Hell hath no fury like a Bill Ackman scorned: For those just tuning in, let me catch you up on the Harvard/antisemitism/plagiarism scandal that just won’t end.
Back in December, three elite university presidents—including Harvard President Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, and MIT President Sally Kornbluth—were trotted before Congress to give testimonies related to their handling of antisemitic speech and pro-Palestine activism on campus. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R–N.Y.) raked them all over the coals, declaring their answers unsatisfactory and insensitive and full of legalese, and Magill soon resigned.
Harvard initially stood by Gay, but then a mostly conservative collection of journalists and activists—as well as some big donors, like hedge fund manager Bill Ackman—publicized her extensive track record of plagiarism. Gay resigned, but not before calling everyone racist. (She is a black woman, and she claims that that’s the real reason people tried to take her down.)
Now Business Insider has accused Ackman’s wife—Neri Oxman, an entrepreneur and former MIT professor—of plagiarism herself. Oxman, they say, “stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars and technical documents in her academic writing.” (As an aside: Oxman’s work is interesting. “Her team at the MIT Media Lab coaxed silkworms to build sculptures,” notes the article. Oxman “also made undulating structures out of natural materials like cellulose and chitin, the material found in shrimp cells.”)
Now, Ackman has basically sworn revenge: “There has been no due process,” wrote Ackman this morning on X. “Neri Oxman was given 90 minutes to respond to a 7,000-word plagiarism allegation before Business Insider published a piece saying she was a plagiarist.” For the record, it’s good to give sources sufficient time to respond, but that’s not quite a due process issue.
“This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews,” he declared, vowing to helpfully review the work of all Business Insider reporters and MIT faculty, after claiming that Insider‘s source is most likely inside MIT. (Side-by-side reviews for plagiarism are getting easier and faster to do in the era of artificial intelligence.)
Now Ackman’s allegiance to his wife is being alternately memed and criticized:
when he says "I love you," but ackman said "would they accuse you of plagiarism, I would burn the institutions to the ground, and salt the earth where they once stood, let there be a thousand dark ages, and you, lordess of my castle laboratory, my dark queen for eternity"
— Mike Solana (@micsolana) January 7, 2024
This all started in early Oct. when Bill Ackman went ballistic and tried to ruin the lives of some 18 year old Harvard students, get them blacklisted over an Israel letter, and got upset university leaders didn’t help with this project, so he escalated — v pathetic news cycle.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 7, 2024
Truly Shakespearean if Bill Ackman's wife loses her academic career because her husband led a national charge against the very crime she committed many years ago.
— Joe Colangelo (@Itsjoeco) January 5, 2024
Bill Ackman is literally trying to claim that you can copy Wikipedia wholesale and claim it as your own because it’s “open source”
If you ever had the misconception that billionaires were all brilliant, let his words disabuse you of the notion. https://t.co/Q5PlbvC1ay
— Whey Standard (@Whey_standard) January 8, 2024
On one hand, it’s fair to collectively groan Why do we have another goddamn Harvard-related news cycle? On the other, we’re in a weird moment for plagiarism and the related subject of intellectual property. If ChatGPT is the death knell for plenty of academic writing, maybe it’s replacing something that had already mostly withered and died.
The focus of the Harvard kerfuffle could have been the initial congressional testimony, and the speech double standards present on college campuses. Or it could’ve been the intellectual bankruptcy of DEI bureaucracy. Instead, it is becoming trench warfare over plagiarism, which seems like the dumbest possible way for this to all go.
Israel pummels Hezbollah: Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari says the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have struck Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon in retaliatory fire, killing at least seven fighters. The IDF claims that Hezbollah struck an Israeli military base on Saturday, most likely due to Israel’s killing of a senior Hamas leader inside Lebanon last week.
Though war has been raging between Israel and Hamas since October 7, when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, killing 1,200 civilians—in some cases brutally raping and beheading the victims—many had hoped that other factions in the Middle East, particularly those backed by Iran, would not be drawn into the conflict. With the increased Israel-Hezbollah conflict, as well as Houthi activity snarling global shipping and provoking some U.S. military action, that’s not looking likely.
Scenes from New York:
Surfer politics, spotted in Rockaway.
QUICK HITS
- The Supreme Court will decide whether former President Donald Trump can be kept off ballots via the 14th Amendment, which includes a section barring officials who have “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office. Oral arguments will be held on February 8.
- Congress returns this week and is supposed to pass some funding bills, as another shutdown deadline looms on January 19.
- A story about a salon upcharge for clients with autism is making the rounds, but the actual underlying facts seem…mostly fine, like a hairstylist is catering to an underserved market.
- The National Park Service apparently has nothing better to do with its time than tear down statues of old white men.
- Please enjoy the absolute worst segment on the Claudine Gay scandal, involving the most Hilaria Baldwin–esque overpronunciation of the word Latino you could possibly imagine.
- “Often, when an issue becomes polarized, you’ll see thermostatic effects in public opinion, as when Democrats became more liberal on immigration in response to Donald Trump’s histrionic attacks on immigrants,” writes Josh Barro on Very Serious. “But while liberal figures on campus like to talk about themselves as a vanguard in a fight against conservative know-nothings who would take down knowledge and expertise, there is no pro-college backlash among liberals that is apparent in the polls.”
- Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 had an accident while up in the air, and part of the plane flew off. A few injuries were sustained, but all passengers survived following an emergency landing.
- Tell me you don’t know what unrealized gains are without telling me you don’t know what unrealized gains are:
BREAKING: Billionaires and centimillionaires held $8.5 TRILLION in untaxed, unrealized capital gains in 2022.
Unrealized gains are the largest source of income for the ultra-rich—but they're completely UNTAXED under our tax code.
This is why we need a billionaire income tax ???? pic.twitter.com/0ewB3H05SQ
— Americans For Tax Fairness (@4TaxFairness) January 3, 2024
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