Why Is Plagiarism Okay for University Presidents but Not Students?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the simple fact that any organization – family, business, church, community, state, nation, or even terrorist group – must have unity of purpose rules, standards, or laws to build unity. There is no unity in any organization when some people are treated one way, and other people are treated another way.

There is currently a national conversation about plagiarism. Many universities have some crazy ideas when it comes to hiring professors and presidents of universities. Case in point is Claudine Gay’s ouster as Harvard University president for plagiarism. She was allowed to resign – not fired – and is still being paid about one million dollars by the university.

Every single class that I have taken for the past eight years has had instructions about plagiarism and how to avoid it. Plagiarism is theft – theft of ideas, theft of words, and theft of credit for doing the work.  Gay is an outright thief!

Representative J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) explained why plagiarism is not the “most important point about Gay’s resignation. According to Vance, the most critical point is that she was hired in the first place – “the most prestigious job in higher education – with such a thin record of academic accomplishment.” He listed several reasons why hiring her was such a bad idea. 

Gay has never published an article – even a plagiarized one – that really mattered or advanced scholarship significantly. She got her job not through merit but because she checked a box. In this, she is not an outlier but a representative of a system of education that rewards mediocrity.…

Our entire elite is like this. People who got their jobs because they checked boxes, not because they achieved something amazing or accomplished something meaningful. That is now the purpose of our elite universities: to give credentials that signal fake merit rather than rely on real excellence.

After pointing out the problem with Gay, Vance then castigated all elites who received their credentials by checking a box. He mentioned several distinct types of elites –

·         Public health experts “who want you to mask toddlers in their schools to stop the spread of a respiratory virus. These public health experts are not smart or accomplished….”

·         Economists “who tell you that mass migration raises the wages of the working class or has no effect on housing prices…. These economists are not smart or accomplished….”

·         Foreign policy experts “who will tell you that we should allow East Asia to make all of our steel, phones, and pharmaceuticals while sending all of our weapons to a war in Eastern Europe that has little to do with our core national interests. These foreign policy experts are not smart or accomplished….”

·         Attorneys “who tell you that Donald Trump committed ‘insurrection’ and should be thrown off the ballot. They have no special legal knowledge. They are political hacks pretending to be lawyers, and they are not smart or accomplished….”

·         Doctors “who tell you to prescribe experimental pharmaceuticals to gender-confused children. These doctors are not smart or accomplished….”

Vance said that all the categories of so-called “experts” – public health experts, economists, foreign policy experts, attorneys, and doctors – “are not smart or accomplished” because they “have a credential from an institution that cares more about box-checking than merit.” He then gave the following explanation:

The real story of Harvard is not Claudine Gay’s firing but this: you are ruled by thousands of people who are just as mediocre. Their power relies on tax advantages from the federal government, a DEI bureaucracy backed by Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, and the implicit consent of millions of Americans.

I say we withdraw that consent and all the favors that come along with it.

Gay was hired because she is a Black woman, not because of merit. As long as our families, educational systems, communities, or nations continue to have different laws and standards for diverse groups of people, there will always be division. The non-favored will be called racists, sexists, etc., while wondering why they are treated unfairly. As the unfairness continues, division will grow until there can be no unity.