Mainstream national political media is right wing

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Justafan said:

I would agree with you if the infraction was as you describe. I would suggest looking at the free beacon article. She copy pasted 4 complete sentences and she did so multiple times. I posted one of 6. There were over 40 infractions found. Some of them were minor as you describe but not all of them were. The one I pointed out for instance was egregious. It wasn't copying an entire work but it wasn't just describing a common phrase of the voting rights act either. What she did was not a whoopsie, that is intentional cheating. 

 

I am looking at this. Can you repost your example? 

[Justafan]

4 minutes ago, Bink said:

 

I am looking at this. Can you repost your example? 

[Guest]

Example 1: 

 

 

This is probably the most lifted in terms of writing. I don't think that's really relevant. 

 

Why? It was in the acknowledgments. This was before you could google sample acknowledgements, find a templated, etc. In composing this, she was probably reading sample acknowledgments and either intentionally or otherwise lifted this language. To me this is like plagiarizing a thank you note--is it really a serious academic concern? Maybe to be discussed later. 

 

 

 

 

 

The first example is a very common form of unintentional plagiarism. Things like the Tax Reform Act are written about in very literal, hard to paraphrase ways. I could get more into it here, but it's honestly a very common style of mistake--true, problematic academic dishonesty is extremely widespread writing like this in a single document, and I haven't seen good evidence of that. 

 

 

The second example is the worst in terms of directly using the language--but she does include a citation! 

 

This should be in direct quotes, and the use of construct as a verb here is not great. I'd need to really the full fucking dissertation, or at least the chapter, but again I'd hardly vote to expel a student over this type of writing. 

[Justafan]

8 minutes ago, Bink said:

Example 1: 

 

 

This is probably the most lifted in terms of writing. I don't think that's really relevant. 

 

Why? It was in the acknowledgments. This was before you could google sample acknowledgements, find a templated, etc. In composing this, she was probably reading sample acknowledgments and either intentionally or otherwise lifted this language. To me this is like plagiarizing a thank you note--is it really a serious academic concern? Maybe to be discussed later. 

 

 

 

 

 

The first example is a very common form of unintentional plagiarism. Things like the Tax Reform Act are written about in very literal, hard to paraphrase ways. I could get more into it here, but it's honestly a very common style of mistake--true, problematic academic dishonesty is extremely widespread writing like this in a single document, and I haven't seen good evidence of that. 

 

 

The second example is the worst in terms of directly using the language--but she does include a citation! 

 

This should be in direct quotes, and the use of construct as a verb here is not great. I'd need to really the full fucking dissertation, or at least the chapter, but again I'd hardly vote to expel a student over this type of writing. 

I can buy those might be unintentional plagiarism. See the ones I posted above. They are far more egregious imo. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Justafan said:

 

Examples 1 and 2 are evident of what I described above. It's a kind of issue that pops up when students (sorry, but I have to treat this like I am back teaching an English class), try to paraphrase a fact, something that has been written literally about hundreds of thousands of times, becomes common knowledge, etc. She is by no means borrowing the original writers idea in these two sentences, are we looking at a mistake in a footnote or endnote. 

 

The same looks true for the Gary King text. I think we might be underestimating how hard it is to write with research. 

 

The Gilliam citations are the most problematic example. The last one you shared is a pretty common mistake (didn't correctly cite something you cited). 

 

Almost all of these are transcription citation errors--preserving too much of the original wording (probably amounting to less than 1 percent of her text). Let's go over anyone's dissertation with a fine tooth comb and see what we find. 

 

The other two Gilliam citations are the ones I am most critical of. She absolutely should not have preserved his use of rhetorical questioning, and there does seem to be a missing citation. I'd want to see the text more in context. 

 

 

Personally, I would be happy to teach my students how all of these things are or could be construed as examples of plagiarism. We'd have a candid discussions about mistakes, what is worse here and what is more acceptable. I'd have caught and marked all these things on her dissertation, except that it's almost impossible to do such a hard and close comparison of a text and the original. 

 

If I noticed some of these things, I would have gone over her dissertation with a fine tooth comb. 

 

That being said, show me a report of how much of her dissertation this comes from. The worst example I am seeing here comes from the damn acknowledgements! Do we understand how humans even write those things!

