Former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s serial plagiarism is just the tip of the iceberg. Within days from now, thousands of internet sleuths who are scouring dissertations for plagiarism will have uncovered a shocking number of academicians who have obtained their doctorates by fraud.
Brilliantly said. Your pathway to that decline is the most clever. I listened to a recent James Lindsay interview on the Atheists for Liberty channel. He referenced being with Brett Weinstein and others five years ago, where Brett questioned what type of illness academia was suffering from. (I assume you were in attendance as well. ) Among the analogies were flu, a tumor, cancer, or rabies such as in one's family dog. If rabies, the family dog is no longer. The disease has overtaken it. I sadly agree with this assessment. My father was in academics. Any university made me feel at home, especially those with ivy. I now see them as dangerous as rabid dogs.
When I left the conference room in December 1981 after defending my doctoral dissertation I was once again a nervous wreck. Somehow after answering the first question, I calmed down and thought I had answered all the questions competently and correctly. (Later that evening my dissertation director informed me that I was wrong in at least one instance.) I sat down and chatted a bit with the receptionist/secretary whose desk was by the conference room. After a few minutes there was laughter coming from the room and she informed me that that was a good sign, there is no laughter when a dissertation is rejected.
That evening I asked Leland Yeager (my dissertation director) about the laughter. He told me that the Economics Department at the University of Virginia requires the dissertation director before concluding the committee’s meeting to ask, “Does anyone have reason to believe that there is any plagiarism in this dissertation?
The question began to be required after it had been discovered that a student of future Nobel Laureate James Buchanan (1986 prize in economics) had plagiarized his doctoral dissertation by copying almost an entire paper written by Buchanan. This discovery did not occur until a few years after the defense. The student’s degree was revoked. The paper work my dissertation director submitted included answers to two questions: How many dissertations have been successfully defended and how many degrees granted? So at that time the number of dissertations approved was one more than the number of degrees awarded.
That James Buchanan would miss his student copying pages of one of his papers puzzled me until I refereed a paper that plagiarized me. I did not notice, but the other referee did. But in my case, it was only an entire paragraph. The author of the paper blamed his/her graduate student.
The Grievance Studies Affair revealed deep flaws in peer review as currently practiced, especially in disciplines that function largely as fronts for idea laundering. Now we are seeing how this laundering sits side-by-side with fraud. The fact that it is not common practice for universities to run all theses and dissertations through a tool such as Turnitin, and for publishers of books and journals to do the same, is telling. It is a systemic rot in the social sciences and humanities comparable to the natural sciences' failure to require preregistration of hypothesis testing.
We faculty need to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold our students. Check that. Given grade inflation, especially among the Ivies, maybe we need to go back and simply establish standards. No wonder so many are afraid of generative AI; it actually is capable of generating something that is quasi-original.
Interesting take on the higher education institutional fraud that has permeated through all levels of our educational system. I can agree that Gay should be able to remain at Harvard but I think it would be a reflection of her noble character that she would agree to accept a yearly salary of $1.00. The rest of her $900,000.00 compensation go be given to the Harvard rowing club.
I understand the line of thought, but think plagarists have to face the strongest consquences, because the students watching all have access to AI chatboxes. If examples aren't made I don't think we will have much human research done in the future.
Agree 100%. The answer to this is to teach Critical Thinking. This is no longer being taught in k12 schools let alone colleges and universities. We are quickly reaching the point of no return!
For the first time, in my winter class that started just his week, I am leaning into ChatGPT as something of an experiment, asking students to engage the chatbot in a brief conversation about any topic relevant to the course (freshman-level World Geography) that they find interesting. I am asking students to share a link to the transcript of their brief conservation with ChatGPT and then to reflect on their conversation. What did they learn? What did they think ChatGPT got right or wrong? Can they identify gaps or flaws in ChatGPT's thinking? Can they summarize (and improve) the answers that ChapGPT provides--in their own words?
