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Remember when the AP had a modicum of credibility? Over the past few years it’s been working hard to shed that modicum to the point that the formerly respected wire service is indistinguishable from the Washington Post which is the same as The Nation or the old Gawker. That is to say most media now looks like the same stew of leftist snark, explainers and narrative warfare.
That’s also how we end up with this spectacular AP response to Harvard President Gay resigning over plagiarism charges.
Harvard president’s resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism – AP
There used to be four Ws of journalism to which we can now add, “what the hell”.
Even within the entire “Republicans pounce” meme where the focus on every leftist scandal is how it’s a cynical ploy by Republicans, that’s really something.
Harvard’s president is caught with instances of plagiarism in the majority of her work and the response is… Republicans pounce.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education.
Possible new weapon.
After a few paragraphs the AP “report” reads like something from a college student paper.
The plagiarism allegations came not from her academic peers but her political foes, led by conservatives who sought to oust Gay and put her career under intense scrutiny in hopes of finding a fatal flaw. Her detractors charged that Gay — who has a Ph.D. in government, was a professor at Harvard and Stanford and headed Harvard’s largest division before being promoted — got the top job in large part because she is a black woman.
Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the effort, celebrated her departure as a win in his campaign against elite institutions of higher education. On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote “SCALPED,” as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans.
Intersectionality is a beautiful thing.
The AP “article” doesn’t get around to describing the plagiarism until the very end of the article and claims that Gay merely “mirrored” the language as if she were doing a Marx Brothers routine. The key points are that the whole thing is a racist conspiracy by the right-wing that threatens academic freedom. Since plagiarism is now a conservative weapon, the only thing to do is legalize it. That will show those conservatives.
Algorithmic Analyst says
lolol … her advisors and peers let her get away with it, until she finally got caught.
Domenic Pepe says
I bet she gets a 20 percent raise for 2024.
That will be a 180 grand pop that will get Gay’s salary above the one million bucks per year poverty level for the woke leftist academic Ivy League elites.
Where do I sign up to become an oppressed victim in America ?
Jeff Bargholz says
Contrary to the AP’s usual amateurish story telling and woke horse shit, it wasn’t fabled political foes led by conservatives who exposed Gay’s plagiarism, it was Dr Carol Swain, because she’s one of the people Gay has plagiarized. I suppose she would be considered a peer by the AP because she was also a university professor but she was never a DEI hire and never depended on Affirmative Action for her academic success as Gay has. She’s extremely competent and honest and has published ten significant books to Gay’s zero, so Gay is her peer in name only. She certainly isn’t Swain’s peer in achievement, talent, integrity or hard work.
Dr Swain grew up in poverty. Her family lived in a shack without any plumbing, she shared two beds with her eleven siblings and missed school whenever it snowed because she didn’t have any shoes. She dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and got married when she was only sixteen. The couple had two sons but lost their daughter to S.I.D.S. The couple divorced when she was twenty one.
She went to work, earned a GED and went on to graduate from Virginia Western Community College with an AA,
Roanoke College with a BA, Virginia Tech with an MA, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a PhD, and
Yale University as a Phi Beta Kappa member with an MLS (Master of Legal Studies.)
She went on to achieve early tenure as an Associate Professor of Politics and Public Policy at Princeton University and from 1999 to 2017, she taught political science and law at Vanderbilt University. She retired from her post at Vanderbilt in 2017 because she’d become disgusted by “what American universities have allowed themselves to become”
She’s a self made black woman who’s written honest books about race relations and regularly speaks publicly about the divisive, destructive and racist nature of CRT, DEI and diversity hire programs and mandates, so of course the AP and the rest of the fake news media hate her.
She’s right to be angry with Gay and to have called for her to be fired. I see her a lot on Newsmax and Real America’s voice and I think she’s great. She was on “The Steve Gruber Show” just yesterday.
There is no right-wing,” much less a right-wing conspiracy against Gay because she’s a black woman, and Americans conservatives and Republicans aren’t critical of her because they want to discredit the college and university system. We all know it discredits itself.
Bob Meyer says
Gay wasn’t chosen for her race, she was chosen for her incompetence, This serves two purposes. It makes her controllable since even she knows that she has not earned her position. Second, she serves as a slap in the face of anyone who is competent, especially competent individuals who happen to be black.
America has the reputation for being a place where talent and hard work lead to success. Gay is part of the effort to kill this idea. Everyone who sees Gay will feel that success is beyond them because competence is not a virtue, it is a threat to the status quo.
