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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25632 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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*ding* *ding* *ding*

Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, is out. Yep, it's true, absolutely not Fake and Gay. No Gay here, no siree...

Harvard President Claudine Gay will resign Tuesday afternoon, bringing an end to the shortest presidency in the University's history, according to a person with knowledge of the decision.

...

Gay weathered scandal after scandal over her brief tenure, facing national backlash for her administration’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work.

Even the Harvard Crimson, which is about as institutional-woke aligned as you can get pulls no punches in its article. She really seems to have completely fallen from the graces of the powers that be in academia. The plagierism allegations aren't new either, they've been going around for a year at this point, but it looks like they only really started to matter when she put a mark on herself and the sharks smelled blood.

Before that point they were just ignored and the general fishiness around her dates back to the early 2000s. This means that Harvard did not care about the allegations when they were appointing her to the presidency (just 6 months ago, when these allegations were all out there), but only started to care once she became a personal liability to Harvard rather than merely an academic one. Alternatively they did care but their vetting process is so bad something so open and shut as her plagierism passed through undetected. Either way it looks really bad. A pox on Harvard!

On a more cynical note I admit to being personally surprised by this, of all three presidents she was the one I expected the least to get deposed even though Sally Kornbluth, the MIT president came across as by far the most consistent and reasonable person at the hearing (she didn't do that well either, but it wasn't a car crash at least).

One thing I’ve found interesting is a couple of responses in the "mainstream media." First, this AP piece, which was introduced on Twitter with:

Harvard president's resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism

(I once again thank Elon for the gift that is community notes)

From the piece itself:

WASHINGTON (AP) — American higher education has long viewed plagiarism as a cardinal sin. Accusations of academic dishonesty have ruined the careers of faculty and undergraduates alike.

The latest target is Harvard President Claudine Gay, who resigned Tuesday. In her case, the outrage came not from her academic peers but her political foes, led by conservatives who put her career under intense scrutiny.

That same “Republicans pounce” tone carries throughout. Little to no concern as to whether the accusations are true — even as they do note it is the sort of thing that would absolutely not be tolerated from an undergrad:

The allegations against Gay initially came from conservative activists, some who stayed anonymous. They looked for the kinds of duplicated sentences undergraduate students are trained to avoid, even with citation.

Instead, who is making the accusation is treated as what really matters. It’s very tribalist.

Another paragraph that stood out:

Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the effort against Gay, celebrated her departure as a win in his campaign against elite institutions of higher education. On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote “SCALPED,” as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans and also used by some tribes against their enemies.

Note the historically backwards framing at the end there, in service of a tortured guilt-by-association-to-metaphor.

Also, an “everybody does it” defense, combined with a further assertion that accusations shouldn’t count if they come from The Wrong People™ who think “everybody does it”:

In highly specialized fields, scholars often use similar language to describe the same concepts, said Davarian Baldwin, a historian at Trinity College who writes about race and higher education. Gay clearly made mistakes, he said, but with the spread of software designed to detect plagiarism, it wouldn’t be hard to find similar overlap in works by other presidents and professors.

The tool becomes dangerous, he added, when it “falls into the hands of those who argue that academia in general is a cesspool of incompetence and bad actors.”

Next:

John Pelissero, a former interim college president who now works for the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, said instances of plagiarism deserve to be evaluated individually and that it’s not always so cut and dried.

“You’re looking for whether there was intentionality to mislead or inappropriately borrow other people’s ideas in your work,” Pelissero said. “Or was there an honest mistake?”

Would an undergrad get away with plagiarism if it was “an honest mistake”? Well, I went to Caltech, not Harvard, but the way the “honor code” was enforced vis-a-vis plagiarism and proper citations when I was there two decades ago, the answer was no.

I’m trying not to be “boo outgroup” here about mainstream “journalism,” but this all seems pretty partisan for something from an institution like the Associated Press that purports to be reporting rather than editorializing.