It is still early days, but it is proving to be a great exercise so far, that I think (hope?) is promoting/practicing critical thinking and learning how to share and synthesize ideas from sources without plagiarizing. It's the most Socratic I have been in a purely online course, interacting with students to help them think more critically about the information and ideas that ChatGPT generates. And it has been quite fun for all of us. Without realizing or specifically intending it, the exercise achieves similar goals to what Peter gets from his street epistemology.
If anyone is curious, here is a sample ChatGPT conversation I present to my students as something of a model and fodder for conversation.
Re-wording already poorly worded half-baked concepts isn't really plagiarism is it? Seriously, have you read the drivel Dr. Gay copied? One doesn't normally get caught because no one reads the junk. It's not written for human consumption. It's grist for the academia mill. It's sort of the idea to plagiarize. Kind of like Old English rhyming poetry. If you can take the same junk and fabricate two Ph.D.s out of it, I'd call it success.
I think I can agree with your argument that they shouldn't have their PhDs revoked if enough reputational damage can be caused such that their desire to indoctrinate young students into their unjustifiable nonsense is largely hampered, but at the same time, keeping them around forces young adults to pay the price more than the rest of us, which is something that weighs heavy on my heart because we're supposed to pass things down to subsequent generations in better condition than we found them.
On the other hand, it also seems possible that so much more work needs to be done in removing the rot from these places that my aforementioned desire isn't yet plausible. Regarding the Claudine Gay situation, had she been fired, the impending testimony from Harvard in front of Congress might not happen, but them keeping her on staff in spite of being a Mark McGuire-level cheater seems like it'll require some maximally embarrassing, under-oath explanation that might go a lot further in cutting off the proverbial carcinogenic dingleberry that has infested Harvard.
Last thought, if we don't run our institutions and country well, the impending decline will be felt most strongly in the families and communities that are the least capable and have the least means. Giving the daughter of wealthy Hatian immigrants privileged position after privileged position (as she stepped on African-American academics in the process no less) offers nothing to disadvantaged black Americans in attaining higher station in life.
How do you think a university should deal with an undergrad who was sloppy/lacked intellectual rigor on an assignment/part of an assignment--treading into the gray territory of "plagiarism?" Let's say, hypothetically a source was only cited at the beginning or end of a paragraph discussing said source. Let's also say never was an entire paragraph lifted or was anything intended to be deceptive. Slap the student with academic misconduct or something else? Honest question honest situation.
The reality is the student should be helped to rewrite the material so that it does not violate the standard. It could be done. It would be very time-consuming. The instructor would use the Socratic method as does our venerable Substacker Dr. Boghossian. But colleges don't really care about that stuff for the average student. They don't make any money by actually teaching things to people who don't already know things or don't have the capacity to teach themselves.
If academia can't enforce rules about plagiarism within it's own leadership then what's the point in enforcing it amongst just the rest? Allowing plagiarism to go unpunished simply because the accused has 1 or more intersections of oppressions that's not an excuse to be allowed to engage in the act
The term Accelerationism springs to mind. Meaning roughly, "Increase the speed of a system moving towards the crash. Bring about the inevitable crash sooner, in the hope that something better can be built after the system is destroyed."
Distinguish between PhDs by using 'pPhD' for plagiarists and 'PhD' for others. I suppose the 'pPhD' would be more valued in the warped world of the woke.
I up-vote this Op-Ed even though I believe you are either being disingenuous about the primary danger being the "ideological" compromise of institutional academia as opposed to the basic personal becomes institutional corruption motivated by financial gain and attendant privilege.
You get to play the radical by seeming willing to chuck the reputational capital of Big Bucks Elite University degrees, or the simpler and less noble profit\status motives over the side by posing at some magical gears that would de-legitimize the paper mill (or sheepskin certification game). Yet you have neither the Big Picture (larger Socio-Econ and Political E-Con) in your sniping efforts, nor a locus that distinguishes any compartmentalized assessment of the varying value of each academic discipline's elite imprimatur.