Luz Maria Rodriguez says
Yes.
Swain is a real hero and model for some of us.
Jeff Bargholz says
Yes, Swain is a good role model, isn’t she? Particularly for “minority” women.
And even though she’s old as F***, I think she’s hot.
Algorithmic Analyst says
Plagiarism is the pillar of MSM. If one looks at numerous MSM articles on the same topic, they generally copy from each other.
Kasandra says
I don’t think they are so much copying from each other as reading from the same DNC supplied talking points.
Domenic Pepe says
The Harvard Board never heard of Dr. Carol Swain.
Jeff Bargholz says
Yes, Swain was just another faceless utility to be plagiarized and otherwise exploited by those scumbags and their representatives. They all thought they were ten feet tall and bullet proof and could do whatever they wanted.
Typical Dirtbagocrat lefties in that way.
Jeff Bargholz says
I used to be a Dirtbagocrat too. So what? Young people are gullible.
Stay in your shed and write Bundy screeds. Don’t blow anybody up, you whack-job.
NAVY ET1 says
I’ve learned that leftists are consistently a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but the AP write up confirms that they either choose not listen to themselves at all or are completely “Orwellianized” to be incapable of such. But as far as the “new conservative weapon” is concerned, I’m good with the label. One could easily substitute “caught her lying and stealing 50 times”, but I assume that wouldn’t fit well into the headline.
Remember that the next time you choose to read an AP article, because they are willfully trying to make people think that her ousting was egregious for perpetrating something a Harvard freshman would get in trouble for doing.
Onzeur Trante says
Good analysis. “Plagiarism” makes it to the top of the list for the media’s talking point this week, pushing “democracy” to second place. Those mean, conservative white supremacists want to make a big deal out of Gay’s copying of WORDS, not IDEAS. How rich is that? About as good as destroying democracy to “save” democracy. Hello 2024!
CowboyUp says
Yes, and I was shown what was wrong with ap stories in the late 80’s, and told I’d better not do that when I was writing news or features. They’ve only gotten worse, and bear the same thing in mind when reading upi or Reuters stories. Reuters writes one grade level above the others, but that’s just third grade level, instead of second, and that was that grade level for the 80s. It’s probably high school level now, as much as they’ve dumbed down the schools since then.
Cassandra says
As plagiarism is stealing it’s hardly surprising the marxist left support it, but only if it doesn’t affect them personally. And what is interesting is Gay plagiarised from other blacks but no one is sticking up for them …😆
Jeff Bargholz says
Not onbly did she plagiarize from other blacks but she tried to refute the very material she stole!!!!!
DERP.
B. Stauning says
Plagiarism, or not plagiarism?
Well, depending on the context, as Harvard president Claudine Gay likes to remind us.
Plagiarizing in the context of being black is not plagiarizing. Rather it’s collecting the long overdue “forty acres and a mule”.
Luz Maria Rodriguez says
Gay only merits a 1/4 acre and a couple jackasses.
CowboyUp says
By the 90s, that was 40 acres and a Lexus, lol. Either way, freedom and equality isn’t enough, they want something they didn’t earn, for something they didn’t suffer.
BB says
So Harvard is totally happy with having an anti-semite terrorist supporter who plagerizes the academic work of black female intellectuals…as head of the university….until it gets so much international pushback and looses hundreds of millions of alumni dollars they finally respond.. Her punishment is to let her resign from the President position and go back to indoctrinating students with her anti-semitism and dishonesty. Her punishment?? will be to keep her $900,000 a year paycheque.
JL says
Why is anybody surprised? it’s no different than pretending Biden’s obvious corruption isn’t really corruption simply because it’s conservatives leading the investigation into it.
Una Salus says
It’s a Harvard weapon. Pay attention to inversion if you want to survive. Hence you can anticipate.
Una Salus says
What weapon is it?
Una Salus says
The only people that survive at Harvard are people who pay attention to this rule.
Una Salus says
You’re not going to reclaim Harvard. Harvard is gone.
Luz Maria Rodriguez says
Once we get a real prez and ag, ivy league endowments must be taxed. No more free rides.
Una Salus says
Pay attention. (Your comment is too short—try writing a little more)
internalexile says
Guess there should be an all AP news, all the time channel with the items read by an AI generated girlfriend/anchor.