The other is this Forbes piece: “Claudine Gay Resigns From Harvard: Why Black Excellence Is Never Enough.” Exactly what “black excellence” Dr. Gay displayed, beyond being “Harvard University’s first Black president” is left unsaid. The author’s other two examples for comparison are Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Nikole Hannah-Jones. The fourth paragraph is what I’d like to highlight, particularly its end:

No amount of wealth, achievements, accolades, or notoriety will offer safety and protection in an anti-black world. Black excellence will never be enough—it is an insatiable chasm that tricks us into believing that all a Black person needs to do is “be excellent” to transcend oppressive systems and structures. But if the stories of Claudine Gay, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Nikole Hannah-Jones can teach us anything, it’s that it doesn’t matter how much you know, how much you’ve achieved, or how far you’ve come. Being excellent for Black folks, and especially Black women, will not shield you from harm.

Note the “harms” Gay, Hannah-Jones, and Jackson suffered: Gay had to step down from being president of Harvard, but still works there in a highly-paid position; UNC initially denied Hannah-Jones tenure… before eventually granting it; and Justice Jackson… received criticism during her Senate confirmation hearing. That last is particularly notable — Jackson was confirmed. She’s on the Supreme Court.

The author, Janice Gassam Asare, seems to be offended that these women received pushback and criticism at all, and that these women — all quite well off and protected and very safe compared to most Americans of any color — aren’t even better off is proof that “misogynoir is never too far away.”

Again, the substance of the issue is waved away, in favor of making it about “the first Black woman [X].” Where in the first piece, truth comes second to partisan affinities, here truth is second to identities. In both, the focus is shifted away from Dr. Gay’s questionable scholarship, in favor of painting the outgroup as horrible for daring to point it out. How are things supposed to work, in a media environment like this?

I've been skeptical of the "now the Jews are going to turn on DEI", but earlier today Bill Ackman, who publicly led the effort to oust Gay, posted a viral article that does take it head-on. It's interesting he more or less admits that he's changing his position on DEI because of anti-semitism:

In light of today’s news, I thought I would try to take a step back and provide perspective on what this is really all about.

I first became concerned about @Harvard when 34 Harvard student organizations, early on the morning of October 8th before Israel had taken any military actions in Gaza, came out publicly in support of Hamas, a globally recognized terrorist organization, holding Israel ‘solely responsible’ for Hamas’ barbaric and heinous acts.

How could this be? I wondered. ...

I came to learn that the root cause of antisemitism at Harvard was an ideology that had been promulgated on campus, an oppressor/oppressed framework, that provided the intellectual bulwark behind the protests, helping to generate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate speech and harassment.

Then I did more research. The more I learned, the more concerned I became, and the more ignorant I realized I had been about DEI, a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard, but the educational system at large. I came to understand that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was not what I had naively thought these words meant.

I have always believed that diversity is an important feature of a successful organization, but by diversity I mean diversity in its broadest form: diversity of viewpoints, politics, ethnicity, race, age, religion, experience, socioeconomic background, sexual identity, gender, one’s upbringing, and more.

What I learned, however, was that DEI was not about diversity in its purest form, but rather DEI was a political advocacy movement on behalf of certain groups that are deemed oppressed under DEI’s own methodology.

Translation: he only cares now that it affects the interests of Jews and Israel. He didn't care it's been used as a bludgeon against White Americans, and he still doesn't care about that now.

In your own quote, he says "I ultimately concluded that antisemitism was not the core of the problem" and then continues his 5000 word post calling DEI racist and explicitly condemning white racism as equal to all other types. Take the W, what else do you want?

Translation: he only cares now that it affects the interests of Jews and Israel. He didn't care it's been used as a bludgeon against White Americans, and he still doesn't care about that now.

From the article:

DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people (and it is remarkable that I even need to point this out). Racism against white people has become considered acceptable by many not to be racism, or alternatively, it is deemed acceptable racism. While this is, of course, absurd, it has become the prevailing view in many universities around the country.