Meanwhile those such as Duff McDonald, author of The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite bite off what can be pragmatically chewed and spit into peer review and public discourse across borders and academic fiefdoms based on quantitative and qualitative findings of disciplined studies. To wit:
The ethical stakes and moral values change from accredited discipline to accredited discipline. We don't need reductive sideshows turning this serious and multi-faceted core issue at the root of our Epistemic Crisis. I greatly value the overall contribution you, Peter B. and your collaborators continue to make from the inclusive Philosophical considerations you and your guests creatively and playfully plumb here and via your Street Epistemology global hopscotch theater games on the margins of Educational Policy Making and Post Mortem excavating of the pedagogical corpse or carrion of all academic certification values v. costs and cost\benefit studies.
Keep on doing, without the reductive pseudo-reasoning.
either I was being phished(?), or you responded to one of my YT comments... either way, I decided to write this down. I believe a man like you can understand it. I also believe I can help you more than you can help me lol.. enjoy
I believe all humans have an eternal soul that is part
of the eternal continuum.
I believe full awareness and understanding of this will be revealed to us all eventually.
Everybody alive today exists at an intersection of awareness and understanding of their soul within the eternal continuum.
Everything humans have ever thought or said or wrote or did or created was done so at a population level of that intersection.
I believe all human existence can be improved if everyone’s awareness and understanding of their eternal soul and its place within in the eternal continuum intersects at some higher point.
I believe this can explain the truth of the human condition, and the fact that truth is not discovered, it is revealed. And why truth changes until we have full awareness and understanding of our eternal soul within the eternal continuum.
All of the above is true and that makes me happier. It helps me get through life.
Interesting perspective which, I assume, is either ironic in nature or sincere in wishing to see the academy implode under the groaning weight of its own dogma and ineptitude? If the former then 👏. If the latter then I must ask what comes next? Well actually that is valid under either scenario.
Do we seek the total destruction of academia (by omission of action or active engagement in that destruction, and if the former will that occur fast enough to save us from the cancerous spread?) and if so what do we build to replace it? OR do we recognise that the venerable institutions themselves (not the current people and false culture) are worth saving and renewing?
For me this is analogous across our Western civilisation in all our instructions: political, civil service, Healthcare (including Big Pharma and regulation), security, media & information technology, big business; and of course most pressingly, children’s education. I am concerned that the growing opposition is not United (AKA haven’t got their shit together). As an example, one commenter mentioned Bret Weinstein. I like Bret and his wife for what they did during Covid, a topic they had some grounding in , BUT I find Bret’s views on other things, especially Climate Alarmism, a product of the same academic corruption as all the others, naive at best. If we are taking the view that the academy is corrupt, and the likes of Bret do, then we must view everything produced by the academy with suspicion and make vast efforts to scrutinise it rigorously, which is actually quite easy in the case of Climate (and likely most issues) because there as so many silenced true academics of standing that oppose the mainstream dogma. I am constantly surprised Bret and others have not consulted heavily with such experts, whose knowledge and experience and expertise far outstrip Bret’s own, and learn from them.
In short, there is no reason to trust any mainstream doctrine that has come out of the academy, or big business, or political and civil service arena in the past, say, 20 years, and that includes: Covid 19 fake pandemic, Climate Alarmism, CRT and intersectionality, Gender and Queer theory, ESG, DEI, SEL etc etc. To be clear I couldn’t care less if individuals want to identify as a cat but do care whether they seek to normalise that by forced language, forced behaviour and forced societal structural changes that cause great risk and harms to people, especially children, and the cohesion and security of our society.
Just as I ask the question, is the academy worth saving and if not what do we replace it with?, I also ask is our Western society: democracy, freedom of thought and expression, democratic capitalism, compassion etc worth saving by renewal and refocus and if not what would it be replaced with..? I can’t help feeling these are two sides of the same coin... what goes for one goes for the other. So are you willing to let society implode under the groaning weight of corruption, ideological brainwashing and ineptitude?