 

We could get lost in the weeds in this for hours, but also I think it would require a deeper understanding of writing, culture, and capital than I am willing to share. 

 

I reiterate, her causing a shitstorm and answering one line of questioning (the congress meddling being bogus or not) is enough! This is president of Harvard, not a student cheating in 101. Sometimes the standards for this job are insane--like an NFL coach being fired.  

[Justafan]

4 minutes ago, Bink said:

 

Examples 1 and 2 are evident of what I described above. It's a kind of issue that pops up when students (sorry, but I have to treat this like I am back teaching an English class), try to paraphrase a fact, something that has been written literally about hundreds of thousands of times, becomes common knowledge, etc. She is by no means borrowing the original writers idea in these two sentences, are we looking at a mistake in a footnote or endnote. 

 

The same looks true for the Gary King text. I think we might be underestimating how hard it is to write with research. 

 

The Gilliam citations are the most problematic example. The last one you shared is a pretty common mistake (didn't correctly cite something you cited). 

 

Almost all of these are transcription citation errors--preserving too much of the original wording (probably amounting to less than 1 percent of her text). Let's go over anyone's dissertation with a fine tooth comb and see what we find. 

 

The other two Gilliam citations are the ones I am most critical of. She absolutely should not have preserved his use of rhetorical questioning, and there does seem to be a missing citation. I'd want to see the text more in context. 

 

 

Personally, I would be happy to teach my students how all of these things are or could be construed as examples of plagiarism. We'd have a candid discussions about mistakes, what is worse here and what is more acceptable. I'd have caught and marked all these things on her dissertation, except that it's almost impossible to do such a hard and close comparison of a text and the original. 

 

If I noticed some of these things, I would have gone over her dissertation with a fine tooth comb. 

 

That being said, show me a report of how much of her dissertation this comes from. The worst example I am seeing here comes from the damn acknowledgements! Do we understand how humans even write those things!

 

We could get lost in the weeds in this for hours, but also I think it would require a deeper understanding of writing, culture, and capital than I am willing to share. 

 

I reiterate, her causing a shitstorm and answering one line of questioning (the congress meddling being bogus or not) is enough! This is president of Harvard, not a student cheating in 101. Sometimes the standards for this job are insane--like an NFL coach being fired.  

I'll defer on the academics of this to someone with, clearly, far more expertise than myself. I'm just a dumb grunt doing the best I can. I'll stand by my personal opinion though, that this this is unacceptable or at least should be. 

 

I can fully agree though that the testimony was plenty and this is more a product of the frustration stemming from that than the cause itself.

 

Appreciate your perspective. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Justafan said:

I'll defer on the academics of this to someone with, clearly, far more expertise than myself. I'm just a dumb grunt doing the best I can. I'll stand by my personal opinion though, that this this is unacceptable or at least should be. 

 

I can fully agree though that the testimony was plenty and this is more a product of the frustration stemming from that than the cause itself.

 

Appreciate your perspective. 

 

Not at all. 

 

But here's my take on this, it's a great example of what I have been trying to describe in this and other threads--there is so much more to critique here. Her whole academic career and her rise to this role is interesting to look at at a glance. 

 

Her handling of this situation--how university presidents react to this conflict--along with political meddling in education, is EXTREMELY interesting. 

 

The plagiarism thing to me is a distraction. 

 

It reminds me of an old rhetorical exercise my high school English teacher used to do--where we'd be debating a figure like Malcolm X and she say something like "but he smoked!" How off track could she get us? 

 

In this case, I see where your concern is coming from, but it's a symptom of all our political discourse, how we consume media these days, etc. 

 

Really universities themselves and the academic community can will handle academic dishonesty. 

 

We are obscuring the real issue here--her testimony. 

 

As I have said before, this is also one of the things were the standards are so insanely high and what action is taken against you is not like some regular person working a 9 to 5.

 

I could go on about this for days, but how can people discuss something when the very way it is being presented is misleading? 

 

I was actually more sympathetic to your viewpoint than Starkiller's before diving into this, and in some ways still am. 

 

 

[Justafan]

11 minutes ago, Bink said:

 

Not at all. 

 

But here's my take on this, it's a great example of what I have been trying to describe in this and other threads--there is so much more to critique here. Her whole academic career and her rise to this role is interesting to look at at a glance. 

