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Leftist professor 'shaking with rage' because her race-obsessive peer at Harvard was outed as possible plagiarist
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Leftist professor 'shaking with rage' because her race-obsessive peer at Harvard was outed as possible plagiarist

Yet another race obsessive on faculty at Harvard University has been exposed for alleged plagiarism. While scholars might take satisfaction that grifters are being outed, this latest revelation concerning assistant sociology professor Christina Cross has left one leftist professor "actually shaking with rage."

Quick background

Harvard University has been rocked in recent months by plagiarism scandals.

Claudine Gay resigned her post as Harvard's 30th president on Jan. 2 after nearly 50 complaints had been filed against her, implicating seven of her 17 published works, including her 1997 doctoral thesis. Despite disgracing the institution, Gay was able to remain on faculty.

Later that month, affirmative action expert Sherri Ann Charleston, the university's chief diversity and inclusion officer, was slapped with a complaint identifying 40 examples of alleged plagiarism in two of her academic works, including her 2009 dissertation.

A complaint submitted to the chair of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' professional conduct committee in February accused Harvard Extension School administrator Shirley R. Greene of 42 instances of plagiarism — just in her 2008 University of Michigan dissertation.

Critically plagiarized race studies

The latest Harvard plagiarism scandal concerns Christina Cross, an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty affiliate of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Cross — like Greene, a University of Michigan graduate — is apparently an up-and-comer in the field of critical race studies.

In addition to having an impactful article attributed to her in the New York Times, which downplayed the importance of the two-parent family, Cross has enjoyed support from the National Science Foundation.

Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo reported Tuesday that a new complaint has been filed with Harvard's office of research integrity, this time against Cross, claiming her work suffers multiple instances of plagiarism, including "verbatim plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, uncited paraphrasing, and uncited quotations from other sources."

Rufo indicated Cross did not respond to his request for comment.

According to Rufo, Cross is accused of lifting "an entire paragraph nearly verbatim from a paper by Stacey Bosick and Paula Fomby — the latter of whom was her dissertation advisor — without citing the source or placing verbatim language in quotations" in her 2019 dissertation.

In addition to apparently appropriating this entire paragraph without attribution, Cross allegedly plagiarized another full paragraph from Bosick and Fomby later in the paper, making only slight alterations. The complaint indicates that again, Cross failed to place the copied content in quotation marks or properly cite the actual authors.

Rufo stressed that "Cross cannot plead unfamiliarity with the source: Fomby served on Cross's dissertation committee, making the offense even more egregious."

Throughout the paper, the prospective CRT star ostensibly passed off others' ideas and language as her own. In one instance, she allegedly lifted a passage from a paper coauthored by another academic who served on her dissertation committee, again without using direct quotations.

When allegedly adopting real scholars' language as her own, it appears Cross, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, did not even bother to change their unique use of parenthetical notes or italics.

Rufo noted that Cross' apparent trouble expressing herself without adopting the language of others is not limited to her dissertation. The complaint suggests that Cross also plagiarized in a 2018 paper published in the journal Population Studies.

The Manhattan Institute fellow highlighted that Cross' alleged improprieties constitute plagiarism according to Harvard's own definition. The "Harvard Guide to Using Sources" states that "it is considered plagiarism to draw any idea or any language from someone else without adequately crediting that source in your paper."

According the university's latest student handbook, "Students who, for whatever reason, submit work either not their own or without clear attribution to its sources will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including requirement to withdraw from the College."

The fact that Gay, Greene, and Charleston have not been ousted bodes well for Cross, as it appears faculty and staff are not held to the same standard as students.

Literally shaking

Heba Gowayed, an associate professor of sociology at CUNY Hunter College, was devastated to hear about her peer's possible bout of plagiarism — not that Cross had allegedly engaged in it but that she had been caught.

Gowayed, a race-obsessive critic of Israel who has advocated for abolishing border policing and the U.S. citizenship exam, tweeted Thursday, "So today I sat down to work, to write a talk. I then got a text from a friend that a colleague is being attacked purely & solely because she's Black by the same assholes who attacked Claudine Gay. And now it's an hour and a half later. These months have seen so much stolen time."

While evidently more concerned about stolen time than stolen ideas, Gowayed exhausted more time persevering on Cross' forthcoming fall from grace.

"I am actually shaking with rage," continued Gowayed. "I cannot stop obsessing over it. It's KKK level s**t. And I don't know what to do about it. I've never been more worried about what the near future has in store."

Gowayed was not the only academic left trembling by Cross' outing as a likely plagiarist.

Karen Benjamin Guzzo, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote, "I'm just absolutely livid about this."

Guzzo added, "What a nightmare for her to have to go through."

Gowayed and Guzzo were both apparently fired up by Georgetown University professor Don Moynihan's Substack article alleging that exposés such as Rufo's "are examples of backlash, of a post George Floyd Politics" aimed at feeding "a culture of fear within research institutions."

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Joseph MacKinnon

Joseph MacKinnon

Joseph MacKinnon is a staff writer for Blaze News.
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