This is a long thread but you should read the whole thing. It begins as a stunning condemnation of powerful academics and how they use and abuse their students and colleagues to advance their own career while preaching honeyed words to speak of the importance of 'equity' and 'inclusion', and ends in one of the saddest whimpers in recent memory with a defense of Harvard President Claudine Gay from the 'dangerous' practitioners of 'right-wing politics' using the mountain of credible accusations of plagiarism against her because they're racists or something.
Seriously, read the whole thing.
One of the most powerful English professors of the past 40 years stole an argument I made in a seminar presentation, turning it into the core of his next book.
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
The week after my presentation, he came into the classroom and...
1/n https://t.co/N5d1s8Nm0J
...and he read a conference paper he was going to deliver at the Shakespeare Association that month, re-articulating exactly what I had said about the same material the week before. The 15 or so grad students around the seminar table were dumbfounded. Jaws on the floor.
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
2/n
It was the classic Trumpy move: do something illegal, but be so blatant about it, trusting that your power gives you immunity, that somehow committing the criminal act manages to normalize it simultaneously.
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
3/n
I will say, proud of my early-20-something grad-student self, that I went up to him after the seminar and said "I think we may have a problem." To which he responded: "oh no, there's no problem. Hamlet is a big enough play for us both to work in. Give me a hug." And then...
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
4/n
He proceeded to wrap me into his arms and give me a full-body, pelvis-to-pelvis hug, which of course made me freeze, Jean E Carroll style, and then just smile weakly at him when he let me go, patted me on the shoulder, and breezed off down the hallway.
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
5/n
Recommended
At post-seminar drinks that evening (the class would always go out for beers after), the other grad students, still shocked, kept asking me what I was going to do. I think I just shrugged it off, because I soon decided that I would just let him have my idea.
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
6/n
I had chosen Berkeley over other graduate programs not just because it was the best in my field, but also because this guy was there and I wanted him to be my dissertation supervisor. If I had to give him one of my ideas so that he would see I was smart, so be it.
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
7/n
Yes, I realize that this is abject and not the way it works, and the whole story is a symptom of pre-#Metoo workplace politics, but I had no power and he had all the power and I thought he was brilliant. (I want to hug my first-year grad student self. 😢
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
8/n
Anyway, the seminar went great, although I wasn't able to publish the paper that came out of it because, well, this professor had already circulated my argument. But again, I thought his plagiarism was a down payment I was making on an investment which would bring big returns. 🙄
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
And he did favor me all year, in various ways. But then, over the summer, it was announced that he was leaving for Harvard. Which he must have known all along. But of course never told me, leading me on all the while.
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
I never spoke to him again.
10/n
Since then I've heard from many trustworthy sources that this guy has plagiarized arguments from multiple graduate students both at Berkeley and Harvard — AND that his (second) wife got the topic of her second book from one of her graduate students's seminar papers.
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
11/n
Again, the person I'm talking about is perhaps the most celebrated scholar in the field — and a hugely successful crossover author. And EVERYONE KNOWS HE'S A PLAGIARIST.
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
12/n
If you've made it this far you've had a truly damning tale of plagiarism at the highest levels of academia, a full professor taking advantage of someone who is charged to their care for education... someone who is entirely dependent on the goodwill of that person to be able to practice in a field of study that they've spent much of their adult life up until this point putting all of their time and effort in to advancing in in the hopes of working in that field. It's horrifying, and the professor seems like absolute scum... and if Dr. Guenther had left it at that we'd be having a very different conversation. But sadly she did not, she continued and made this whole rant become like something out of a farce.
We'll quote this next one as she devolves into a bit of risqué language unsuitable for our site:
So if there are any doubts over double standards—comparing one white professor stealing whole arguments to a black grad student repeating banal phrases, performing "scholarliness," in her f&*%ing acknowledgements, which are not even ideas—let this anecdote help put them to rest.
Okay... seems like an odd segue. Let's see where she's taking us.
The right is going after Gay because they don't want the kids at Harvard to have any sort of an anti-racist education and they're not even trying to hide it. DON'T FALL FOR IT, FFS. Support Gay. Support DEI. Support anti-racism.
— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023
whatever the number is now, I forget / n
And one last pasted in quote because Genevieve has a potty mouth:
And, yes, US right-wing politics are so dangerous right now that I feel like I have to defend the president of f*&$ing *Harvard*, which is absurd, but that's the power of today's white supremacists, to make *Harvard* a bastion of racial sanity. What a time to be alive.
She's so close top getting it here. Academia is deeply corrupt, and the higher up the academic food chain you go as far as institutional reputation goes the more nasty and corrupt often is. They're circling the wagons to defend President Gay and using literally anything they can think of to defend herm even arguments that are damning to the entirety of higher level academics in a ham-handed attempt to deflect deflect deflect. It's insane.
By far the best criticism of this entire tweet-storm was this guys, which he got in before Dr. Guenther realized she was being responded to by filthy conservatives and shut down replies:
How did you go from a legitimate grievance about plagiarism to labeling any valid criticism of Gay as 'right-wing'? (God, this is so tired; most of us are centrists or center-left.) The discussion shifts to a divisive white/black narrative, when no one critiquing Gay is focused…
— Jake 4️⃣2️⃣ — e/acc (@JakeFortyTwo) December 22, 2023
How did you go from a legitimate grievance about plagiarism to labeling any valid criticism of Gay as 'right-wing'? (God, this is so tired; most of us are centrists or center-left.) The discussion shifts to a divisive white/black narrative, when no one critiquing Gay is focused on her race. In fact, to not critique her is to be racist and apply a different standard. It would be nice if you spent more effort understanding why so many of us are critical of the toxicity of DEI/anti-racism. We can pursue diversity and equality in better ways than labeling everything with an oppressor/oppressed binary, dividing people, and reintroducing segregation. It's not "right-wing" to believe this -- it's now a super-majority position and for good reason. Should we label everything on the far left as "radical left-wing" or "left extremism"? I think everyone should be more neutral and thoughtful. The right answer is both this English professor AND Gay should be criticized.
100% accurate on all counts. This whole thing couples the 'soft bigotry of low expectations' with a weird insistence that apparently because a white man has gotten away in academia with being an intellectual crook then we have to let all members of minority races do whatever they want or risk being branded as racist.
Let's throw them all out, shut down academia as a whole and start from scratch. In the end would we really be losing anything?
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