Academic integrity has become the center of discussion of many questions regarding the use of AI tools like Chat GPT in primary and secondary schools. However, academic integrity has surprisingly become an issue in higher education and not on the side of the students, but at the very heart of the institution–its professors.
Both university presidents and professors have been targeted, from both within and outside their own institutions. Stanford’s former President Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned last August after it was revealed first by the Stanford Daily that 12 of his academic articles contained falsified information. After admitting that his work had many breaches of intellectual integrity, Tessier-Lavigne resigned. There seemed to be little motive besides affirming Stanford’s standards present in the investigation of his work. This is not true for other major academic investigations.
Claudine Gay, the former President of Harvard, became embroiled in controversy after remarks at a congressional hearing in December when she responded that threats to commit genocide against the Jewish people could only be determined as violations of Harvard’s hate speech policy depending on the context in which they were said. Harvard saw a massive backlash from Jewish donors, including Len Blavatnik who is withholding $250 million in potential donations and gave Harvard’s single largest gift in its history of $200 million. During the turmoil, Gay’s academic work was questioned by outsiders, and it was found that she used information from other sources in her doctoral dissertation but failed to cite them. The double punch of an unpopular appearance in Congress and the seemingly targeted investigations of the conservative New York Post into errors in academic work from decades prior caused her fall.
A recent victim of these investigations was Neri Oxman, a former MIT Professor and wife of Bill Ackman, who was one of the most outspoken advocates of President Gay’s resignation. The journalism in this case errs on the side of being predatory. Of all three individuals discussed, Oxman’s targeting is by far the most perplexing. Oxman is not employed by MIT and has not been for several years. Linked directly under Business Insider’s initial headline of their Jan 4. Article “Bill Ackman’s Celebrity Academic Wife Neri Oxman’s dissertation is marred by plagiarism”, it becomes apparent that this is not an attack on Oxman but rather at Ackman and his opposition to Gay’s presidency. Oxman was proven to have failed to cite Wikipedia in her academic work. This is the true beginning of using academic integrity as a proxy war to advance an agenda. The investigations against President Gay were almost certainly motivated by disagreements with her comments and presidency and not by just a normal investigation into higher education figures. Given how Oxman was given very little time to respond to Business Insider’s queries and Ackman’s claim that his company was contacted by the journalist and not Oxman, it is obvious that he is the target and his wife is simply collateral damage. Given that neither Oxman nor Ackman are currently employed in academia, the damage suffered will not be a loss of a job but rather of reputation.
While these investigations will almost certainly lead to higher standards in the practice of academic integrity in the future so that other academics do not suffer these fates, those who have already written works and are in these positions are worried about potential errors. Ackman has said that he and a team will investigate all current MIT professors and administrators for similar discrepancies. While this seems like a pipe dream, it sets a dangerous precedent that academics can be used in a proxy war over political debates in which they are not active. I believe that academics should not be targets as collateral targets. While irrelevant to her statements in Congress, Gay’s former position as an administrator and also having such violations which is her duty to prevent should exclude her from remaining in that capacity. In contrast, in the case against Oxman, while legitimate claims were found, the intent was not to question her academic work but rather to hurt the image of her husband. Academics should have their work questioned when they are hired by institutions and not by sensationalized headlines used to promote an agenda.
