Harvard’s former president, Claudine Gay, was shown to have frequently taken the work of others and passed it off as her own. So have other “scholars” of lesser fame. When those cases came to light, some people scoffed and said, “It’s no big deal — just some picky rules about citation.”
In today’s Martin Center article, economics professor Jon Murphy explains why the rules against plagiarism matter and need to be enforced.
He writes:
The problem is that “borrowing” the words written by others and passing them off as your own is dishonest. It’s intellectual theft. Colleges and universities need to uphold and exemplify moral standards, including respect for the property of others. Plagiarism cannot be allowed any more than more tactile forms of stealing.
Yes — moral standards. The left has scant regard for them.
Murphy points out that all colleges and universities have rules against plagiarism that students must abide by. It would undermine the rule of law if exalted people such as Claudine Gay were allowed to do what students may not. And he’s troubled by the fact that there are quite a few who say that her plagiarism should be ignored:
The sorts of lazy excuses offered by Voss and others morally cannot hold water. The fact people offer them suggests the academy is failing in its most basic duties: the unwavering search for truth, the education of the next generation, and academic integrity. By offering these excuses with a perfectly straight face, those academics are demonstrating the corruption and the utter failure of higher education.
Indeed so.