Brilliantly said. Your pathway to that decline is the most clever. I listened to a recent James Lindsay interview on the Atheists for Liberty channel. He referenced being with Brett Weinstein and others five years ago, where Brett questioned what type of illness academia was suffering from. (I assume you were in attendance as well. ) Among the analogies were flu, a tumor, cancer, or rabies such as in one's family dog. If rabies, the family dog is no longer. The disease has overtaken it. I sadly agree with this assessment. My father was in academics. Any university made me feel at home, especially those with ivy. I now see them as dangerous as rabid dogs.
When I left the conference room in December 1981 after defending my doctoral dissertation I was once again a nervous wreck. Somehow after answering the first question, I calmed down and thought I had answered all the questions competently and correctly. (Later that evening my dissertation director informed me that I was wrong in at least one instance.) I sat down and chatted a bit with the receptionist/secretary whose desk was by the conference room. After a few minutes there was laughter coming from the room and she informed me that that was a good sign, there is no laughter when a dissertation is rejected.
That evening I asked Leland Yeager (my dissertation director) about the laughter. He told me that the Economics Department at the University of Virginia requires the dissertation director before concluding the committee’s meeting to ask, “Does anyone have reason to believe that there is any plagiarism in this dissertation?
The question began to be required after it had been discovered that a student of future Nobel Laureate James Buchanan (1986 prize in economics) had plagiarized his doctoral dissertation by copying almost an entire paper written by Buchanan. This discovery did not occur until a few years after the defense. The student’s degree was revoked. The paper work my dissertation director submitted included answers to two questions: How many dissertations have been successfully defended and how many degrees granted? So at that time the number of dissertations approved was one more than the number of degrees awarded.
That James Buchanan would miss his student copying pages of one of his papers puzzled me until I refereed a paper that plagiarized me. I did not notice, but the other referee did. But in my case, it was only an entire paragraph. The author of the paper blamed his/her graduate student.
The Grievance Studies Affair revealed deep flaws in peer review as currently practiced, especially in disciplines that function largely as fronts for idea laundering. Now we are seeing how this laundering sits side-by-side with fraud. The fact that it is not common practice for universities to run all theses and dissertations through a tool such as Turnitin, and for publishers of books and journals to do the same, is telling. It is a systemic rot in the social sciences and humanities comparable to the natural sciences' failure to require preregistration of hypothesis testing.
We faculty need to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold our students. Check that. Given grade inflation, especially among the Ivies, maybe we need to go back and simply establish standards. No wonder so many are afraid of generative AI; it actually is capable of generating something that is quasi-original.
Interesting take on the higher education institutional fraud that has permeated through all levels of our educational system. I can agree that Gay should be able to remain at Harvard but I think it would be a reflection of her noble character that she would agree to accept a yearly salary of $1.00. The rest of her $900,000.00 compensation go be given to the Harvard rowing club.
I understand the line of thought, but think plagarists have to face the strongest consquences, because the students watching all have access to AI chatboxes. If examples aren't made I don't think we will have much human research done in the future.
Agree 100%. The answer to this is to teach Critical Thinking. This is no longer being taught in k12 schools let alone colleges and universities. We are quickly reaching the point of no return!
For the first time, in my winter class that started just his week, I am leaning into ChatGPT as something of an experiment, asking students to engage the chatbot in a brief conversation about any topic relevant to the course (freshman-level World Geography) that they find interesting. I am asking students to share a link to the transcript of their brief conservation with ChatGPT and then to reflect on their conversation. What did they learn? What did they think ChatGPT got right or wrong? Can they identify gaps or flaws in ChatGPT's thinking? Can they summarize (and improve) the answers that ChapGPT provides--in their own words?
It is still early days, but it is proving to be a great exercise so far, that I think (hope?) is promoting/practicing critical thinking and learning how to share and synthesize ideas from sources without plagiarizing. It's the most Socratic I have been in a purely online course, interacting with students to help them think more critically about the information and ideas that ChatGPT generates. And it has been quite fun for all of us. Without realizing or specifically intending it, the exercise achieves similar goals to what Peter gets from his street epistemology.
