[IsaacL]

We (as outsider observers) lack the evidence to judge this story objectively. It sucks to be unfairly accused of plagiarism (it happened to me once in high school).

However, we don't know why the professor came to the conclusion that she plagiarised. Maybe they jumped to conclusions on limited evidence, or maybe this paper was written with vocabulary and sentence structure which was inconsistent with the student's earlier work. Either way, it's incredibly unlikely that an academic professor of sociology would be a closet racist.

tl;dr It's unfair to be accused of plagiarism for submitting a paper which sounds "too intelligent", but it's also unfair to be accused of racism for attempting to enforce academic standards.

Unfortunately, this a story which is going to press the internet's hot buttons.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

One of the benefits of being someone else is we have the luxury of not experiencing her pain.

When I read this piece, I immediately flashed back to my first week of college, decades ago.

Apparently on the basis of my entrance essay, the school decided I should skip English 101 and placed me in ENGL102 the first semester. When we received the first assignment (a criticism and synopsis of some article I don't remember) back from the professor, held back the two he thought were the best to ask those students to read them to the class as examples of what he wanted to see.

It was too early for him to know our names so he called the first name and gave that student his paper to read. Then he called my name and I raised my hand. I'm black. He did an obvious double-take, looked down at the paper to verify that he had picked up the right one, then looked up, raised his eyebrows slightly and brought it to me. It was impossible to miss the subtext and I just stared at him for a few seconds, then shrugged internally and read the damn thing.

You don't always have the benefit of knowing all sides to a story, but often, even knowing only one side, conclusions can be drawn fairly accurately.

[subjectsigma]

The fact that you're being down voted means you're absolutely correct about two things: that 1) this is a very emotionally charged story and emotionally charged pieces are hard to discuss civilly, and 2) we as commenter cannot truly judge the situation, especially with only one side speaking out. The rest I don't know about - it seems definitely possible that the professor could be a racist, I don't know why you would say it is 'incredibly unlikely'.

I'd say the professor was wrong in this situation no matter what happened for publicly humiliating a student and also thinking one suspicious word warrants an accusation of plagiarism. However there is nothing in the article that indicates that the professor was specifically targeting her for her race, other than 'I deal with racism every day'. Without knowing more about the situation it's hard to say more. Despite this, there's quite a few comments in this thread already that seem emotionally loaded.

Think about it this way: A while ago an article was posted about discrimination against conservative Christians in academia, and some of the discussion here was appallingly hypocritical; the same kinds of people advocating diversity in race, culture, and thought were openly admitting that they don't think Christians, as a group, should be allowed in decision-making processes, because they're obviously all gullible idiots. Does that mean when I go for my PhD I would be justified in writing my own teary blog post should someone act condescending and rude to me? Would I be justified regardless of whether the discrimination was real or perceived? Would such a post be received with positive feedback? Would I be allowed to call academia 'completely broken'?

[ivraatiems]

> However there is nothing in the article that indicates that the professor was specifically targeting her for her race, other than 'I deal with racism every day'. Without knowing more about the situation it's hard to say more. Despite this, there's quite a few comments in this thread already that seem emotionally loaded.

It seemed pretty clear that the author is drawing an inference that "not your language" means "you don't speak English well enough to use this word or write like this," and therefore, that the author was cheating. I think that is a reasonable inference given the context provided, assuming it's all truthful.

[nickpsecurity]

"It seemed pretty clear that the author is drawing an inference that "not your language" means "you don't speak English well enough to use this word or write like this,""

It's not clear. Your own bias makes you think that's clear. The alternative is that the instructor believes it's plagiarism. This means they thinks they've seen what's in front of them before exactly as worded in uncommon scenario or they sees an odd discrepancy between that paper and prior work of hers. Several people have already showed up in the comments pointing this out with one person catching real cheaters using this method. That validates it's a hypothesis that must be ruled out as we determine what caused the decision.

