Midwest Chick's Place

 It’s now very clear that Claudine Gay is a plagiarist.  

The four papers that include plagiarized material comprise a sizable portion of Gay’s academic work. Gay, who is Harvard’s 30th president, has authored just 11 peer-reviewed articles.

“If this were a stand-alone instance, it would be reprehensible but perhaps excused as the blunder of someone working hastily,” said Peter Wood, a former associate provost of Boston University, where he helped investigate several cases of suspected plagiarism. “But that excuse vanishes as the examples multiply,” said Wood, who now serves as the director of the National Association of Scholars.

She’s actually submitting ‘updates’ to her dissertation (didn’t even know that was a thing). 

She’s also being shown to be a piss-poor scholar.  Because how can you understand work and data that’s not your own?

Two professors – Michael C. Herron, a quantitative social science professor at Dartmouth, and Kenneth W. Shotts, a professor of political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business – told a 2002 conference of The Society for Political Methodology that she would not share her data or code with them.

‘We were, however, unable to scrutinize Gay’s results because she would not release her dataset to us (personal communication with Claudine Gay, 2002),’ they noted.

The professors said the statistical practice Gay used in her research often leads  ‘logical inconsistencies’.

The Harvard Corporation is taking heat for hiring her in the first place and then more heat for not firing her when it was clear that swift action was needed.  They’re busy running cover for her probably out of some weird idea that it would salvage their reputation as well.

Another professor has called on Massachusetts lawmakers to appoint a government official to the board to represent the public interest. It would fall under a clause in the state constitution that reserves authority over Harvard to the state legislature, the newspaper reported.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Maura Healey told the outlet she is aware of the proposal and is looking forward to reviewing it.

The current members include a former US Commerce Secretary, a former CEO of American Express and the president of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Each member serves a six-year renewable term, and the current members select new ones.

Not much is known about the board, which for centuries has steered the university and made it one of the wealthiest universities in the world from behind closed doors with minimal transparency.

It’s pretty clear that Harvard’s foray into the world of DEI, at least as far as university leadership goes, has been a complete and utter fail.  And it’s shown the world that Harvard isn’t all it’s cracked up to be as well.  It’s put them under a well-deserved microscope.  And it’s about time.