If anyone is curious, here is a sample ChatGPT conversation I present to my students as something of a model and fodder for conversation.
https://chat.openai.com/share/e58c8d85-30ed-457b-95a6-f8472612eb02
Re-wording already poorly worded half-baked concepts isn't really plagiarism is it? Seriously, have you read the drivel Dr. Gay copied? One doesn't normally get caught because no one reads the junk. It's not written for human consumption. It's grist for the academia mill. It's sort of the idea to plagiarize. Kind of like Old English rhyming poetry. If you can take the same junk and fabricate two Ph.D.s out of it, I'd call it success.
I think I can agree with your argument that they shouldn't have their PhDs revoked if enough reputational damage can be caused such that their desire to indoctrinate young students into their unjustifiable nonsense is largely hampered, but at the same time, keeping them around forces young adults to pay the price more than the rest of us, which is something that weighs heavy on my heart because we're supposed to pass things down to subsequent generations in better condition than we found them.
On the other hand, it also seems possible that so much more work needs to be done in removing the rot from these places that my aforementioned desire isn't yet plausible. Regarding the Claudine Gay situation, had she been fired, the impending testimony from Harvard in front of Congress might not happen, but them keeping her on staff in spite of being a Mark McGuire-level cheater seems like it'll require some maximally embarrassing, under-oath explanation that might go a lot further in cutting off the proverbial carcinogenic dingleberry that has infested Harvard.
Last thought, if we don't run our institutions and country well, the impending decline will be felt most strongly in the families and communities that are the least capable and have the least means. Giving the daughter of wealthy Hatian immigrants privileged position after privileged position (as she stepped on African-American academics in the process no less) offers nothing to disadvantaged black Americans in attaining higher station in life.
Unfortunately, appeasement will not work against critical social justice, which is a euphemism for an ideology. I suggest reading "The Ideology that Captured Our Culture" in my recent Substack at https://2026.substack.com/p/the-ideology-that-captured-our-culture
How do you think a university should deal with an undergrad who was sloppy/lacked intellectual rigor on an assignment/part of an assignment--treading into the gray territory of "plagiarism?" Let's say, hypothetically a source was only cited at the beginning or end of a paragraph discussing said source. Let's also say never was an entire paragraph lifted or was anything intended to be deceptive. Slap the student with academic misconduct or something else? Honest question honest situation.
The reality is the student should be helped to rewrite the material so that it does not violate the standard. It could be done. It would be very time-consuming. The instructor would use the Socratic method as does our venerable Substacker Dr. Boghossian. But colleges don't really care about that stuff for the average student. They don't make any money by actually teaching things to people who don't already know things or don't have the capacity to teach themselves.
If academia can't enforce rules about plagiarism within it's own leadership then what's the point in enforcing it amongst just the rest? Allowing plagiarism to go unpunished simply because the accused has 1 or more intersections of oppressions that's not an excuse to be allowed to engage in the act
The term Accelerationism springs to mind. Meaning roughly, "Increase the speed of a system moving towards the crash. Bring about the inevitable crash sooner, in the hope that something better can be built after the system is destroyed."
Is that the right interpretation?
Distinguish between PhDs by using 'pPhD' for plagiarists and 'PhD' for others. I suppose the 'pPhD' would be more valued in the warped world of the woke.
Dear Peter B.,
I up-vote this Op-Ed even though I believe you are either being disingenuous about the primary danger being the "ideological" compromise of institutional academia as opposed to the basic personal becomes institutional corruption motivated by financial gain and attendant privilege.
You get to play the radical by seeming willing to chuck the reputational capital of Big Bucks Elite University degrees, or the simpler and less noble profit\status motives over the side by posing at some magical gears that would de-legitimize the paper mill (or sheepskin certification game). Yet you have neither the Big Picture (larger Socio-Econ and Political E-Con) in your sniping efforts, nor a locus that distinguishes any compartmentalized assessment of the varying value of each academic discipline's elite imprimatur.
