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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBill Ackman vows plagiarism checks on MIT president and faculty after wife pulled into fray: 'We will share our findings
https://fortune.com/2024/01/06/bill-ackman-plagiarism-checks-on-mit-president/Bill Ackman vows plagiarism checks on MIT president and faculty after wife pulled into fray: ‘We will share our findings in the public domain’
The billionaire investor has turned his focus on MIT's Sally Kornbluth following the resignation of Harvard's Claudine Gay
Bill Ackman ramped up his campaign against Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth, saying he will begin checks on the work of all of the school’s current faculty members for plagiarism.
The move, announced Friday in a post on X, comes after Business Insider expanded its allegations of plagiarism against Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor. The billionaire investor said that faculty members, including Kornbluth and MIT board members, will be subject to checks using MIT’s own plagiarism standards.
“We will share our findings in the public domain as they are completed in the spirit of transparency,” Ackman said, adding that “it is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family.”
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Harvard alum Ackman had been one of the most outspoken critics of Gay — first for her handling of campus antisemitism after Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel, and then for her scholarship, which came under scrutiny amid allegations of plagiarism. Gay acknowledged using inadequate citations in some of her articles and said she would fix them. Ackman also suggested that she was chosen to lead the school because of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
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leftyladyfrommo
(20,005 posts)trying to prove everybody is as crooked as they are.
Demovictory9
(37,113 posts)jimfields33
(19,382 posts)
yardwork
(69,364 posts)The fact that his wife plagiarized herself and he brushed it aside shows that he is openly hypocritical.
bucolic_frolic
(55,143 posts)Voltaire2
(15,377 posts)She was simply dismissed.
MichMan
(17,151 posts)JohnSJ
(98,883 posts)Voltaire2
(15,377 posts)not support her.
MichMan
(17,151 posts)Those are generally confidential
honest.abe
(9,238 posts)Such a waste of effort and time.
RandomNumbers
(19,156 posts)I haven't had the patience to delve into the actual facts behind the allegations against Gay. I believe she admitted to some "sloppy" work in crediting sources. I started to think about papers I wrote in college, and I remember how careful I tried to be to make sure I attributed everything properly. I have no idea if I was perfect then. What if I were suddenly in a prominent position with a target on my back?
I bet if every white male leader of every major institution were subjected to the same scrutiny, quite a few would come up as imperfect.
The lack of perspective on this thing is what grates on me. (in addition to the real-world consequences of course)
Ms. Toad
(38,643 posts)My cute checking caught technical plagiarism in pretty much every article I reviewed for publication.
I've looked at the allegations against Gay, and the vast majority are improved use of quotation marks or citation errors. Yes, technically plagiarism, but not what one normally thinks of as stealing someone else's work.
honest.abe
(9,238 posts)In many cases multiple sentences were copied with no citation or attribution to the original author.
I have written a PhD dissertation and multiple professional journal articles. Im quite certain I did not plagiarize anyone ever. Perhaps my situation might be a bit different as these were scientific articles based on original research so the main content had to be my own words. Of course these articles required summarizing past research but in all cases I gave appropriate attribution. Not sure why some academics have difficultly with providing this.
maxrandb
(17,428 posts)Just like Elise Stefanik's line of questioning had NOTHING to do with antisemitism.
Yet, even on DU, people fall for this thinly veiled shit EVERYTIME!
It needs to fucking stop before our kindergardeners start coming home telling us about the "benefits" of slavery.
Arazi
(8,887 posts)Rufo of course is the guy behind the stupid CRT panic and is newly installed at New College to destroy it from within.
He’s been upfront about tearing apart academia, and now one of their own has been caught plagiarizing (Oxman’s does look worse than Gay’s from a very brief examination) so now the bloodbath is on.
With billions to spend and the indignation of a spurned husband trying to rehabilitate his wife’s reputation, Bill Ackman is determined to fuck up higher Ed now that Rufo’s lit the match.
I’m very wary of this shitshow and the motives behind it
yardwork
(69,364 posts)I'm sorry this is long. I hope you'll read it because I respect your point of view.
Complicated sets of facts require thoughtful responses. Not everything is cut and dried.
On DU and elsewhere, people have gotten used to the Republican Party's bizarre one-sidedness. Trump, for instance, is wholly bad. There is no complexity in his character - he is wrong and evil 100% of the time. Same with almost every one of the Republicans in Congress. It didn't used to be this way.
I think as Democrats, we've gotten used to viewing discourse as good vs evil because, frankly, the Republicans are almost invariably evil. Even our friends and relatives who've become MAGAs present us with a stark choice - tolerate their crazy beliefs or cut ties with them. There's no way to converse about politics meaningfully with them.
