Why we should not be surprised that Harvard's president is a plagiarist, and the real reason to care

 If you know the name, Claudine Gay, you probably learned of her existence from her testimony before Congress, when Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), shitweasel, managed to look like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington simply by lobbing the softest of ethical softballs to three horrible people who demonstrated on national television just how far "elite" universities have sunk under the weight of the vileness of DEI.  The President of Penn has resigned, but Claudine Gay has magic superpowers, and she is forever protected, unlike the Jews from Auschitz to Dachau to October 7, from the Inquisition to pogroms, from every group committed to extermination of us "vermin."  Gee, can I hide behind this rock?  This tree?  (Hint:  that's a reference.)  Claudine Gay's testimony should not have surprised anyone, nor should news that is not as prominent, but should be.  She is a plagiarist.  Yup.  Here is a link, with some side-by-side text.  Claudine Gay is guilty as fuck.

Do you remember the 2016 Republican National Convention?  Do you remember Melania, America's sweetblackheart?  Her speech was plagiarized, and in a fun, little turn, I got quoted in the national press as an official authority on plagiarism.  Mostly, I don't keep track of my press activity, but this one gave me extra-warm fuzzies because I got to tell my students that I am an official, nationally recognized hard-ass on plagiarism, so don't fuck with me, don't do it, I will hand you over to the Academic Integrity Board.  Anyway, Melania's speech was plagiarized, and what I told USA Today, and several others, was this.  I threw the book at students for cases far less egregious.  And you know what?  The Academic Integrity Board's rules on plagiarism are set up so that on this one, narrow issue, there is no wiggle room.  Violate the rules on plagiarism, and there are no excuses.  Freshmen can claim not to have known the rules, and even then, it does not matter.  You're fuckin' guilty, take the punishment.  I have flunked students for less than what Melania Trump did, and I have flunked students for far, far, far less than what Claudine Gay did.  I have flunked freshmen for less than what Claudine Gay did in her doctoral dissertation.  I have been quoted in the national press for my enthusiasm for flunking freshmen for less.

When Melania did it, it was bad, and that was just a convention speech for the candidate's "wife."  Gorsuch's plagiarism was worse, being a Supreme Court Justice, but I do not really care about Melania, or politicians' family members at all, except when there are good jokes to be made.

Claudine Gay plagiarized in her doctoral dissertation.  Not a convention speech for a would-be first lady, a doctoral dissertation.  And she is President of Harvard University.

From now on, every student at Harvard should plagiarize everything and hide behind little lady Claudy.  If it's good enough for the President of the University, it should be good enough for the students.

And thereby discredit the entire university, which does not deserve its stature anyway.

Should you be surprised by these revelations?  No.  Claudine Gay does not believe that rules apply equally to all people.  That's equality, not equity.  Her career is an ideological struggle session for equity.  Meaning, she gets to cheat.  Donald Trump thinks he gets to cheat because he's Donald Trump, Claudine Gay thinks she can cheat because equity that's why fuck off she's oppressed.  To me, they're all just liars and cheaters.  One is a sociopath, and the other a perverse ideologue, but at the end of the day, a cheater is a cheater.  The reflexive property of cheaterdom.

Cheaters do, alas, prosper.  By some definition of "prosper."  I advise against it.  What matters is honor, not the false accolades and meaningless accrual of shit that these people seek.  By their own measure, they prosper, because cheating does work.  By the measure of what matters, they do not prosper.

Trump is forever seeking vengeance for imagined slights and by that, justifying his crimes, while Gay is perpetually raging against victimization that doesn't happen anymore, imagining herself to live in 1923 Mississippi while being President of Harvard in 2023.  If you examine either, you see the misery at the source of their cheating.  Donald Trump is wealthy, born to every advantage such that even his incompetence and stupidity could not sink him, he is the once and possibly future president.  Perhaps more, in a quest for authoritarian power.  But he is a miserable sack of shit, he always has been, and he always will be.

Claudine Gay is the President of Harvard, not just a tenured professor, but President of the most famed, if not truly respected university in the world, immune from the Larry Summers treatment no matter what she says or does because she has that certain je ne sais quois.  Two things, actually.  Sorry, Liz.  (And sorry, Larry.  You should have equivocated on the genocide of the Jews from behind a demographic forcefield of leftist unassailability.)

Yet the same thing that drives her fight, and gives her internal permission to cheat is what makes her, too, a miserable sack of shit.  No one committed to her ideology can ever be content in life because it is an ideology that teaches misery.  The core of the ideology is that the world is evil and you are forever oppressed, no matter what you think you have.  You are always a victim.

Actually, she's a miserable sack of shit who cheats for the same reason as Trump.  The only difference is sociopathy and narcissistic personality disorder versus a toxic ideology.

