28 Comments

No. No no no. No!

He capitalizes "black." He lower-cases "white." And if one cannot be just a wee little bit pregnant, one can't be slightly plagiaristic. He was willing to overlook what God knows how many unfortunate Harvard undergrads became un-Harvardized for over the years, little wee bits of uncitationed submissions.

No. Johnny-come-lately. And some miserably pedestrian prose for a guy who's a linguist, for fuck's sake.

I know you must be giddy now. Take a deep breath. Remember how long you been on our Claudine's case. You should be John's hero.

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Harvard Finds More Instances of ‘Duplicative Language’ in President’s Work

--- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/20/us/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism.html

"Duplicative Language". That is creative writing.

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Stop it with the grade inflation. One doesn't become a "hero" just for exercising minimal common sense.

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Is it me, but objecting to Gay for committing forty crimes against Harvard, but not objecting when she commits twenty crimes against Harvard, does not make JW a hero. Just sounds like a narcissist engaged in CYA.

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A "hero"? Karl, be more careful with word choice please

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Must be bad for a leftist to go this far.

Poor fellow uses the adulatory spelling of the black race, but the standard spelling for White.

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John’s a good dude, I first saw him on Penn & Teller’s BS damn near 20 years ago at this point. As any good libertarian of the skeptic variety, it’s one of my favorite shows of all time. For current stuff, check out John on Glenn Loury’s show, John always has an interesting take on things. Those who don’t know him well will be surprised at what he has to say. Also, to my knowledge, the “Black” thing is an NYT style guide thing. When you write for a publication, you have to follow the style guide, no matter how stupid it is.

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"There are indeed degrees of plagiarism. The allegations against Dr. Gay do not entail promoting actual substantial ideas as her own…"

And yet she did precisely that when she lifted the substantial ideas from Dr. Carol Swain, but I guess Dr. Swain doesn't count because she's an Aunt Tom or something.

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Fairly weak sauce here. Her process was sloppy, mistakes were made, but her ideas were original. But for the sake of the continuing DEI enterprise, she should step down. I find no bravery or boldness in his stance.

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It’s a bit odd that no one mentions the allegations of data fabrication. Whatever happened to that, Chris?

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I believe the only solution to these problems are aligning academia to market forces. The fact the author says only one person read their dissertation shows how little value so much of academia has in the world. If you look at Substack or YouTube people need to create things of value to people and are then reviewed and critiqued by many in their market niche. It seems like academia almost doesn’t want to be read widely for fear of being reviewed and critiqued. It’s sad really so much effort is put into things no one cares about enough to even read.

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Dec 22, 2023·edited Dec 22, 2023

Mr McWorther's prose was a bit painful to read. As others have pointed out, his overtly racist Black/white dichotomy stands out. But his repeated (pro forma?) approval of "antiracism" (i.e. anti-white bigotry) is repugnant.

Nevertheless, his main point is sound: in a "zero tolerance" environment for students like Hahhhhvud, it's odious for the boss to flaunt the rules xir administration forces on the student body.

We all know what Comrade Lenin or Comrade Mao would do with a degenerate anti-working-class racist like Mx Gay. (Wall's over that way, stand up straight please, this will be brief.) While I can't endorse such harsh justice, that is kinda the ideological world Mx Gay inhabits.

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