 

Her handling of this situation--how university presidents react to this conflict--along with political meddling in education, is EXTREMELY interesting. 

 

The plagiarism thing to me is a distraction. 

 

It reminds me of an old rhetorical exercise my high school English teacher used to do--where we'd be debating a figure like Malcolm X and she say something like "but he smoked!" How off track could she get us? 

 

In this case, I see where your concern is coming from, but it's a symptom of all our political discourse, how we consume media these days, etc. 

 

Really universities themselves and the academic community can will handle academic dishonesty. 

 

We are obscuring the real issue here--her testimony. 

 

As I have said before, this is also one of the things were the standards are so insanely high and what action is taken against you is not like some regular person working a 9 to 5.

 

I could go on about this for days, but how can people discuss something when the very way it is being presented is misleading? 

 

I was actually more sympathetic to your viewpoint than Starkiller's before diving into this, and in some ways still am. 

 

 

I agree. I'm not sure a forum is an appropriate medium to have the discussion that conversation deserves. There are far too many layers to this and so many competing perspectives it's hard to really stay on track. The ocean of information makes it a difficult conversation to have as well. 

 

Still, I appreciate all the perspectives here, including @Starkiller. At least we had a good conversation here without a ton of vitriol. 

[IrishTitansFan]

5 hours ago, Justafan said:

She did it five more times in the same work and copied the bibliography word for word.  No chance that gets brushed off. It just wasn't caught. 

Bink did a way better job explaining things but I will add this: Academic papers (and any essays in University now) are automatically ran through plagiarism checkers which detect a percentage of the overall paper that has similarities to previous writings

 

For us in college, the limit (IIRC) was something around 20% that could show up before they wouldn't accept it. That was because in every paper you're going to have to include certain things that have been said before, are from something like an Act, quotes etc. The software will highlight in the paper where the words are and will link to where they have been previously written so it's really easy for whoever is checking the paper to cross-reference an potential plagiarism

 

Lifting a bibliography sequentially word for word would show up massively on that so it would be flagged I'm sure and would be bad by all parties

 

I know I'm not contributing anything new to your argument but just thought I'd add that if it wasn't already known as some context. The software my University used was Turnitin

[IrishTitansFan]

BTW, I have used turnitin to pull up Bongo, Mike and others for blatantly plagiarising on football posts on this site!

[Justafan]

1 minute ago, IrishTitansFan said:

Bink did a way better job explaining things but I will add this: Academic papers (and any essays in University now) are automatically ran through plagiarism checkers which detect a percentage of the overall paper that has similarities to previous writings

 

For us in college, the limit (IIRC) was something around 20% that could show up before they wouldn't accept it. That was because in every paper you're going to have to include certain things that have been said before, are from something like an Act, quotes etc. The software will highlight in the paper where the words are and will link to where they have been previously written so it's really easy for whoever is checking the paper to cross-reference an potential plagiarism

 

Lifting a bibliography sequentially word for word would show up massively on that so it would be flagged I'm sure and would be bad by all parties

 

I know I'm not contributing anything new to your argument but just thought I'd add that if it wasn't already known as some context. The software my University used was Turnitin

We use the same system.

[luvyablue256]

 

 

 

[luvyablue256]

 

 

[Number9]

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/10/26/what-the-2020-electorate-looks-like-by-party-race-and-ethnicity-age-education-and-religion/

Around two-thirds of registered voters in the U.S.

(65%) do not have a college degree, while 36% do.

... voters with a college degree have risen substantially since 1996, when 24% had one.

 

Voters who identify with the Democratic Party or lean toward it are much more likely than their Republican counterparts to have a college degree (41% vs. 30%). In 1996, the reverse was true: 27% of GOP voters had a college degree, compared with 22% of Democratic voters.

()()()().....  

 

I think we should have more conversations with people who haven't been to college.  Encourage them to register and vote for the candidate that has done the best on the main issues that effect them.  We all have family.  Do they even vote?  Learn what to tell them about Biden's plan to deal with unlawful immigration.  Trump is still running on the wall that in four years never happened.  Still, you gotta say Joe is gonna build wall around the whole country. Learn common sense talk.  Being smart is something most people want to be.  You lose them when you talk over their heads(appear to think you know everything).  

[Justafan]