Unfortunately, we don't have enough data to do that. All we can be sure of was their evidence appears weak, how they handled it should get them reprimanded/fired, and we only heard one side of the story by an individual with extreme bias on this sort of thing which pervades the whole article. So, I'd like to hear what the professor or other people there said about that event, the professor, and her. Past that, I have to address it conditionally like "If professor did this, then it might have been reasons X or Y with terrible corrective action taken. Source leans toward X based on personal experiences but no data to support either."

Note: There's also other forms of discrimination based on language besides race in terms of what you expect of different kinds of skill levels, institutions, local dialects, etc. I've had many experiences with discrimination based on how I write or speak from white and black people of both genders with women doing it much more to me than men. In the white cases, race usually had no element in it since I'm white but they were still judgmental pricks with their own biases with impact on my future. It's why I'm pro-merit and anti-superficial.

Edit: Had to change some pronouns because my own bias made me assume something. Bias is that sneaky!

[dismantlethesun]

You're arguing past him.

The author believes that the professor is racist, and writes as if it is true.

That's all that the above poster really said. It's not an indiciation that anyone believes that this is true.

[nickpsecurity]

I hate retractions but you're probably right. I was reading so many comments that I missed one set of words in that one: "was cheating." Changes meaning of whole comment. So, my elaboration of the points makes sense but totally wrong comment to drop them. Thanks for counter as I sometimes make these mistakes doing too much at once. :)

[jseliger]

it's incredibly unlikely that an academic professor of sociology would be a closet racist.

That's probably true in the sense of using racial slurs or joining the KKK or something like that, but IME of academia in grad school as an adjunct, lots of people are paternalistic or condescending—often without quite realizing that they are (which would be consistent with the original article).

Efforts to be culturally sensitive can also backfire in incredible, spectacular ways (for example: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/22/how-do-you-know-when-your...).

[qntty]

These sort of discussions always bother me, for a few reasons

1. There's no such thing as a single reason for doing anything. Humans are too complex for that. So to frame this as a question of "she did it because of race" vs "race has nothing to do with it" is naive at best.

2. It's more or less impossible for anyone to be unaffected by race. Sociology professors are no exception. When you meet someone you've never met before, you can't (no matter how hard your try) encounter a "blank slate" of a person. Your brain would be dangerously inefficient if you didn't jump to conclusions for superficial reasons literally all the time.

Taken together, this means:

3. Clearly race had something to do with it. This shouldn't be a question. The question is exactly how much did it have to do with it.

[Pharylon]

Maybe not an active KKK-rally attending racist, but a soft racist? There's a reason why two identical resumes for post-graduate work get rated differently when the names are "Chad" vs "Shaniqua".

The fact is, when you really get down to it, most people are subconsciously racist. Not a joke - most people. There have been studies on it and everything.

[HarryHirsch]

If you replace the names with "MIT" and "mediocre four-year institution that no-one ever heard of" suddenly it becomes less straightforward. Race is a proxy for education, and that's where the real injustice is.

[kaitai]

Race is not just a proxy for education. Racism affects Asian-Americans, despite their good educational track record as a broad group; African immigrants, despite the fact that Nigerian immigrants and Nigerian-Americans make up the immigrant group with the largest number of PhDs per capita in the US immigrant landscape; and British immigrants, who everyone thinks are smart because of the accent (despite no better educational attainment than anyone else).

The real injustice is that my black students cannot earn or learn their way out of being black in America. A Caltech education doesn't help when you're pulled over by the cops. This blogger's ability to use "Hence" in a literature review won't help either.

[IsaacL]

"The fact is, when you really get down to it, most people are subconsciously racist. Not a joke - most people."

If this is true, why the moral outrage towards the professor?

[CuriousCosmic]

Because everyone has some amount of racism whether they realise it or not but it still is not acceptable to display that racism. Sure having some racist thoughts isn't great but just like with almost every other unacceptable topic, everybody thinks about it sometime. It is only a problem when it becomes verbal/affecting others. That is why people are upset with him.

[kaitai]

1) Polite people try to cover up their racism; it's not socially acceptable in the US. This is not the case in all countries -- I've been in other countries where certain levels are racism are really still A-OK. For instance, in some Scandinavian countries it's not unusual to have a housing contract that says the place can't be rented or sold to Roma/Gypsies. Few people see anything wrong with that -- it's something you just obviously wouldn't want to happen!