I think this has left all of us, in the U.S. and maybe elsewhere too, vulnerable to viewing things in terms of stark choices. Many of us struggle to view the war in Gaza as a complex situation where many things are true at once. We are dividing along stark lines with issues that appear to stem from the war, but are actually way more complex.
maxrandb
(17,428 posts)is that is is a stark choice between good and evil, democracy and despotism, freedom and fascism.
It is not my responsibility to pull the Retrumplican Party back from madness...I have tried with some of my own extended family.
Yes, there were posts on DU "praising", or "agreeing" with Elise Stefanik, just as there are posts on DU decrying "plagarism", as if that's what this is really all about.
Before the age of MAGAts, I rarely saw politics as a "zero/sum" game, but with today's Retrumplican Party it is!
We either defeat it and send it to the dustbin of history, or we "debate" plagiarism and antisemitism on college campuses from our cells at the gulag.
That is the "stark choice" we are facing.
They see the forced resignations of college presidents as a victory over evil. That's their "stark choice"; and it's a victory that fuels them to go further.
We better wake up.
yardwork
(69,364 posts)There's no reason not to decry plagiarism and antisemitism, even though we know the Republican Party is not acting in good faith.
We on DU had no influence over whether the Harvard corporation asked their president to resign. We don't have that power.
We on DU can decry racism, plagiarism, antisemitism, the impossible situation facing college presidents, and bigotry - all at the same time. We can model nuance. That puts us in a stronger ethical and logical position.
Meanwhile, we get out the vote for Democrats. That's where we have power.
I don't agree with our beating up on one another because we don't fall in line and agree with every plank in some side's point of view.
Demovictory9
(37,113 posts)haele
(15,403 posts)Publish or perish messes with the time it takes to do a completely accurate job.
And, of course, the twin factors of the lack of respect for humanities training and the influence of technology and the internet, with not only the access to but mimicking of masses of original source materials (inaccurate computer assisted translations or scanning of source materials has happened before) but the shear volume of publication an author can now pump out in a relatively short period of time has pretty much skewed what my parents would have recognized as research when they were at University.
My mom was assistant to several graduate students programs over decades due to mad librarian skills, she assisted in research for PHD and other research publications, and she remembers the transition to computers and electronically transcribed library sources without fondness. She preferred books or even microfiche to a Word Perfect transcription or PDF. She was concerned that it was easier to doctor the source material electronically than it was with something physical.
And that's my opinion, FWIW.
Haele
Prairie Gates
(8,157 posts)I especially like this part: "... lack of respect for humanities training..."
Many academics in STEM are terrible writers. They make mistakes on plagiarism and attribution because they have a poor understanding of how writing even works. You can hear this is some of the defenses of Gay's mistakes: she was so "focused on content" that she didn't really concentrate on the "writing it up" so much. That's the attitude in much of STEM, so the results are predictable. (Disclaimer: there are, of course, very good writers in STEM fields, and there's a lot of terrible writing in the humanities, but the general point holds).
Many STEM faculty receive remedial training on writing when they're in graduate school - when their committees realize they're too embarrassed to pass functionally illiterate dissertations. Who does the training? Usually graduate students in English/composition, though, thankfully, it's usually the advanced ones, as the newbies are slogging through paper grading in first-year composition! Put the paper destined for publication of the ABD graduate student in physics next to the earnest late-night position paper of the second semester first-year student and try to determine which one is more effectively composed. It won't be easy.
yardwork
(69,364 posts)Prairie Gates
(8,157 posts)This was specifically part of the defense by her supporters.
yardwork
(69,364 posts)They just would. Being on "the quantitative side" of poli sci, psychiatry, or any other social science is not the same as being a physicist or microbiologist. I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm just saying that poli sci is not STEM.
Edited to add - and without outing myself on DU, I'll state that I know this first hand - many investigators in STEM fields write beautifully. It takes a special skill to be able to communicate extremely complex science in lay terms, and some of them are very good at it. And some are not.
I don't agree - and again, this is based on decades of firsthand experience - that STEM faculty are generally worse writers than those in social sciences and humanities. I've read things written by humanities faculty that are incomprehensible, they're so wrapped up in theory jargon.
In the first post you responded to: (Disclaimer: there are, of course, very good writers in STEM fields, and there's a lot of terrible writing in the humanities, but the general point holds).
The claim is not that she's in STEM, but that she has a similar approach to writing as many STEM faculty: that they are merely "writing up the results," as if the writing is secondary to and less important than the real research. That was the claim of some of her supporters in her defense. I maintain that that holds for many faculty in the social sciences in the same way that it does for many STEM faculty, and it's a problem. I value your vigorous defense of your field, and your first-hand experience, of course . Try to imagine that you're not the only one who has some, though.