But while they each prosper by some measure for their cheating, if they are both miserable, that tells you something.

What is more distressing is how many excuse the cheating, be they Trump cultists or academic leftists and Church of DEI faithful.  Trumpists project their own self-pitying sense of victimhood on Trump's narcissistic personality disorder and fantasize about engaging with the world like the wrestling heel he is, while identitarian leftists, deriving their beliefs from Foucault and other postmodernists, deny any moral truth and claim that the only truth is power.  In that case, any action by the oppressed is justified as a fight against the oppressor.  Gay can do whatever she wants.  Similarly, since Jews have been deemed oppressors rather than oppressed, advocating our extermination is just hunky-dory.  To academic leftists, Claudine Gay's cheating is, itself, a fight for "equity," just as surely as we, Jews, should be found behind those rocks and trees.

Oopsies!  Am I not supposed to quote that?

Too bad.  I like to read.  However, since this is a post about plagiarism, I suppose I had better provide proper attribution.  I am referencing the Hamas charter, which itself is quoting.  Track it down!

Point being, no one should be surprised.  This still matters.  The mess is a lesson in several parts.  Truth matters.  Honor matters.  Colleges do not.  Education matters, but colleges do not.

Yet the reward for integrity can only be integrity.  To look elsewhere is to be misled.

Consider.

Truthfully, you can educate yourself, if so inclined, but colleges are a scam, and none worse than the "elites," which is easy to write from where I write, admittedly, but outside of STEM, education is quite different.

In STEM, the material itself can actually be hard.  Once you get to a certain point, even the mathematically adept generally need assistance.  The social sciences and humanities hand out grades for nothing, and as Claudine Gay demonstrates, you can even get a Ph.D. for plagiarism.  Right now, I have a difficult time justifying formal education in the social sciences and humanities, given the state of academia.  True education?  Yes.  Formal education?  Um...

Would you like a reading list?  I can provide one.  Any intelligent and self-directed person can read it, and learn.  The degree is a joke because failure is not an option.  I do not mean that students are pushed until they succeed because the consequences of failure are so high that one simply must do whatever work is necessary.  I mean that an F is taken off the table as an option for K-12 teachers, and professors.  Even a D is unthinkable, regardless of what is submitted, as long as something is submitted.  Truthfully, a C is reserved for semi-literate drivel, so really, just showing up and submitting something that passes for on-topic generally puts you into the B range.  Yes, grade inflation is that bad.

And under the right circumstances, you can plagiarize your doctoral dissertation and have academia rally to your defense.  I cannot defend the value of a degree in the social sciences or humanities under these circumstances.  Can I defend studying the best of these disciplines?  Properly defined, yes.  The most insightful writings in these disciplines, the findings that replicate, the rigorously derived, these remain vital.

But academia has fallen.

And even the tech companies are no longer requiring college degrees, acknowledging that all that matters is if you can code.

Yet for your sake, it matters if you read.  It matters if you learn.  It matters if you understand.  The reward is not a better paying job nor honors nor recognition nor fawning throngs of worshipping fans nor "likes" on Twitter or whatever the fuck Musk calls it now, nor any of that.  That is the wrong standard.   The standard is your own learning.

How you attain that is irrelevant.  You can skip college, do construction and read on your own time.  If you read attentively, you will train your mind more effectively than most of the professors I know.  Unlike Claudine Gay, you won't be a fuckin' cheater.  You will not have the title, but what is a title worth?

Note the question.  Put in those terms, you are primed to put a dollar value on it, or a number-of-Twitter-followers measure on it, or something, but that is the wrong measure.  The right measure is right thinking.  The right measure is whether or not you have clarity.

Claudine Gay does not.  She never will.  She cannot, blinded by her toxic ideology.  That very ideology put her where she is, while making her an embittered, vengeance-seeking dogmatist.

That is not contentment.  That is the same path to misery as Donald Trump.

So what are you seeking?

You should care about Claudine Gay, but not in the sense of calling for her head.  She is exactly what Harvard deserves.  A worthless human being, an anti-intellectual, a cheater, a dogmatic ideologue of a toxic, extremist, bigoted path to hell.

Why should you care?  To avoid that path.  Let Harvard be Harvard.  Shit people deserve shit people.

Clear thinking and honor.  Don't be Claudine Gay.  That's the point.

Read.  Learn.  Think.  Don't cheat.  This path is its own reward, and seek no other.  Do those people look happy to you?

Two of the greatest guitarists who ever lived, Roy Clark & Joe Pass, "Your Cheatin' Heart," from Roy Clark & Joe Pass Play Hank Williams.  Claudine Gay would just hear racism because it's a country tune, but she is not an intelligent person.  Just a cheater devoted to a toxic ideology of lies.


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