Billionaire launches plagiarism detection effort against MIT president and all its faculty - Angered by media exposé of his wife’s work, Bill Ackman also vows to audit faculty of other elite schools
Strange to see a man go to war against academics just to prove how common it is for the members of his class to steal from others, just so his wife won’t feel guilty/singled out.
I think there's also something about the wealthy being upset that non-wealthy people are being educated at all.
I think it's the betrayal he feels from the wider academic class too. In some corners of academia the kinds of paraphrasing stuff that's been coming out is an open secret. It's kinda fucked up to crucify one person for doing something you know is happening quite commonly.
The only reason he feels betrayed is because he’s taken an unpopular political position and has tried to strong-arm the academic class into adopting his position. When that failed, he began lashing out through a smear campaign, which his wife then immediately became a casualty of. She caught a stray because he didn’t want to back down.
This is a retaliatory smear campaign to remove anyone who disagrees with him. He wants to hire/fire people until academic leadership reflects his worldview. Since he can’t invoke the unpopular politics which led him to these actions, he’s made Plagiarism the cover of his McCarthyist campaign to root out opposition to his political agenda.
Two people. Two people have been crucified and he supplied the nails, hammer, and 10 foot cross for the first one.
Notable alumni include Lex Luther, Tony Stark and Gordon Freeman. Not the kind of people I’d make enemies of .
This has to stop. Another infantile billionaire tantrum putting the world at risk. Some of these people are working on important shit, many times more important than running ponzis and insider trading.
I’d like to see a coordinated response from academia some how.
The fact that one person has the resources to cause problems for the rest of us is fucking infuriating. These people need to lose their wealth, forcibly if necessary.
Fuck billionaires.
Given the recent successful union drives for graduate workers, we may well see that.
I mean, yeah, fuck billionaires, but if you can prove plagiarism then prove it.
A fraud is a fraud