SPURWING PLOVER says
AP along with CNN have become the chief sources of leftists propaganda in America
FDTS says
If plagiarism is now a weapon for conservatives, it’s one that was served up on a silver platter by the left. Affirmative action and other diversity schemes that put unqualified individuals in positions they don’t belong in opened that door. As usual, its their own fault. So, it’s good bye and good riddance to another fraud rising up the ranks on the work of others.
chaya says
At 900k per year i do nit think she lost. And maybe she will run for US president. She cheats, is mediocre, grew up privileged. She’s another Obama.
charlie vance says
IMHO we should take a look at MLK’s body of work. If he is found wanting maybe it is time to pull down those statues and start renaming streets.
Nicole from Logan says
I thought Native Americans scalped the whites settlers not the other way around ??
Fokker says
If by weapon they mean applying long held standard of academic integrity, regardless of the offender, then YES we are absolutely using plagiarism as a weapon to dispose of academic frauds.
ChazChan says
What a weapon! It shoots a ray that makes its target plagiarize. Conservatives are geniuses!
CowboyUp says
Calling AP reporting college level is being too generous, it’s pretty bad for even high school level reporting. Lots of missing attribution and lots of opinion. They’ve sucked since the late 80s, but it’s gotten really bad over the last decade.
It’s also interesting that joe biden was judged unqualified to hold the office of president way back in’88, for plagiarism. that was back when the dems still had some minimum standards., so joe is good enough now.
rmt says
Democrats yawn at plagiarism….after all, Biden, the Democrats leader, is also a well known plagiarist. And if any conservative plagiarized, you know these same Democrat yawners would be outraged and demand resignations. Which goes to show all of us, that Democrats use people and issues to gain political power, and once achieved, those people and issues are not important any more. It’s all about political power with the left. So any time a Democrat moralizes on some subject, you know it’s a ploy to gain more political power for themselves or their party.
rmt says
Gay has a PhD in government? What’s that? There’s no Government major or department? That liberal description of Gay even sounds dodgy.
chaya says
Wait, Maybe “ Scalped” just referred to her hairdo
Kasandra says
The AP has been garbage for a while. Didn’t anyone read its statement and ask, “Whaaa?” So the offense isn’t stealing the work of others and portraying as one’s own. It’s discovering that it was done that is the issue. This is simply insane.
Duane DePool says
Apparently, the AP supports the act of plagiarism.
Matt Tarango says
Well, that is a what a wire service does, does it not?
John Sweet says
This is right up there with the “conservatives pounce” or “Republicans pounce” headlines.
Ugly Sid says
Character assassination and lawfare are where the rapid gains lay. Writs of Attainder work. Favorable verdicts come from utilizing predisposed jury pools and magistrates disloyal to their oathes.
If Trump doesn’t switch his attention away, he could end up dead broke AND be confined long term.
That’s what can be done by those who play for keeps. They aren’t trying to get into heaven. Their goals are more immediate, more substantial.
They consider actual sincerity to be a weakness and a vulnerability. They avoid it.
For the Left, it’s one party rule, period.
Jeff Bargholz says
That’s a perfect description of the Dirtbagocrats and their lefty base.
Algorithmic Analyst says
Excellent description of the function of the law in the Dark Ages.
Matt Tarango says
My slightly funny but harmless non-comment comment is under moderation. Meanwhile, boom-laka-laka-laka, boom laka-lak-goon-ka boom, hey, hey, hey, hey, I want to take you higher
Algorithmic Analyst says
It’s just keywords that cause moderation. Syntax causes moderation, not semantics.
Jeff Bargholz says
Yes, I don’t even care about the content of my comments anymore. They either get moderated or they don’t. Who gives a shit? I can write anything. 😛
CowboyUp says
All my posts go into moderation first, but that’s okay with me. They rarely get scrubbed, it just takes longer to hit the comment thread.
TruthLaser says
The AP has a style book to control language. It keeps writers in a straight jacket the better to fool readers. Now, it claims to decide that plagiarism is not an academic violation, but a racist attack based on the target’s identity. Reality to AP is political and agenda driven. In defending Gay, the AP has approved of everything Gay did wrong.
Jeff Bargholz says
The AP is a big promoter of Hamas. That’s all that needs to be said about that evil organization.
CowboyUp says
I still have an ap stylebook from the mid 80s. I’ve been tempted to get a new one to see how much it’s changed. Originally, it was for standardization, and to make articles more clear and concise. Now, it’s to control language and match leftist narratives.
Richard Loewe says
writing something original is supporting a meritocratic system and the idea of meritocracy is a white idea and therefore racist. So Gay is a hero for copying relentlessly with sourcing it.