Azathoth
(4,677 posts)This strikes me as one of the dumber excuses I've heard. Sure, a lot of STEM students are poor writers, and at the graduate level many are also struggling with English as a second language. But that doesn't mean they don't understand plagiarism.
In fact, I'd say STEM students have, or at least should have, a much better grasp of plagiarism that humanities students. Humanities research is all about developing and expanding and modifying "ideas" and "theories" and "frameworks" and "conceptual models." It's inherently rooted in language and literary expression, and it's often difficult to distinguish where the ideas of one person end and another begins since everyone is building on everyone else, and they're all showing off with linguisitic dancing.
STEM research, at least outside of the most abstract theoretical areas, is much more clearcut. Either you're discussing your own results, or you're referencing someone else's results. Someone gathered the data and performed the analysis, and it was either you or it wasn't you. To my mind, it's much harder to argue you "forgot to add quotes" when you're stealing STEM data and/or results from someone else.
WhiskeyGrinder
(26,956 posts)yardwork
(69,364 posts)Nothing he's doing is in the spirit of supporting higher education or defending against antisemitism.
I was going to say more but self-deleted several sentences...
Demovictory9
(37,113 posts)Oxman, an architect and artist, gained recognition for her innovative work with natural materials, collaborations with Björk, and exhibits at prestigious institutions. Previously, emails uncovered by the Boston Globe exposed Ackman's efforts to keep Oxman's name out of a controversy related to a sculpture gifted to Jeffrey Epstein.
Plagiarism in dissertation:
BI's investigation uncovered Oxman's use of unoriginal content from various sources in her 2010 dissertation, violating MIT's academic integrity guidelines. Instances of paraphrasing without proper attribution and inaccurate source attribution were also identified.
Bill Ackman's changing stance:
Despite Ackman's strong stance on plagiarism in Gay's case, he softened his tone after BI's revelations about Oxman. Ackman acknowledged the possibility of authors missing quotation marks but downplayed the severity of plagiarism, suggesting it reflects more on competency than being a crime.
Here's a series of tweets Ackman posted on X defending his wife and questioning the whole report:
Sympthsical
(10,969 posts)But now that we're here, sure, why not?
If people won't hold themselves to standards - and it's become very clear in America's hyperpartisan environment that people are very disinclined to hold their own accountable - then let's enforce standards out of spite.
At least that way the standards are actually being enforced.
This is what happens when people or organizations cannot or will not hold themselves accountable. It usually results in someone else doing it for them - and, very predictably, people don't like the way it happens when outsiders come in with their vision of accountability.
Some want to blame the outside forces. That's fine. But don't forget to blame the inside forces that refused to reform themselves.
Reform almost always comes, voluntarily or not. When it's not voluntary, the involuntary is usually a shitshow. It's like governments. If they don't fix themselves, revolution will fix it for them. And revolutions are very messy things indeed that can suddenly morph into reactionary authoritarian movements at the drop of a hat.
Good job, all around.
maxrandb
(17,428 posts)might be better than the current practice of ONLY Upholding Standards for one-side.
yardwork
(69,364 posts)RandomNumbers
(19,156 posts)It doesn't appear that it is, for the targets of Bill Ackman and his cronies.
The problem is that proper attribution is a lot of work, and no one is perfect, and most academics have probably made similar mistakes. In other words, there is a standard, all well-intentioned students make efforts to meet that standard; but probably almost all of us have erred on occasion. But only "certain people" are being targeted and thrown out of jobs / pressured to resign.
See my reply #7 and the reply to it, for more background from inside about how it is. Or, how it was in the days before AI. Perhaps instead of having AI write papers for them, today's students could figure out how to use AI to validate their attribution of sources.
Sympthsical
(10,969 posts)Right now, people are going after the presidents who were part of that Congressional hearing. In this instance, those presidents were women.
However, men cannot and should not escape accountability in academia either. In fact, I'd say the most notorious downfall of an academic in the past year was the President of Stanford. There were severe problems of research in a study he oversaw seven years before he was president. Stanford very quickly let him know he had to go. It affected their reputation and standing.
Harvard went in the opposite direction and created its own problems here. They knew they had a Claudine Gay problem months before the Congressional hearing. Their response? Send defamation lawyers at the people bringing it up. They tried a cover-up, then they tried a denial, then they started trying to gaslight people with "No, it's duplicative language, it's different."
They made it incredibly clear accountability wasn't going to be a word in their universe. So outside forces came in and made it one.
