Fourteenth black female Harvard personnel in three weeks to confront plagiarism allegations
A Harvard University sociology professor has been accused of plagiarism by associates, who claim the accusations are false and represent a larger assault on black female academicians.
Christina Cross, a professor at Harvard University who received an award, is being investigated for copying in a complaint that traditional education activist Christopher Rufo first reported in the middle of March.
The problem, provided to Rufo, “documents a design of misuse in Cross’s thesis and one other educational paper”.
According to him,” The problem begins with a few allegations of theft related to the research that range in intensity from minor pieces of “duplicative language,” which may not form an offense, to numerous passages heavily plagiarized from different sources without proper attribution,” he reported.
The College Fix’s request for comment was never responded to by Harvard University’s internet relations department or Professor Cross.
Next week, the Harvard Department of Sociology released a statement in support of Cross from “false claims of plagiarism.”
These fabricated states are especially troubling in the framework of a number of attacks on Black women in universities, with the apparent pretext that they have no position in our universities, according to the statement. Dr. Cross is a beautiful academic who, based on the merit of her award, we placed at the very top of our hiring list when we selected her from a niche of plenty. We are lucky to have her on our university, and she has our full and unmitigated help”.
The complaint alleges in piece that Cross copied a passage from Stacey Bosick and Paula Fomby’s paper, which was uncitations.
Cross reportedly plagiarized the function of scholars who served on her research committee two more times, which would make her more than likely acquainted with their academic works.
” At each wave, the family brain or the family or cohabiting mate of the brain reports on household home composition, employment, earned and earned income, assets, debt, educational attainment, expenditures, housing characteristics, and health and health care in the household”, a passage from Bosick and Fomby’s paper reads. ” In 2015 ( the most recent wave available ), the study collected information on almost 25, 000 individuals in approximately 9, 000 households”.
Cross’s paper reads almost identical, with minor alterations:
” At each wave, the household head or the spouse or cohabiting partner of the head reports on household composition, and household members ‘ employment, income, educational attainment, and health status. In 2015, the study collected information on nearly 25, 000 individuals in approximately 9, 000 households”.
Cross also appears to have lifted almost verbatim a passage from a 2014 paper co- authored by Natasha Pilkauskas titled” Examining the Antecedents of U. S. Nonmarital Fatherhood”, altering only six words, Rufo reported, noting Pilkauskas served on Cross’s dissertation committee.
The new complaint comes a few months after Claudine Gay, a former president of Harvard, resigned following numerous accusations of plagiarism. Gay blamed “racial animus” for the allegations. She has maintained her position as a professor, earning almost$ 900, 000 annually.
Sherri Ann Charleston, the head of Harvard’s division for diversity and inclusion, was also accused of plagiarism in January. She allegedly copied a lot of the text from her 2009 University of Michigan dissertation and gave credit for her husband’s research in a peer-reviewed journal article that allegedly copied a lot of her husband’s work.
A fourth black female employee, Harvard Extension School administrator Shirley Greene, was accused of dozens of instances of plagiarism in her 2008 University of Michigan dissertation, the Harvard Crimson reported in mid- February, which noted that Charleston and Greene do not hold academic appointments.
As for Cross, several scholars she allegedly plagiarized have also defended her from the allegations in a March 21 statement, writing they are “deeply concerned” about this “false allegation”.
” It’s not simply that Dr. Cross’s writings do not constitute plagiarism”, they wrote. Instead, her standardization of a large public dataset is simply good research practice, ensuring reproducibility and transparency. Indeed, this is a common practice among our user communities, and it should remain so to ensure high quality scientific research”.
And Cross was defended by the Journal of Marriage and Family, where Cross serves on the editorial board, against what they called” contemptible attacks aimed at undermining and threatening scholars focused on race and racism, particularly Black women academics.”
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