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She simply refused to make a blanket statement that would exclude all nuance.

She essentially refused to agree to zero tolerance policies. Which, you would think that people would be against.

But it was trap, and the media successfully branded it as condoning hate speech, when that's not at all what her refusal to take the bait was about.

Damned if she did, damned if she didn't.

It only looked bad because the question itself was dishonest and meant to make the school look bad. The students did not openly call for genocide. They called for another “intifada” and repeated the “from the river to the sea” mantra (or whatever you’d call it). Both of these things would be protected by a free speech policy that, as she stated, requires things to be targeted and actionable.

Eh, us professors care pretty deeply about the plagiarism she did. Intent or even knowledge of plagiarism isn't necessary for disciplinary action in plagiarism cases at major research universities. Any one of these examples would be enough for my university's academic integrity committee to rule that plagiarism occurred:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/us/claudine-gay-harvard-president-excerpts.html

And in the case of a dissertation, plagiarism is an automatic expulsion and degree retraction from my university. At the PhD level, students certainly know that what Dr. Gay did is plagiarism (a good rule of thumb is that five sequential words, even with paraphrasing, without citing the source, is plagiarism), and that plagiarism is completely unacceptable.

I already know of a student who made the argument that their plagiarism wasn't as bad as Dr. Gay's, so because Dr. Gay wasn't penalized, they shouldn't be penalized. Had she not stepped down, that line of argument likely would have snowballed out of control. The professors I know think her comments to Congress were out of touch, but all of us had been livid that she and Harvard were saying that she didn't plagiarize--any professor who looks at those examples will tell you that she did.

Her students were not calling for genocide and the questions were a trap along the lines of "when did you stop beating your wife?".

I think it's fair to say that she did not handle it as well as she could have done - directly calling out the nature of the question would have been better. But her refusal to throw her students under the bus is to be commended.

That’s what I’m saying, though… I don’t think anyone actually thought it was a problem until they decided they wanted her out. The supposed plagiarism was reviewed twice by independent bodies and they both said they couldn’t find an “intent to deceive or mislead”. They said that the quotations were negligent but wouldn’t be considered plagiarism in those instances and would typically be allowed to be submitted for revision.

If she was trying to pass off someone else’s words or thoughts as her own, that would be one thing. Missing a citation for a technical description doesn’t seem to fall under that umbrella.

We all know that plagiarism was not the real issue here. It was a convenient excuse to call for her resignation, but it was the other thing listed above that was the real push by certain well known non-profit groups to get her fired.

This Carol Swain? Yeah, no, it has nothing to do with plagiarism, it has to do with Swain being pro-ethnic cleansing and is mad that Claudine Gay didn't expel all Palestinian students or some other extreme action to show loyalty to Israel.

I know your argument is of semantics but I’d say it's not relevant either way. The determination should be done by objective third parties.

While that is true, I don’t think she actually addressed the substance of the plagiarism claims. She just issued a blanket statement calling for her to be fired.

I'll have to check it out. I only started listening to them a couple months ago.

Of course they do.

That's why, if I hear someone attended an Ivy League school, I'll praise them when they demonstrate to me they are actually doing good in the world with their expensive degree. Until then, I see no reason not to call a spade a spade. Ivy League a nepotism laundering machine.

Besides, why should education even be elite? It's the same shit as the private schools that get so much praise. Why the hell should "the best" be gated to the few (who just so happen to be the wealthy or connected)?