This is their own fault. They basically dared people to come at them. And people are complaining about the Found Out portion of the program while pointedly ignoring the Fuck Around that got them there.
As to the point you made in #7. I'm in college right now. All of the papers I write are run through a system called Turn It In. It highlights every citation I make. It lets you know right away that your paper contains quotes, duplicative language, or could have possibly come from another source. And it is thorough. I've probably written several dozen papers in the last couple of years, and it highlights my citations every single time. A lot of the problems we're seeing in these stories would have been sussed out at the time if similar systems had existed at the time.
RandomNumbers
(19,156 posts)But I stand by that it was a lot more challenging in the old days, and if sloppy citations in college work are the only issue, no one who is otherwise qualified should be hounded out of their job for it.
yardwork
(69,364 posts)It's certainly no accident that they targeted Claudine Gay. Stefanik has a personal resentment against Harvard. Gay was already under scrutiny. Taking out the Black female president of Harvard was irresistible to the right wing.
It's not as clear to me why the MIT president was targeted. The GOP may have gone a bridge too far, there.
Sympthsical
(10,969 posts)I think it might have been a bonus for some people, in that "Yay, I have an excuse to go after this person/school!" kind of way. But if you look at the universities that had major antisemitism problems in the wake of Oct. 7th, Harvard is pretty much at the top of the list. They got a lot of ink for what went on there. Pennsylvania also did to a degree and was already embroiled in an antisemitism scandal before Oct. 7th because of that Palestinian Literature Festival. Donors were furious with Macgill over the crazy antisemitic shit happening with that two weeks before the Hamas attacks. So, she was primed.
MIT also became an antisemitic shitshow - check out the "bounties" situation there, it's wild, or the El-Kurd controversy where Jewish students were actively defamed and targeted. However, if you asked me for a third in the triad of antisemitic shittiness that occurred after Oct. 7th, I probably would have reached for Columbia. However, that is also a woman president, so it wouldn't have made the gender optics any better.
I am absolutely 100% supportive of systems that look like the rest of America. But unfortunately, with antisemitism, these presidents each failed in fairly egregious and extremely public ways.
At the end of the day, accountability is accountability. Many in academia decided they weren't going to hold themselves accountable for the antisemitism they either directly fomented or allowed to fester under their supervision. Well, Republicans took that opening. These presidents, and many supportive of them, opened the gates to the barbarians, and now they're worried they might trash the place.
If they had gotten the problems on campus in hand before the rest of the world got an eyeful of the anti-Jewish shitshow many of these places have become, this wouldn't have happened.
yardwork
(69,364 posts)The Republicans have their agenda and it rarely overlaps with truth or justice.
I can think of some very egregious things that have happened lately on other campuses but dragging their presidents in front of Congress wouldn't have had the same impact. Partly because some of those presidents were already in the process of being forced out for other reasons. I think the job of college president is nearly impossible at this point.
Maybe one silver lining that might come of this is that college presidents will feel empowered to crack down on "free speech" that is openly vile, but I'm not sure that's an ideal outcome, long term. I'm old enough to remember when communists weren't allowed to speak on college campuses. But maybe it's gone too far the other way, finally. Maybe someone has to stand up for decency, at long last.
Sympthsical
(10,969 posts)I did some reading after your post, and she seems like she's trying really hard to wrestle the antisemitism monkey in a way that the others haven't ("clarify" their statements, do nothing substantial, and double down on evading the problem). I actually went back and wondered why MIT would be called in when Columbia seemed like a much more slam dunk target, and it refreshed the story where students weren't getting suspended fully, so it wouldn't jeopardize their visas. And it absolutely caused a huge stink when she made that statement. People were furious, because they saw a president more concerned with protecting antisemites than her Jewish students.
I had completely forgotten that happened.
I'm not sure what to do about campuses right now. It's clear free speech isn't really a thing as claimed. Speech is sanctioned all the time. So standing on that as a defense of antisemitism is a look and a half. Most places aren't University of Chicago. That said, how do you want to open the door. I think calling for genocide or the death of any group is pretty open and shut. And you want students to be able to criticize Israel and its government, but what happens when it tips over into threats to Jewish students and unsafe learning environment for them?
That's the million dollar question. I do know these administrations have not been nearly as eager to protect their Jewish students as they have every other group under the sun, so that betrays there is something going on under the surface that is probably very ugly. (I mean, we know it's oppression ideology, but getting our side to throw that broken ideology into the trash heap would be a tall order given how entrenched it is nowadays. It's borderline religion at this point).
