Plagiarism is a cardinal offense for academics. In December, it also became the latest cudgel in the conservative culture war on Harvard and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Harvard was struggling to navigate public fallout from former President Claudine Gay’s now-infamous congressional hearing. The University was under a national microscope like never before, and politicians, alumni, and Harvard affiliates were calling for Gay’s resignation.
And amidst it all – as the Harvard Corporation met to discuss Gay’s future at the University – right-wing activist Christopher F. Rufo and journalist Christopher Brunet hit publish on a piece that would add a new element to the controversy: allegations that Gay had plagiarized large sections of her Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard.
Harvard had already found itself in the crossfires of the culture war. But with new software at their disposal and a trove of unscrutinized scholarship to dive into, the plagiarism allegations against Gay had opened up a new frontier.
The allegations might have ended with Gay’s sudden resignation. Instead, they took off. The first three months of 2024 saw three more Black women at Harvard hit with anonymous plagiarism complaints, one after another: Chief Diversity Officer Sherri A. Charleston, Harvard Extension School administrator Shirley R. Greene, and Sociology professor Christina J. Cross. All three have not commented publicly on the allegations. The University has repeatedly said it would not comment on specific cases, citing the ongoing review processes.
Typically, leveling an allegation of plagiarism is supposed to defend the scholarly record and the contributions of the allegedly plagiarized author. But from the get-go, Rufo emphasized that his aims were much bigger. At Harvard, the fixation on Black female scholars who study issues of race and equity has led many academics to criticize their reporting as racially motivated. Jennifer L. Hochschild, a political scientist at Harvard from whom Gay was accused of plagiarizing, said the string of allegations suggested a “targeted” attack on Black women in service of the conservative push to discredit institutions of higher education and DEI initiatives.
More: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/5/23/plagiarism-culture-war-feature/
