Claudine Gay Residualized as President of the Harvard University Corporation of Particle Physicists: A Memorino
Claudine Gay resigned her post as Harvard University president on Tuesday, following congressional testimony about antisemitism and allegations of plagiarism, which have plagued the once-rising star of academia.
“It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president. This is not a decision I came to easily. Indeed, it has been difficult beyond words because I have looked forward to working with so many of you to advance the commitment to academic excellence that has propelled this great university across centuries. But, after consultation with members of the Corporation, it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.”
Gay was under fire for plagiarism in her work and for her appearance before Congress last month.
In a statement Tuesday, Harvard’s governing board named Alan M. Garber, the university’s provost and chief academic officer, as interim president until a new leader is chosen.
Gay, who was the first person of color and the second woman to hold the post at Harvard, has had a spectacular rise during her career in political science. She was courted by the nation’s most prestigious institutions in the early days of her career.
“Despite all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt about my commitments to confronting hate and to uphold scholarly rigor, two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am,” she wrote.
Comment on Claudine Gay’s resignation highlights the trouble with regulating academic writing” by C.J. Eaton and E. J. Tomar
Tomar said that Gay’s alleged transgressions are most likely to come to light because of the endless amounts of data that gets fed into artificial intelligence programs.
He claims a lot of academic leaders will also be outed in similar fashion. He doesn’t feel sympathy for those that violate an institution’s policy, but he says it’s not the right thing to focus on.
“We may be able to retroactively discover what somebody did in the 1990s. The person was going to graduate next year and should not be more concerned about what he or she is doing.
It has been a tumultuous episode for Harvard, whose highest governing board, known as the Harvard Corporation, has since noted that Gay had acknowledged “missteps.” A few instances of inadequate citation were found after an initial review of Gay’s published writings.
On Monday, right-wing website the Washington Free Beacon reported that it found problems in four of Gay’s published papers, including her 1997 dissertation.
“Supervisors should bear some responsibility for mentoring and shepherding the student to ensure that the quality of the work that they produce is high,” Eaton said.
A supervisor, an exam committee and peers are some of the elements that go into the verification of a doctorate degree.
Source: Claudine Gay’s resignation highlights the trouble with regulating academic writing
Dr. Sarah Elaine Eaton: A Professional Cheating Expert and An Empirical View on Plagiarism in Higher Education
Still, Dr. Sarah Elaine Eaton, author of Plagiarism in Higher Education: Tackling Tough Topics in Academic Integrity, says allegations of plagiarism are still largely handled manually.
Tomar began his career as a professional cheater during this pre-internet time. He recalled how easy it is to get away with cutting and copying before educators get up to speed.
Without the plagiarism detection software programs that are now in use, professors were encouraged to use their intuition if something felt off with an assignment. They were urged to hold one-on-one meetings to help them assess a student’s grasp of the material.
The internet was the beginnings of plagiarism detection technology, but he said that the 1990s and early 2000s were the dawn of the internet. Physical libraries were still used to conduct research. It wasn’t unusual for papers to be written out by hand, then typed into a computer or word processor. And the few software tools that eventually became available back then, were nowhere near as sophisticated as what exists today.
In the 20 years that have passed, the alarm bells have not really been raised as much, according to Tomar. “It’s a no-brainer to me that she was just sort of right ahead of the curve of detection at the time.”
Dave Tomar, a self-described “professional cheat” who spent about a decade ghost-writing academic papers for undergrads and post-doctoral students, said it’s easy to understand how Gay’s writing went undetected for so long.