2) The professor should be better at their job (I say as a prof). I accuse students of plagiarism only if I have proof, and the last 4 times it's happened I've been able to highlight passages and provide the citation of the original paper, with the page number. Or I can show the student their peer's paper with the same exact sentences and typos. I'm sure it's plagiarism. If I can't prove it, I poke around. I ask the student to come in and describe their process to me, talk through their notes. This works. People crack, or they reveal their legit process. Sometimes that legit process includes a crappy first draft that got immensely better via four sessions with the Writing Center. Great. Sometimes their not-quite-legit process involves too much help from their girlfriend. Then we have a talk about what's appropriate and how they can rectify the situation.

[danharaj]

Because the professor is in a position of power and they abused that power because of their biases. Prejudice is far more damaging when paired with power than without. It is injustice. If injustice is not worth moral outrage, what is?

[GunboatDiplomat]

If we're all racist, and that racism is enough to condemn any of us at the whim of someone else, what's the point in trying to not be racist?

[krapp]

Unlike many other animals, humans have the capacity for abstract thought, moral consideration, and behavior not entirely driven by instinct.

As such, we can recognize the harmful effect of fallacies such as racial prejudice, both on ourselves and on society as a whole, and utilize our ability as sentient beings to avoid such behavior.

[ASpring]

> Either way, it's incredibly unlikely that an academic professor of sociology would be a closet racist.

Just as unlikely as a priest being a pedophile.

[rocqua]

No matter the context in which the professor came to the conclusion of plagiarism, the public shaming remains a terrible thing.

It is simply never OK to try and put someone down, even more so when you are someones administrative superior.

[danharaj]

> Either way, it's incredibly unlikely that an academic professor of sociology would be a closet racist.

Your priors are naive. To be honest.

[nickpsecurity]

You should see the comment section of that web site. I read them all since I like watching people's behavior in these things. Her audience is mostly people 100% agreeing with her interpretation of things with a clear message: "any counterpoints are people clueless about racism esp if it's white people and all whites might as well shut up anyway since it's inconceivable for them to have ever felt something similar regardless of circumstances." [1] There's recurring patterns in the responses vs what I see in similar articles' comments that effectively cause censorship where there's little argument as the comments have total dismissal built in to them. In this case, unless I missed on, there was no argument after the first counterpoint posted by each commenter. So censorship worked to point one skin color and one gender were pushed out of being heard commenting on an article that's about people of non-dominant, skin colors and/or genders not being heard with any credibility.

As disgusting and racist as the kinds of haters they claim to oppose. About the only one that seemed especially fair among the supporters of her claims was one claiming the post itself might be highly-biased due to it being a catharsis of sorts that may lead to a constructive response to her situation she hasn't elaborated on. I could easily see that possibility being it's her personal blog & she left identifying information off. Past that, I knew I shouldn't comment as specific people there would disqualify it on color/gender, imply I couldn't conceive similar things, imply the stated bias was true since it was a minority that claimed to experience it, and drag me into a bunch of tangents unrelated to data original source provided. That's what they did to the others. Hence, my suspicion it would happen to me.

[1] I review this from perspective of a white male who grew up in mostly black areas where hating on whites was norm and redneck areas that weren't big on intellectual or "soft" types. I experienced subtle and overt racism + discrimination constantly that hurt my education, cost me jobs, got me targeted by authority figures more, got me served last at lunch lines, question whether I was the problem, etc. So, I have to work extra hard maintaining balance and rational approach to reviewing stuff when the comments basically act like I never experienced that or play it off as existential vs circumstantial or some other nonsense. Yes, we do experience it with those of us in minority areas experiencing it at the level of blacks except there's more beatdowns of us and murder in general. That they keep pretending we don't despite our claims and journal introspection being almost identical to theirs is itself a form of racism. I always point that out in case someone assumes I'm a white, suburban guy from middle class home in a white area going to college on a football scholarship or something.