Meanwhile those such as Duff McDonald, author of The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite bite off what can be pragmatically chewed and spit into peer review and public discourse across borders and academic fiefdoms based on quantitative and qualitative findings of disciplined studies. To wit:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/books/review/golden-passport-duff-mcdonald.html
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/capitalisnt-moral-case-against-mba
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/west-point-capitalism
https://newrepublic.com/article/148368/ideology-business-school
The ethical stakes and moral values change from accredited discipline to accredited discipline. We don't need reductive sideshows turning this serious and multi-faceted core issue at the root of our Epistemic Crisis. I greatly value the overall contribution you, Peter B. and your collaborators continue to make from the inclusive Philosophical considerations you and your guests creatively and playfully plumb here and via your Street Epistemology global hopscotch theater games on the margins of Educational Policy Making and Post Mortem excavating of the pedagogical corpse or carrion of all academic certification values v. costs and cost\benefit studies.
Keep on doing, without the reductive pseudo-reasoning.
Health and balance throughout the New Year.
Respectfully yours,
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\LookseeInnerEarsHearHere
either I was being phished(?), or you responded to one of my YT comments... either way, I decided to write this down. I believe a man like you can understand it. I also believe I can help you more than you can help me lol.. enjoy
I believe all humans have an eternal soul that is part
of the eternal continuum.
I believe full awareness and understanding of this will be revealed to us all eventually.
Everybody alive today exists at an intersection of awareness and understanding of their soul within the eternal continuum.
Everything humans have ever thought or said or wrote or did or created was done so at a population level of that intersection.
I believe all human existence can be improved if everyone’s awareness and understanding of their eternal soul and its place within in the eternal continuum intersects at some higher point.
I believe this can explain the truth of the human condition, and the fact that truth is not discovered, it is revealed. And why truth changes until we have full awareness and understanding of our eternal soul within the eternal continuum.
All of the above is true and that makes me happier. It helps me get through life.
Interesting perspective which, I assume, is either ironic in nature or sincere in wishing to see the academy implode under the groaning weight of its own dogma and ineptitude? If the former then 👏. If the latter then I must ask what comes next? Well actually that is valid under either scenario.
Do we seek the total destruction of academia (by omission of action or active engagement in that destruction, and if the former will that occur fast enough to save us from the cancerous spread?) and if so what do we build to replace it? OR do we recognise that the venerable institutions themselves (not the current people and false culture) are worth saving and renewing?
For me this is analogous across our Western civilisation in all our instructions: political, civil service, Healthcare (including Big Pharma and regulation), security, media & information technology, big business; and of course most pressingly, children’s education. I am concerned that the growing opposition is not United (AKA haven’t got their shit together). As an example, one commenter mentioned Bret Weinstein. I like Bret and his wife for what they did during Covid, a topic they had some grounding in , BUT I find Bret’s views on other things, especially Climate Alarmism, a product of the same academic corruption as all the others, naive at best. If we are taking the view that the academy is corrupt, and the likes of Bret do, then we must view everything produced by the academy with suspicion and make vast efforts to scrutinise it rigorously, which is actually quite easy in the case of Climate (and likely most issues) because there as so many silenced true academics of standing that oppose the mainstream dogma. I am constantly surprised Bret and others have not consulted heavily with such experts, whose knowledge and experience and expertise far outstrip Bret’s own, and learn from them.
In short, there is no reason to trust any mainstream doctrine that has come out of the academy, or big business, or political and civil service arena in the past, say, 20 years, and that includes: Covid 19 fake pandemic, Climate Alarmism, CRT and intersectionality, Gender and Queer theory, ESG, DEI, SEL etc etc. To be clear I couldn’t care less if individuals want to identify as a cat but do care whether they seek to normalise that by forced language, forced behaviour and forced societal structural changes that cause great risk and harms to people, especially children, and the cohesion and security of our society.
Just as I ask the question, is the academy worth saving and if not what do we replace it with?, I also ask is our Western society: democracy, freedom of thought and expression, democratic capitalism, compassion etc worth saving by renewal and refocus and if not what would it be replaced with..? I can’t help feeling these are two sides of the same coin... what goes for one goes for the other. So are you willing to let society implode under the groaning weight of corruption, ideological brainwashing and ineptitude?