You can say things about white people today in universities, in business or otherwise, that if you switched the word ‘white’ to ‘black,’ the consequences to you would be costly and severe.

To state what should otherwise be self-evident, whether or not a statement is racist should not depend upon whether the target of the racism is a group who currently represents a majority or minority of the country or those who have a lighter or darker skin color. Racism against whites is as reprehensible as it is against groups with darker skin colors.

...This passage, and many more like it, appear to be straightforwardly caring about how DEI has been used as a bludgeon against White Americans. At first glance, this post appears to be a straightforward conservative rejection of Progressive identity politics and all its attendant works. If this attitude carried the day, I think it would be a straightforwardly good thing.

It's still possible that this clarity will disappear once his ox stops being gored, but judging the statement on its own terms, your summary does not seem accurate.

I'm going to tap the sign again.

If she suffers no meaningful consequences for the plagiarism and indeed is shuffled off to a well-compensated position to run out her career (as appears to be the case) then literally nothing will be impacted in the system at large, and any changes this brings about will be entirely superficial.

Either 'we' (I don't even know to whom that is referring) can make elites suffer some tangible and material harm or damage for misbehavior, or we are resigned to being ruled by a class of humans that that is simply unfit, undeserving, incompetent... and mostly untouchable.

Granted, the identity of the President of Harvard does not impact my own personal life very directly, so I feel little personal need to inflict such harm, but if I had the capacity to do so I would willingly take the metaphorical shot simply to try and move us towards a better, happier equilibrium.

or we are resigned to being ruled by a class of humans that that is simply unfit, undeserving, incompetent... and mostly untouchable.

And once again tapping my own sign, I have to ask, where is it written that we need to be ruled by these people?

I catch a fair bit of flak from certain parties for my alleged "Anti-Intellectualism" but what if we live in a world where some level of disdain for intellectuals is simply the intelligent well-reasoned position?

I won't even contest the point, but it sure seems like excising the institutions is going to be a fraught task, as there incentives they have to hold onto their authority and the various means they have to do it is still substantial.

I'd absolutely advocate for "disregard them completely, revert to localism" position. I just think that pointing out the exact reason why the institutions are dysfunctional, and the reason it isn't being fixed, is the best way to nudge people towards that position.

And in her resignation, she doesn't acknowledge the plagiarism, pinning it rather on racism:

Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor – two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.

She is being replaced for now by a liberal Jew who supports DEI but also Israel. The only "winners" in this are Zionist. This stuff is so stupid to me. Anyone who replaces her will have more or less the same agenda. This is how The Cathedral works. These people are all interchangeable and getting rid of one bureaucrat literally changes nothing for almost everyone celebrating this. Nobody knew who this woman was until Israel decided to kill tens of thousands of Palestinians and people started criticizing Israel and she wouldn't/couldn't clamp down on that so she had to go.

She was felled after more plagiarism allegations yesterday (or two days ago) apparently. I think they were committed to keeping her, but having like half her published work subject to retraction and correction would have been too embarrassing.

Before that point they were just ignored and the general fishiness around her dates back to the early 2000s. This means that Harvard did not care about the allegations when they were appointing her to the presidency (just 6 months ago, when these allegations were all out there), but only started to care once she became a personal liability to Harvard rather than merely an academic one. Alternatively they did care but their vetting process is so bad something so open and shut as her plagerism passed through undetected. Either way it looks really bad. A pox on Harvard!

This raises the question of why they appointed her to begin with- yes, there's not a lot of black women with the IQ's to publish original research, but there's some and 'ivy league university president' seems like the kind of job that there's eleventy million qualified applicants to every opening. Surely they could have found some black woman with original research to appoint? Even if that research was nonsensical non-contributions to grievance studies or communications it seems like finding someone more qualified than Gay would be extremely doable.

President of Harvard isn't a research position. Which is fitting, because with 11 publications she isn't much of a researcher.