I think there simply needs to be more common sense adults in the room and ideologues shown the door from administration. Faculty can be kooky ideologues as much as they want - it's almost kind of tradition. But the administrators shouldn't be that way, and I think the kooky seeped into administration over time, leading us to where we are now.
You almost need someone removed from the whims of an ideological faculty to run these places, but the way things are run almost preclude it. They'll write letters and shit if you displease them. What colleges need are presidents who read the letters, shrug, and toss them in the trash.
Not everything requires a response.
RandomNumbers
(19,156 posts)Friday was my first ever crack at using Bing's AI thing to try to solve a programming question. (I've been watching the rise of AI warily, ha ha - I am a software engineer who is due to retire roughly "just in time" before my job is gone anyway).
Well Bing's first answer was no better than what I got from Google search of my usual sources. (that is, incorrect in that it didn't address my specific scenario, and wouldn't work for my scenario, although it was fine for a similar but different scenario). I tried rewording my question to be VERY specific. It still didn't actually answer my question. But one of the sources it included, did contain the answer, so I got my solution, just wasn't what the AI chatbot tried to give me. I'd give Bing a B minus on that one (B for finding a relevant source, minus for not composing an actually relevant answer), and I will use it again the next time I have an esoteric specific question to address.
The point being, I wouldn't rely on AI 100% for anything. "Trust but verify", perhaps.
Sympthsical
(10,969 posts)Precisely because I've seen it be 100% wrong before when I've made queries.
What I've found it useful for is as a kind of assistive brainstorming session. If I have a topic for a paper, I'll scribble down some supporting topics, angles of approach/perspective. Then I'll run it through the AI to see if there are better supporting topics, angles I hadn't thought of, etc. Just to get ideas or see if I overlooked some facet of the topic that works better than what I have.
Then I go off and search through databases and write my own paper.
It's almost like it helps with inspiration. There have definitely been moments where I'm pretty well-versed in the topic I'm about to write about, and I see something from the AI where it's like, "Huh. I never would've thought of that."
Which I don't see any differently than talking to classmates, professors, etc., when you're trying to put ideas together for a project.
MichMan
(17,151 posts)These aren't undergrads, they are doctoral candidates and/or professors in dissertations and published academic journals and papers.
What many people find distasteful is when we are told that leading academic scholars from our top universities, who would be among the smartest 1%, just can't stop themselves from being "sloppy", missing complete citations, and lifting entire sentences from others.
We are told it that everyone does it, it's not that big of a deal, and unless we hold everyone accountable, no one can be held accountable. I find that argument insulting, especially when they hold students to an entirely different standard.
Sympthsical
(10,969 posts)Students are held to stringent standards. It is drilled into us that plagiarism standards are sacrosanct.
Now, you have professional after professional academics, faculty, and administration officers standing out there going, "Oh, none of this is really that important. It's not a big deal, don't make such a fuss."
Well, which is it? Holy writ or shit easily ignored? Does it depend upon a person's status, position, or influence before we decide if it's vitally important or easily discarded? And this is the liberal position?
If you want to argue these standards aren't that big a deal, fine. Argue that.
Then stop crucifying students and threatening their academic careers when they violate them - on purpose or by mistake.
These people are immolating their reputation - and academia's by association - but they can't see it because they're too preoccupied with winning the immediate argument to notice the longer term damage they're doing.
"We don't really care about our own standards!" They honestly think that's a good argument.
dpibel
(3,944 posts)Just to be clear about your position.
Sympthsical
(10,969 posts)You're very interested in my positions, going back some ways. Which is flattering.
What do you think should happen with Oxman?
If you're going to ask, one should offer their own views.
brush
(61,033 posts)whatever that is...not enough "ibid and op cit" in the footnotes I guess.
Sounds likes they've got a new target at MIT now that Ackman's wife has been accused herself of plagiarism. Who knew plagiarism and accusations of plagiarism was so prominent in academia.
Seems some are at the ready to make such charges at the drop of a hat towards someone they want out.
MichMan
(17,151 posts)Harvard's own policy below
Citation: Avoiding Plagiarism under The Harvard Guide on Using Sources
Bold added for emphasis
Then we have this.....
Nowhere does it say, you are permitted to go back later and add the citations and quotes and all is forgiven
https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/sites/projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/sources/files/avoiding_plagiarism.pdf
yardwork
(69,364 posts)No, these weren't stylistic errors. There are several articles that show the passages in question. It's an easy read to see what she wrote, and what others wrote. She even copied phrasing from another person's personal acknowledgements in her own personal acknowledgements! That's weird, frankly.
No question, I believe that Dr. Gay was targeted because she's a Black woman. Unfortunately, she gave the Republicans some ammunition.