Welcome to a discussion about the upcoming 5th Revolution in the US, which I’ve titled the “Revenge Revolution.” For more about the Revenge Revolution and the author, click “About the Author” tab.  Periodically I write a “sense check” to assess whether a revolution in the US is possible or whether the entire exercise is based on a statistical aberration — i.e., a roughly 50-year cycle between major upheavals in the US. The previous “sense check” was ENTRY #500.

BEGIN ENTRY #501: Back after a couple of weeks off. An article in the New York Times 01/14/2024 discussed the emerging battleground in education is focused on to what extent academic papers have proper attributions and citations. You know that those people — the left-leaning academics — have no new ideas and are constantly plagiarizing information. 

Yes, there are some people who don’t cite properly. However valid the discussion, the hype seems blown out of proportion.  Many of the alleged “significant” instances of plagiarism are minor oversights. Writing an academic paper can be grueling, especially for those not schooled in all the requirements. In my thesis at MIT, no doubt there are a couple of instances where I failed to make a proper citation or attribution. I hope not, but given the time crunch, and the relatively young age, I might not have appreciated the importance of doing so.

Right-wind politicians are having a field day by “outing“ so-called progressive academics who have failed to site properly.  An example is Bill Ackman, a wealthy hedge fund manager. Ackman has been a critic of Claudine Gay since she was installed as president of Harvard. What makes Ackman qualified to evaluate another’s academic credentials remains a mystery. But like some people with money, Ackman feels qualified to comment on issues he knows little or nothing about. 

Since all’s fair in love and war, another group then found evidence that Ackman’s wife, a former MIT professor, had not properly attributed some passages in her PhD thesis. Her response was that in the 330-page thesis there were only 100 words or so not properly attributed. She apologized for the “oversight.”

Ackman, apparently satisfied that his wife had made an innocent mistake, but like all zealots unwilling to let things pass, then vowed to study the thesis and other academic papers of every professor at MIT to ensure there was proper attribution.  Little Billy Ackman, go waste your time on something else.

In Ackman’s world, Martin Luther King should have stopped his famous “I Have a Dream” speech and noted that the “promised land” was first mentioned in Exodus, and that MLK’s remarks that he might not get to the “promised land” should have been attributed to Leviticus.

By right-wind standards, Trump in his speeches should attribute some of his remarks to his second-grade reader, and other remarks to his hero, Adolf Hitler.  Of course, MAGAts have a separate set of standards for Trump. 

Fair to say all academics should be a bit more careful about citations. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If Republicans zealots had their way, there would be no academic papers, only gut feelings. An example is the effort by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who prior to dropping out of the presidential race, issued an order that allows certain school districts in Florida to ban that awful book first published by Noah Webster. That book called, yikes, a dictionary.  Why ban Webster’s handiwork?  Because the dictionary might contain words that would influence the behavior of school-age children. 

Anti-education zealots go put on your big boy pants and realize one of the key policies that made America great and different than most other countries was a free, public education. A public education with a curriculum that taught children how to think. END ENTRY #501

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