Just How Common Is Plagiarizing at Harvard?

Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, testifies before the House Committee on Education and Workforce at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on Dec. 5, 2023. The Committee held a hearing to investigate anti-Semitism on college campuses. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Commentary

“Plagiarize. Let no one else’s work evade your eyes.”

So begins the witty lyrics to the brilliant songwriter-mathematician Tom Lehrer’s “Lobachevsky.”

Restrictions on quoting song lyrics forbid me from taking it further, but you can read the rest here or hear the man sing it here.

When it comes to plagiarizing, Mr. Lehrer, still with us at age 95, attended college at Harvard, so he should know of what he speaks.

Apparently, amid all of the controversy surrounding Claudine Gay’s congressional testimony regarding anti-Semitism on the Harvard campus, as well as the consequent calls for her resignation, it has been revealed that the university’s president is allegedly a plagiarist herself.

Like the politician she is—and college presidents are, in essence, that—she denies it.

But, to be blunt, she appears to be lying.

Ms. Gay’s thesis—or should I say Dr. Gay, since she has her doctoral degree in political science from the university where she’s president—is riddled with clear-cut examples of plagiarism that were exposed to the world by Christopher F. Rufo on his Substack.

I won’t go into full detail because, frankly, like most theses, it’s quite boring and pedantic. Also, Mr. Rufo does a thorough job of illustrating several examples.

So just one, copied by Ms. Gay from Lawrence Bobo and Franklin Gilliam’s paper, “Race, Sociopolitical Participation and Black Empowerment” (told you it was boring), should suffice.

Mr. Bobo and Mr. Gilliam wrote: “Using 1987 national sample survey data ... the results show that blacks in high-black-empowerment areas—as indicated by control of the mayor’s office—are more active than either blacks living in low-empowerment areas or their white counterparts of comparable socioeconomic status. Furthermore, the results show that empowerment influences black participation by contributing to a more trusting and efficacious orientation to politics and by greatly increasing black attentiveness to political affairs.”

Ms. Gay put it this way: “Using 1987 survey data, Bobo and Gilliam found that African-Americans in ‘high black-empowerment’ areas—as indicated by control of the mayor’s office—are more active than either African-Americans in low empowerment areas or their white counterparts of comparable socioeconomic status. Empowerment, they conclude, influences black participation by contributing to a more trusting and efficacious orientation towards politics and by greatly increasing black attentiveness to political affairs.”

Well, she did change “blacks” to “African-Americans.” Also, she dropped the “Furthermore.” Isn’t that worth a doctorate? Possibly an honorary degree or two?

Presumably, the 600 or so Harvard faculty who have rallied in support of Ms. Gay would agree.

“Hundreds of Harvard faculty members are urging the Ivy League university to keep its president, Claudine Gay, in command as she faces calls from some lawmakers and donors to step down over comments at a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism,” the Associated Press reported.

“A petition signed by more than 600 faculty members asks the school’s governing body to resist political pressures ’that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom.'”

Is that the freedom to plagiarize?

I wonder if the 600 had had a chance to peruse Mr. Rufo’s Substack before they rushed to sign this petition.

Probably not.

But here’s the surprise. I doubt that it would have mattered. They would have signed it anyway.

The reason? And here’s where I really get into trouble—I imagine a good many of them were plagiarists, too.

The system fairly invites it. To obtain a doctoral degree, one must write a thesis. Sometimes, that involves research; sometimes, it just involves amalgamating the thoughts of others on a subject and injecting yours.

Most of these theses are read and approved by, at most, three or four people—the adviser and some others —before they make their way, in microfilm or other manner, to the catacombs of a university library such as Harvard’s mammoth Widener, rarely to be seen again.

Sometimes, a thesis may reach the public in that exotic form known as a book.

But most were never meant for that. They were only intended to get the Ph.D. beside one’s name, to earn the honorific “Dr.,” and to move on in the safety of the academic world.

Why not cheat a little to get the degree? Who’s to know or care?

Why isn’t what Ms. Gay did actually normal in a fair number of cases?

It well may be, and that’s what we’re learning from this unpleasant but revelatory series of events about our educational system that’s able to ignore not only anti-Semitism but also plagiarism.

If we follow through even a bit, we have to ask if—outside of STEM subjects—there really should be such a thing as a doctoral degree. Is it basically a fraud?

Many have scratched their heads at calling our current first lady Jill Biden a Doctor of Education. If you peruse her dissertation, available online, you find a document that could have been written by virtually any relatively intelligent person without having taken a single course in education.

But that may be too obvious of an example. More to the point, Harvard’s president is a Ph.D. for her doctorate in political science.

But is politics in any way a science?

Does Ms. Gay know more about politics than deceased legendary conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who attended Southeast Missouri State University and dropped out after two semesters?

Or how about the legendary Democratic Speaker of the House and inventor of “all politics is local,” Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill Jr., who did make it through Boston College but no further?

Both of these men knew more about politics in their pinkies than Ms. Gay—or arguably the entire Harvard faculty—will ever know.

And yet no Ph.D.s for them. No doctorates.

Now I’m aware that the word doctor stems from the Latin “docere” for teacher or scholar.

But not much later, the Italians, during the period of the Commedia dell’arte, held this all up to the ridicule it deserved through their character “Il Dottore,” who would hold forth with the pomposity familiar to all of us today.

So I say—STEM again excepted—let’s invent some new, less-pompous designation for those who want to spend a few extra years studying a subject.

Maybe we would have less plagiarism in the bargain. As someone who has earned his living as a writer for more than 50 years, I certainly hope so.

And as for calling someone “doctor,” next time, let it be your cardiologist.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.