I’ve refrained from opining on the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay - in part because so many others have done so. The opinions range from “This is just another racist hit job” to “She was an unqualified exemplar of affirmative action run amok” and most everything in between.
Yes, the academic products generated by Dr. Gay were not properly vetted, and had they been, the rest of this conversation would be moot. Of note, academic work published in academic journals is typically vetted with great intensity. To make the point: my husband (with well over 100 pubs) was once accused of plagiarism from a journal to which he had recently submitted his work. Confused, my husband asked for the plagiarized source--it was himself, in a previously published article. The methods section was described as too close to another published study by my husband, which indeed used the same methodology. He rewrote it accordingly. So I am amazed that Dr. Gay's work wasn't challenged much earlier. It clearly doesn't meet anybody's definition of scholarship.
Yes, the academic products generated by Dr. Gay were not properly vetted, and had they been, the rest of this conversation would be moot. Of note, academic work published in academic journals is typically vetted with great intensity. To make the point: my husband (with well over 100 pubs) was once accused of plagiarism from a journal to which he had recently submitted his work. Confused, my husband asked for the plagiarized source--it was himself, in a previously published article. The methods section was described as too close to another published study by my husband, which indeed used the same methodology. He rewrote it accordingly. So I am amazed that Dr. Gay's work wasn't challenged much earlier. It clearly doesn't meet anybody's definition of scholarship.