She is rich and well connected. Perhaps a decent fundraiser or Fellows corraller. Her genitalia and skin tone certainly help.

You don't get to those positions through qualifications, but through politics. Which explains why the plagiarism stuff on its own didn't sink her. Only once her support was weakened through the Israel stuff was she vulnerable enough to be taken down.

Having worked in both, the upper echelons of academia and the Civil Service/politics are very similar. You have the full confidence of the board/minister..until all at once you don't. With very little in between.

Yes, she wasn’t the most accomplished black woman even if they’d restricted themselves solely to internal candidates. It’s an interesting decision.

This is the fruit of the Elon-Twitter tree. "Claudine Gay" has been trending on X every other day for the last month. It helped a lot that it was a slow news cycle, but this sort of cultural momentum would have been impossible a few years ago.

This is the fruit of the Elon-Twitter tree.

Not just her firing, attempts to control the narrative after the fact are running into embarrassing fact checks.

Right, with old Twitter management, they just would have banned anyone disparaging Gay.

Idk about that, but I do think they would have throttled engagement.

"Don't say Gay" -- see, both sides really are the same in the end.

If so the only thing I can say is "Elon, you beautiful, beautiful man..."

The right played their card well. And they got support or at least neutrality from liberal jews and Gay is slightly more charismatic than Ebola and less than Hilary Clinton. It's a nice victory, but too much stars alligned. Whether this will be translated in new playbook to nudge the universities to be more centrist or at least more open minded remains to be seen.

This may result in minor damage to Obama's influence within the Democratic Party, since he was very supportive of Gay throughout this process. (Alternatively, it may be evidence of his influence weakening.) I'd be curious as to whether the plagiarism or the anti-Semitism was the decisive factor, as there are significant examples of each that the Party does not consider to be disqualifying.

My guess--for what it's worth--is that a faction within the Party found Gay's defense of anti-Semitism to be seriously objectionable, and tried to get her ousted on that basis before she could do more damage to Harvard's institutional reputation with elite employers. When this failed, the considerable evidence of her plagiarism was leveraged instead. Plagiarism is considered the highest of high crimes within academia, in theory (and even occasionally, in practice!), so Harvard decided it could not weather the purely academic hit to its reputation as well.

Why not both? Some wanted her gone due to her Israeli comments. Some wanted her gone due to her plagiarism. Many probably wanted her gone for both reasons. The more target space you give your opponent the more vulnerable you become.

I agree that it was almost certainly both. My guess is that the anti-Semitism got the ball rolling, and prompted the additional publicity of her plagiarism, which is what finished her off. In particular, the drip-drip-drip of "hey, we found these two papers were plagiarized in part," "oh, and these three papers," and "also this other paper," kept the story fresh in a way that dumping the full list at once would not have.

Edit: typo

Have all of the ousted presidents been replaced by Jews so far?

Penn’s new interim president is Irish-American.

Gay's interrim replacement is a Jew. Don't know about the other one, Kornbluth still has her job.

Sally Kornbluth is jewish herself for what it is worth.

I’m unreasonably pleased by that article title. Five bucks says it shows up in Scott’s next links post for nominative determinism.

Why were all these presidents seeing congressional hearings? One school I could understand.

Yeah, "Fake papers from Gay prove costly" is something that Kabbalistically has to be true.

Oh, I was thinking “out” as in “of the closet.” At first I figured discussing the sex lives of academics was gauche.

I have the weirdest déjà vu right now. I think I saw this exact conversation on The Motte a couple of months ago.

Oh, I was thinking “out” as in “of the closet.” At first I figured discussing the sex lives of academics was gauche.

Ah, I thought that joke is a bit played, didn't even notice that, and anyways if you want to play with that concept rdrama has me beat with:

Harvard Forcibly Outs Gay

Concurring with Nate Silver that the whole thing was an embarrassment and the time it took means Harvard still looks awful despite doing the thing

Basically, it looks like they don't care about anti-semitism, and only care about plagiarism when it's put under an intense spotlight.

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