Glenn Reynolds: Bill Ackman Frightening Leftists Because He’s Holding Universities Accountable
Woke activists are finally experiencing much needed accountability due to the action of outside forces.
We recently reported that billionaire Bill Ackman, a Harvard alumnus who was a major contributing factor in Claudine Gay’s resignation, declared plagiarism war on MIT after his wife’s thesis was attacked.
In his recent column in the New York Post, Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds notes that leftists are now panicked as they are finally experiencing accountability due to the action of outside forces.
A world in which Ivy League presidents have to care what people outside their institutions think is a new world indeed and not a very welcome one to residents of the Ivy bubble.
Ackman is doubling down. With help from artificial-intelligence technology (and his extensive and well-paid research staff), he’s looking for plagiarism among university administrators and faculty, and odds are he’ll find quite a bit.
As a defensive move, the left-leaning press is trying to normalize plagiarism and stigmatize concerns about it as a “conservative weapon.”
…
..[A}s University of Southern California law professor Michael Simkovic notes, outside pressure can influence schools, if anyone cares to exert it: “Universities are deeply financially vulnerable and highly dependent on federal funding and federal policy.”
I think we’ll see more activist alumni like Ackman, more journalistic scrutiny and more government pressure for universities to do a better job.
And it’s about time.
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Comments
Thank you Bill Ackman.
I fear that even if the plagiarist faculty is dealt with, the antisemite faculty will remain.
But sincere thank you to you anyway.
It’s possible screening for plagiarism might indirectly screen for antisemitism. Because antisemitism is at root an unfalsifiable conspiracy theory, antisemites seem to have problems with the whole rational thinking thing.
It’s a start–now if he can convince his friends in business and industry not to hire Ive League graduate, thus reducing the value of their degrees, we’ll really see some progress
Maybe they just give up on a plaque that might have been special in the past but today hires people like Steiger, Gay, Lightfoot, Sen. Warren etc.
Maybe they could come up with an ACKMAN INSTITUTE — to be affiliated with, say, New School Florida, or Touro International, or maybe Hillsdale.
It could conceivably be so effective that it could be me more desirable than the Qatar-funded Sunni Institutes at Harvard and Columbia and Ann Arbor and Berkeley and Penn and George Washington etc.
place
Not plaque
One way to get Ackman to change his mind would be loud demonstrators doing vandalism and blocking access to his home.
Right?
More, please.
Gay getting axed as president is simply Chapter 1 to me. I would like to see a Chapter 2 that focuses on her hiring and the internal documents that placed her above other candidates. I am pretty sure that some EOE complaints could be generated there by the other candidates. Then we could move on to Chapter 3 which would be her dissertation, and I doubt that the stuff in her Journal Publications materialized. More likely a lifelong pattern, so now we get to take a look at her committee, and what have those members done either differently with Gay, or will we discover a pattern of advancing some and holding back others. I know that as far back as the 80’s that there were special programs for “some” students in medical school. The unofficial policy is that once you were admitted, they would go through hell and high water to keep you there.
With Gay it would not be a case of simply piling-on after the fact, but rather a detailed study to further expose the rot.
If the Ivy League people stayed inside their bubble, that objection would be reasonable, but Ivy League grads leave the Ivy League bubble every year with the expectation that they are going to run the world. Which is the way it has been forever. These days, Ivy League Wokesters go out in the world with the intention of converting the heathen conservative Republican cave dwellers to their “enlightened” Wokeism. The outside world now threatening to impinge on the Ivy league shows that turnabout is fair play.
Not sure that there is evidence that the Left has ever believed in ‘fair play’
Besides going after the plagiarists producing no work of meaningful value, I hope Ackman also looks into the replicability crisis. Many studies and experiments, even in the hard sciences, cannot be replicated with the same results, yet the authors continue to get salaries and grants.
Most universities seem to be worthless these days. The teaching side is completely politicized and the research side can’t be trusted. A scam funded with student loans.