The Weaponization of Plagiarism
Last week was a major week for plagiarism news stories.
On Wednesday, January 3, then-president of Harvard Claudine Gay announced that she would be resigning her post. The announcement came after a month-long plagiarism scandal that saw allegations of uncited copying in a variety of her academic work, resulting in corrections of several of her papers.
Though many of the allegations were known as far back as late October, they were published following her testimony before the House Committee on Education in a hearing looking at antisemitism in schools. Gay’s testimony, along with the testimony of two other university presidents, was seen as evasive, creating a call for her resignation.
One of the loudest voices in this call was hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman, who repeatedly called for her resignation on X (formerly Twitter) and prominently shared the initial allegations.
However, one day after Gay’s resignation, Business Insider published an article that examined the dissertation of Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman. Oxman is described as a “celebrity academic” who was a tenured professor at MIT until 2021 and a famous architect.
However, according to Business Insider, Oxman’s 2010 dissertation contains multiple copied passages that are not marked with quotes or otherwise indicated to be verbatim passages. The first round of allegations accuses Oxman of copying and pasting verbatim text and, while the source of the information is cited, the verbiage is not.
That, in turn, is similar to many of the more serious allegations against Gay, who used verbatim passages from sources that were cited, but failed to indicate that the text was quoted.
A day after the first round of allegations, Business Insider posted a second article, this one saying that her dissertation also contained verbatim passages from Wikipedia, which was not cited as a source at all.
However, Bill Ackman responded to these allegations on X, saying that he would begin reviewing the work of all current MIT faculty members and the board of the university. He also indicated in a reply that he would check the work of reporters at Business Insider.
He complained that Business Insider did not give him or his wife adequate time to investigate and respond to the allegations. Axel Springer, the owners of Business Insider, said that, while they stand by the story and note that the facts of the report are not under dispute, that they will investigate their reporting practices.
Regardless of reasons, Ackman’s plan greatly expands what The Atlantic calls “The Plagiarism War” though I refer to as “The Weaponization of Plagiarism.”
To be clear, this is nothing new. Plagiarism has a long history of being weaponized, particularly in politics. But with an election year upon us and two major plagiarism stories making the rounds, this looks like it could be one of the busiest years for such stories in a very long time.
The Long History of Political Plagiarism Scandals
Political plagiarism scandals have been around for as long as there have been both politics and plagiarism. The idea of using plagiarism as a weapon against a political or ideological opponent goes back centuries, if not longer.
Looking just at the 18 years this site has been in operation, there have been dozens of political plagiarism scandals. Going back to 2008, there were plagiarism scandals that involved both Barack Obama and John McCain, not to mention the rehashing of the Joe Biden scandal from the eighties.
In 2014 Senator Joe Walsh was accused of plagiarism in his 2007 thesis at the Army War College. He withdrew from his campaign, which was already floundering, and he had his degree revoked.
2016 saw allegations against Melania Trump with her speech at the Republican National Convention and Donald Trump in a published op-ed.
The 2020 cycle saw new allegations against President Joe Biden, one against Kamala Harris, House of Representatives candidate Tedra Cobb and fellow candidate Burgess Owens.
To be clear, these scandals vary wildly in severity and veracity. However, the majority were either extremely minor issues that someone was trying to make hay on or allegations that just didn’t stand up to real scrutiny. Still, some did point to serious issues and have significant consequences.
In that light, the past month seems almost normal. As the political engines ramp up, we’re going to see more stories like Gay’s and Oxman’s. But these stories represent an expansion of the weaponization of plagiarism in two separate ways.
First, is that neither Gay nor Oxman are running for any office. Though they are both public figures and are politically engaged, we’ve only rarely seen this kind of attention brought to someone who neither a candidate themselves nor tied closely to a candidate.
Second, the allegations were exceptionally effective. In most of the stories above the scandals barely made any waves. Though there are exceptions, those exceptions largely dealt with campaigns that were already struggling. Most of the stories didn’t survive the 24-hour news cycle and you’d be forgiven for not remembering them.
But both Gay and Oxman’s stories have had major impacts, and Gay has already resigned. Though it is unclear what, if any, repercussions Oxman may face from MIT, stories are still coming out about it now. If nothing else, it’s effectively tied her name to plagiarism in a way that Obama’s or McCain’s didn’t.
Now, it sounds like the war may be expanding further. If Ackman makes good on his threat, we could be seeing analyses of all the faculty at MIT, reporters at Business Insider and likely more. This includes people who aren’t public or political figures at all. The only reason for the investigation is a desire to hurt their employer.
Bad Faith Investigations
The problem with these investigations is that they don’t have the intention of improving academic/research integrity. Their intention is to find plagiarism that they can then use to attack the relevant person or institution.
While there are certainly arguments that can be made that every MIT professor should have their dissertation/thesis checked, the goal here isn’t to help the school take appropriate corrective action, it’s to tar the school as a place where plagiarists teach.
This creates a dynamic where a null report is seen as a loss. This encourages those doing the report to try and turn nonissues or small issues into major ones. We saw this particularly strongly with the Claudine Gay report, where the 2-4 serious issues were interspersed with 22 minor examples of overlapping text that often didn’t even prove copying.
Couple that with the fact that such investigations likely won’t be able to spend the time and/or money needed to perform a full and thorough check, and this is a recipe for questionable allegations of plagiarism. However, the public is not well-equipped to parse and process a large number of such accusations, especially with the nuance such cases often require.
The fear is that this weaponization of plagiarism will result not in the public taking plagiarism more seriously, but less. As individuals become inundated with an ever-increasing number of questionable plagiarism stories, the serious cases may end up getting lost in the noise.
That, in turn, devalues plagiarism as an academic sin and makes it more difficult for future cases to be taken as seriously as they deserve.
Bottom Line
In November 2015, I wrote an article where I spelled out the formula for creating an effective political plagiarism scandal. You can see those elements at work in the Claudine Gay scandal.
She was vulnerable due to her recent testimony, it was timed as that controversy was still in the news and, though not as serious as some have made it out to be, there was enough of an issue that some corrective action was necessary. Finally, for an academic, it’s hard to think of a much more serious issue.
That, in turn, is the big fear. We’ve seen repeatedly how plagiarism scandals, both serious and less so, have not really impacted campaigns or elections in the United States. Rightly or wrongly, plagiarism isn’t always a huge issue for a politician, especially when so much other name calling happens over the course of a campaign.
However, as that war spreads beyond political candidates and to people in academia and journalism, these are areas where plagiarism is taken much more seriously and can easily end careers.
While I have no problem with a journalist or a researcher being fired for serious plagiarism, the nature of these investigations will encourage low-quality analyses that don’t put in the needed time and try to inflate smaller issues and non-issues. In their quest to find dirt on various institutions, they risk burning careers that don’t deserve that treatment
Right now, we’re watching as a shooting war morphs into a nuclear war. That means a lot more bystanders are going to be hurt and that both Gay and Oxman will likely just be the start of a very challenging time for many in the field.
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