This is not the crux of the conversation, but.. I remember writing college papers where I read and referenced thirty academic books. I tried hard as hell to not string more than five words together without “quotation” marks and footnotes. Still, I’m sure I’m a plagiarist. Any academic can claim the moniker. Conservative trolls and pro-Is…
This is not the crux of the conversation, but.. I remember writing college papers where I read and referenced thirty academic books. I tried hard as hell to not string more than five words together without “quotation” marks and footnotes. Still, I’m sure I’m a plagiarist. Any academic can claim the moniker. Conservative trolls and pro-Israel lobbyists have it in for easy liberal targets. That is what touched off this hearing. Their racism was icing on the cake for them.
"Still, I’m sure I’m a plagiarist. Any academic can claim the moniker."
This perfectly captures what I find so futile about this conversation. First, yes, I agree with you. I think it's likely that many academics would have a few examples of plagiarism in some of their work. But Gay was found with at least 50. And she hasn't *produced* that much work.
I'm a writer. I'm supremely confident that if you went through the hundreds of thousands of words I've published on the internet, you wouldn't find more than a handful, if any, sections of work that weren't appropriately wrapped in quotation marks. And it's not just about quotation marks, it's about minor changes to other people's work that were obviously intended to skirt plagiarism rules without the hassle of doing the original work.
But second, depending on their political leanings, it's been fascinating to see people arguinag about what plagiarism is, or whether it's a big deal. Maybe I'm biased as a writer, but I take plagiarism extremely seriously And so, I remind you, does Harvard. If Gay were a *student* at Harvard, she'd have faced serious consequences and nobody would have batted an eyelid. But as the president of Harvard, she's somehow held to a lower standard.
We also agree that Gay's firing was political. The extremely progressive president of Harvard is a prestigious "scalp" as Rufo put it. The degree to which "pro-Israel lobbying" was involved is anybody's guess. And therefore I'm not really interested in asking about it. The degree to which racism was involved is anybody's guess too. And therefore I feel the same way.
Will AI programs be scraping all scholarly papers to find plagiarism? It could probably do a fine job at that without agenda driven bias if the algorithm is the same for all author's work.
This is not the crux of the conversation, but.. I remember writing college papers where I read and referenced thirty academic books. I tried hard as hell to not string more than five words together without “quotation” marks and footnotes. Still, I’m sure I’m a plagiarist. Any academic can claim the moniker. Conservative trolls and pro-Israel lobbyists have it in for easy liberal targets. That is what touched off this hearing. Their racism was icing on the cake for them.
LG
"Still, I’m sure I’m a plagiarist. Any academic can claim the moniker."
This perfectly captures what I find so futile about this conversation. First, yes, I agree with you. I think it's likely that many academics would have a few examples of plagiarism in some of their work. But Gay was found with at least 50. And she hasn't *produced* that much work.
I'm a writer. I'm supremely confident that if you went through the hundreds of thousands of words I've published on the internet, you wouldn't find more than a handful, if any, sections of work that weren't appropriately wrapped in quotation marks. And it's not just about quotation marks, it's about minor changes to other people's work that were obviously intended to skirt plagiarism rules without the hassle of doing the original work.
But second, depending on their political leanings, it's been fascinating to see people arguinag about what plagiarism is, or whether it's a big deal. Maybe I'm biased as a writer, but I take plagiarism extremely seriously And so, I remind you, does Harvard. If Gay were a *student* at Harvard, she'd have faced serious consequences and nobody would have batted an eyelid. But as the president of Harvard, she's somehow held to a lower standard.
We also agree that Gay's firing was political. The extremely progressive president of Harvard is a prestigious "scalp" as Rufo put it. The degree to which "pro-Israel lobbying" was involved is anybody's guess. And therefore I'm not really interested in asking about it. The degree to which racism was involved is anybody's guess too. And therefore I feel the same way.
Will AI programs be scraping all scholarly papers to find plagiarism? It could probably do a fine job at that without agenda driven bias if the algorithm is the same for all author's work.