Yet another Harvard University diversity chief and diversity hire has been unmasked as a plagiarizer.
This time, the culprit is the extension school’s Shirley Greene, billed as the Title IX Resource Coordinator for Students in the Office for Gender Equity, yet another university program set up to discriminate against students woke officialdom doesn’t like.
The City Journal’s Christopher Rufo revealed that Greene ripped off “more than 40 passages” from other writers for her nonsense dissertation, Converging Frameworks: Examining the Impact of Diversity-Related College Experiences on Racial/Ethnic Identity Development, published in 2008.
Greene is the third administrator revealed as an academic fraudster at the nation’s oldest and most prestigious university.
The Complaint
The university’s Crimson reported on the allegations 10 days ago.
“The allegations ranged from ‘plain silly’ to ‘especially worrisome,’ according to plagiarism expert Jonathan Bailey, who runs the blog Plagiarism Today and independently reviewed the complaint at The Crimson’s request,” the newspaper reported:
Bailey wrote in an email that the contents of the complaint were “definitely enough” to “warrant a thorough review of this dissertation,” though he added that many of the allegations “either don’t prove plagiarism or only point to very minor errors.”
But Rufo reported that the full complaint “paints a much more damning indictment of Greene’s scholarship than the student newspaper had let on. Seen in its entirety, the complaint raises serious questions about Greene’s scholarship and academic integrity.”
In the most serious instance, Greene lifts directly from Janelle Lee Woo’s 2004 dissertation, Chinese American Female Identity. In two significant sections, Greene copied words, phrases, passages, and almost entire paragraphs verbatim, without proper attribution or quotation. She also copies most of an entire table on “Racial/Ethnic Identity Development Models,” a foundational concept in the paper, without acknowledging the source.
Here is Woo:
Stage 2, White Identification (WI), is a direct consequence of the increase in significant contact between the individual and white society. This stage entails the sense of being different from other people and not belonging anywhere. The individual’s self-perception changes from neutral/positive to negative, and she begins to internalize the belief systems of white society. Consequently, the individual does not question what it means to be Asian American. The individual alienates herself from other Asian Americans, while simultaneously experiencing social alienation from her white peers. Only when the individual seeks to “acquire a political understanding of [her] social status” (Kim 1981: 138) does she enter into the next stage.
Here is Greene’s version:
White Identification (WI), is a direct consequence of the increase in significant contact between the individual and white society. Individuals in this stage have the sense of being different from other people and not belonging anywhere. Their self-perception changes from neutral/positive to negative and they begin to internalize the belief systems of white society. Consequently, the individual fails to question what it means to be Asian American and alienates themselves from other Asian Americans, while simultaneously experiencing social alienation from their white peers. In order to move to the next stage, the individual must acquire a political understanding of social status.
In another case, she copied Stanford University Professor Anthony Antonio’s Developing Leadership Skills for Diversity:
Antonio:
Astin found that independent of students’ entering characteristics and different types of college environments, frequent interracial interaction in college was associated with increases in cultural awareness, commitment to racial understanding, commitment to cleaning up the environment, and higher levels of academic development (critical thinking skills, analytical skills, general and specific knowledge, and writing skills) and satisfaction with college.
Greene:
Astin found that independent of students’ entering characteristics and different types of college environments, frequent interracial interaction in college was associated with increases in cultural awareness, commitment to racial/ethnic understanding, commitment to cleaning up the environment, and higher levels of academic development (critical thinking skills, analytical skills, general and specific knowledge, and writing skills) and satisfaction with college.
Rufo reported that the complaint nailed Greene on everything from “minor infringements to what appears to be outright theft of concepts and language.”
Previous Allegations
In January, the Washington Free Beacon unveiled the plagiarism of Sherri Ann Charleston, Harvard’s chief diversity and inclusion officer.
The 37-page complaint about Charleston alleged 40 plagiarized passages in Charleston’s doctoral dissertation for the University of Michigan in 2009, The Fruits of Citizenship: African Americans, Military Service, and the Cause of Cuba Libre, 1868-1920.
Before Charleston was brought to book, Rufo and Christopher Brunet revealed that Claudine Gay plagiarized other writers in her doctoral thesis.
Gay was forced out as president, but stayed on at the school at the same $900,000 salary.
At the time, The Associated Press claimed that plagiarism was a right-wing conspiracy theory.
All three women violated Harvard’s plagiarism policy and Honor Code. Plagiarism, the university guidebook clearly says, is “the act of either intentionally OR unintentionally submitting work that was written by someone else.”
The Honor Code is clear:
Cheating on exams or problem sets, plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs.
“Harvard should ask itself a simple question,” Rufo wrote:
How did so many alleged plagiarists rise to positions of power at the nation’s most prestigious university? If Harvard officials believe that they can shrug off the university’s growing plagiarism crisis, they should know that this may just be the beginning. My sources indicate that many more allegations may be coming.
If true, the university might have to review the work of every diversity, equity, and inclusion officer and every professor hired through DEI policy.
