yes, the next question would have given a specific example from a student protest at Harvard, out of context, naturally, and asked her if the student in question had been expelled.
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Of course that would have been the follow-up question, based in BS and misdefinitions. And if you and I can anticipate it, it’s a question that someone in her position is capable of anticipating as well (with detailed knowledge of the relevant incidents brought to her attention).
Gaming out a right-winger’s “gotcha” questions is never hard, since they’re limited by a lack of facts and constrained by talking points and lies. We see this play out here every time a right-winger tries to seali0n – everyone is a few steps ahead. No-one has to play their game on their terms, even in a hearing where the tr0ll has power.
One thing I’m now wondering is if she was given that wishy washy answer by one of the school’s in-house or advisory lawyers (the kind the NYT thinks would make a better administrator than an academic). I can easily see that happening and I can also see her bringing that up to the board when they tried to fire her. Canning a university president is easy for them, canning a lawyer along with her is another matter.
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Quote the whole thing!
She says
Bobo and Gilliam (1990) stands as the most complete research to date in this area, focusing on black elected officials at the city level. Using 1987 survey data, Bobo and Gilliam found that African-Americans in ‘high black-empowerment’ areas–as indicated by control of the mayor’s office — are more active than either African-Americans in low empowerment areas or their white counterparts of comparable socioeconomic status.
How is this plagiarism when she’s saying it comes from them twice in two sentences!
It’s the same for all the stupid examples they found. Rufo knows jack-shit about academia or this topic, he just went and found each person she cited, looked up the original work (given her citation!) and looked to see if the language matched closely.
@frauenfelder this is a right-wing hit piece, published in the Post, against a Black female president of Harvard – a trifecta of their hate. Don’t spread this bullshit.
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It is an incredibly weak accusation, even if she did copy it. Are we really supposed to care about this single sentence:
?
Really? I am certain this story was covered by an actual legitimate news organization. Can we just not?
The other thing that continues to piss me off about this entire stupid bullshit is the implication that Harvard is some bastion of leftist politics. It is absolutely not. Gorsuch, Roberts, Scalia, Rehnquist all went to Harvard Law. As did less recognized legal scholars like Ben Shapiro and Kayleigh McEnany. Ted Cruz. Oh, not Harvard Law, but Elise Stefanik herself went to Harvard. Hell, the highly educated wing of the GOP is full of Harvard grads.
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It’s an old American right-wing populist canard, one the conservative graduates of these elite schools smirk about even as they spout it.
If (as they claim when called on it) they hated their time there so much, it certainly doesn’t stop them from bragging (or frequently lying) about attending the schools on their CVs and in their appeals to intellectual authority.
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Sadly, I think they’ve almost all been corporatized now. I was at UGA in the late 90s/early 2000s, when it began to make the transition from the academic model to the business model. Sure, we got lots of new buildings, but when you start to view students and parents as customers, the nature of the academic experience is bound to change.
Now, as a middle-aged person who often interviews and hires recent graduates, I’m shocked by how often interviewees seem to have limited critical thinking skills. I’ve begun to gravitate toward humanities majors. They might not be trained to execute specific technical skills, but I’ve found that they’re often better at handling ambiguous situations and figuring things out. If they can think for themselves, I can always teach them the technical skills.
Here’s hoping that the arts and humanities don’t get too deemphasized at universities. It would be a shame to have a world full of people who know how to do stuff, but not why.
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A bit off-topic, but I was in downtown in Athens not too long ago, and it seems to be going pretty corporate too… there is a Target now right across from the old arch…Wuxtry and Bizarro wuxtry are still there, at least… but it feels very different than it used to when I would go hang with friends in the late 90s…
I hate to be so cynical, but it does feel like they’re winning and that the only places where people will be able to get a good humanities education will be at the elite colleges… leaving everyone else to glorified on the job training… 
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