5 ms·

I'm not playing the fool here, I just am one (i.e. ignorant)... wouldn't the plagiarism stuff have come up when she was appointed President? Like would she have

by lainga 3y ago

I'm not playing the fool here, I just am one (i.e. ignorant)... wouldn't the plagiarism stuff have come up when she was appointed President? Like would she have had a hearing or something first?

gruez 3y ago
> Like would she have had a hearing or something first? A hearing doesn't imply that they thoroughly checked.
noitpmeder 3y ago
I believe they were only uncovered (re-uncovered?, but definitely largely publicized) after those who were dissatisfied with her congressional testimony looked deeper into her past for more ammunition to use in their push to remove her as president.
- submeta 3y ago
  This! It was all about her testimony. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38848351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38848351
- kcplate 3y ago
  Doesn’t matter if some political enemies discovered it, she still owns the mess she put herself in over all of this. And let’s face it, it’s not like the political enemies she made were all on one side. There was bi-partisan outrage over the hair splitting of genocide answer she gave to congress. Also bear in mind that Harvard tried to stick by her and even excused her congressional testimony and after investigating the initial plagerism instances. At a certain point the plagiarism instances just became way to numerous (50?) to reasonably explain them away by carelessness.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  I honestly lean more towards her general beliefs politically (except on the Israel-Palestine issue) but I don't care what was the reason behind it. She still committed plagiarism, and someone who did it in such a provenly egregious way is not fit to run a place like Harvard, period.
- myth_drannon 3y ago
  My understanding plagiarism issue where uncovered before, Harvard even hired a law firm to threaten the journalists.
jnwatson 3y ago
If you want to catch plagiarism, you have to go looking for it. She provided a reason for folks to look. Imagine chaos that Google could cause if it looked for common phrases across its corpus of sites/books/papers.
- swader999 3y ago
  AI will in short order.
  - porkbeer 3y ago
    All while providing a reworded, but just as plagerized phrasing for you.
- 0xcafefood 3y ago
  It's only a matter of time before something like this is done. Semiautomated detecdtion of plagiarism is already possible, and with recent improvements in NLP, I suspect it'll be much more robust.
Tialco 3y ago
[dead]
InTheArena 3y ago
Her qualifications were the previous jobs she held - leading the DE&I initiative. Not her scholastic bonafides - I read that she had 11 published papers before getting this job.
- jwestbury 3y ago
  University presidents hardly need to be distinguished researchers.
  - InTheArena 3y ago
    And yet Harvard introduced her as “a scholar’s scholar”.
dekhn 3y ago
I strongly suspect that in the future, everybody being considered for a senior role at university will have their writing sent through a plagiarism detector and rejected if they fail that test. Harvard should already have been doing that, but it's clear the board who hired her had no real interest in verifying her credentials.
pgeorgi 3y ago
Proving plagiarism is hard work. In general that's only done when there are suspicions already, or if there's some serious (office) politics going on. Otherwise there's a basic trust among scientists that their peers work properly. (with the odd but very honest mistake here or there) Seems like she stayed clear from raising suspicions (by simply not publishing more and going into administration instead) but now she made herself some serious enemies willing to do the work. The consequences are a matter of trust: A simple office clerk with no scientific training going through the ranks at Harvard growing into "President of Harvard", on the understanding that they "merely" ensure that the business chugs along (and with a proven track record in doing that) while keeping a large part of such administration work off the backs of the scientists and teachers is a better fit than somebody who's demonstrated disregard for the tenets of scientific work. It doesn't matter why President Gay's works were scrutinized right now, the loss of trust is still real.

by lainga 3y ago

I'm not playing the fool here, I just am one (i.e. ignorant)... wouldn't the plagiarism stuff have come up when she was appointed President? Like would she have had a hearing or something first?

gruez 3y ago

> Like would she have had a hearing or something first? A hearing doesn't imply that they thoroughly checked.

noitpmeder 3y ago

I believe they were only uncovered (re-uncovered?, but definitely largely publicized) after those who were dissatisfied with her congressional testimony looked deeper into her past for more ammunition to use in their push to remove her as president.

submeta 3y ago
This! It was all about her testimony. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38848351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38848351
kcplate 3y ago
Doesn’t matter if some political enemies discovered it, she still owns the mess she put herself in over all of this. And let’s face it, it’s not like the political enemies she made were all on one side. There was bi-partisan outrage over the hair splitting of genocide answer she gave to congress. Also bear in mind that Harvard tried to stick by her and even excused her congressional testimony and after investigating the initial plagerism instances. At a certain point the plagiarism instances just became way to numerous (50?) to reasonably explain them away by carelessness.
camillomiller 3y ago
I honestly lean more towards her general beliefs politically (except on the Israel-Palestine issue) but I don't care what was the reason behind it. She still committed plagiarism, and someone who did it in such a provenly egregious way is not fit to run a place like Harvard, period.
myth_drannon 3y ago
My understanding plagiarism issue where uncovered before, Harvard even hired a law firm to threaten the journalists.

jnwatson 3y ago

If you want to catch plagiarism, you have to go looking for it. She provided a reason for folks to look. Imagine chaos that Google could cause if it looked for common phrases across its corpus of sites/books/papers.

swader999 3y ago
AI will in short order.
- porkbeer 3y ago
  All while providing a reworded, but just as plagerized phrasing for you.
0xcafefood 3y ago
It's only a matter of time before something like this is done. Semiautomated detecdtion of plagiarism is already possible, and with recent improvements in NLP, I suspect it'll be much more robust.

Tialco 3y ago

[dead]

InTheArena 3y ago

Her qualifications were the previous jobs she held - leading the DE&I initiative. Not her scholastic bonafides - I read that she had 11 published papers before getting this job.

jwestbury 3y ago
University presidents hardly need to be distinguished researchers.
- InTheArena 3y ago
  And yet Harvard introduced her as “a scholar’s scholar”.

dekhn 3y ago

I strongly suspect that in the future, everybody being considered for a senior role at university will have their writing sent through a plagiarism detector and rejected if they fail that test. Harvard should already have been doing that, but it's clear the board who hired her had no real interest in verifying her credentials.

pgeorgi 3y ago

Proving plagiarism is hard work. In general that's only done when there are suspicions already, or if there's some serious (office) politics going on. Otherwise there's a basic trust among scientists that their peers work properly. (with the odd but very honest mistake here or there) Seems like she stayed clear from raising suspicions (by simply not publishing more and going into administration instead) but now she made herself some serious enemies willing to do the work. The consequences are a matter of trust: A simple office clerk with no scientific training going through the ranks at Harvard growing into "President of Harvard", on the understanding that they "merely" ensure that the business chugs along (and with a proven track record in doing that) while keeping a large part of such administration work off the backs of the scientists and teachers is a better fit than somebody who's demonstrated disregard for the tenets of scientific work. It doesn't matter why President Gay's works were scrutinized right now, the loss of trust is still real.