[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. :)