You can imagine the people in the p.r. office at Harvard, praying for some bit of news to knock the issue of antisemitism at Harvard from the news cycle—and then they got what they wished for. Now all the talk is about whether Claudine Gay, the school’s president, is a plagiarist.
Without going into all the specific accusations of plagiarism (you can read round-ups here and here), some of which seem rather thin to me, and a couple of which don’t, I want to focus on what is perhaps the most baffling one, because I think it sheds some light on the minds of certain plagiarists. You may have read that Gay copied portions of her acknowledgments from another scholar (this screen shot is from the social media of Christopher Rufo):
And you may have thought, when you read this, that there was something especially bizarre about copying someone else’s acknowledgments. All plagiarism is indefensible, but at least it’s understandable why someone would steal or “borrow” someone else’s explanation of a difficult concept, deep inside a scholarly article: it’s hard to put certain ideas into language, and if someone else has done it for you, there’s a corner to be cut. But for most of us writers, acknowledgments—the section at the beginning, or sometimes the end, in which we thank other writers, our fifth-grade teacher, our husband or wife, for all their help—are an easy, breezy, fun thing to write. I am in the middle of writing a book, and some days what keeps me going is the thought that, later this year, I’ll have a finished manuscript and get to write my acknowledgments.
Also, acknowledgments are incredibly personal: they’re a way of saying “I love you” to specific people who have helped you along the way. Specific people, or places: the historian Jonathan Spence thanked the late New Haven pizza joint Naples for providing a place where he could spread out his legal pads and write The Search for Modern China:
So who on earth plagiarizes acknowledgments?
Here is one possible answer: people who really hate writing, or for whom the act of writing is very difficult.
Writing is hard, even for most writers. Most of us would rather watch TV, push back our cuticles, or master the latest pour-over coffee method. Whenever I read the biographies of writers, I take notice of all the ways that we avoid writing; one reason we drink, party, brawl, carouse (or in my case, walk the dog, make omelets, and search for discount dog-insignia boxer shorts on the web) is to avoid writing. My theory is that there is only one form of art that is consistently pleasurable to practice, rehearse, and produce, and that’s music: rock and jazz musicians, anyway, seem to enjoy practicing with the band, jamming, gigging, recording—all of it. But writing is lonely and difficult, and I avoid it like a telemarketer’s phone call.
Writing is very hard, even for most writers. Most of us would rather watch TV, push back our cuticles, or master the latest pour-over coffee method.
And I’m good at it. Plenty of people required to write for their jobs are bad at it, and that includes many scholars. That Claudine Gay is a good or even excellent political scientist—and I have no reason to doubt that she is—means only that she is industrious and creative at researching problems and formulating answers to certain questions; it does not mean that putting those questions and answers down in clear, compelling prose is something that she is good at. Many scholars are famously bad writers; one imagines that the bad ones hate the process most. (Some bad writers think they are good, but the majority know they aren’t, and many of them are embarrassed by what they write.)
Now imagine that you are in a field that demands productivity—lots of writing. Imagine that you don’t have the money to hire an editor to help improve your writing, which some graduate students do. If you’re a graduate student, maybe you get help from a friend, advisor, or tutor at the school’s writing center (many universities, especially if they have grad students who are non-native English speakers, have tutorial resources available). But then imagine you get an academic job and are no longer a graduate student, and you are still a bad writer, lacking skill or confidence.
For such people, even writing acknowledgments, which for me is the fun kind of writing, might be torturous. To put myself in the shoes of such a person, I only have to imagine “fun” painting or “fun” madrigal singing: there’s no such thing. I would suck at both, be embarrassed by my attempts, and avoid them like the plague. And if my career prospects depended on faking some sort of competence, the whole project would push me toward some sort of mental meltdown.
And bear in mind: this can be true even if the person in question is brilliant, creative thinker. Doing good research and having good ideas do not make you good at communicating the research and ideas in writing. There are English professors who think brilliantly about other people’s writing but whose own writing is messy, inept, and baffling.
I was once brought in for a possible ghost-writing job; the job was to write a book for someone who happened to be a famous writer. Which seemed like a weird assignment. I was brought in to meet with this woman, author of several best-sellers (you have heard of her), and she told me, to my face, “I don’t write. I can’t do it.” She is someone with an interesting life story, and some passionate political views for which there is an audience, and so publishers want books from her. But she doesn’t write. At all.
So that’s what I suspect is going on with Claudine Gay: she’s not a writer. And she has told herself all kinds of stories about why the little incidents of maybe-plagiarism in which she engages aren’t really plagiarism, and she has let herself believe those rationalizations, because when we want to get out of doing something, or when we are ashamed of our incompetence, or when we have imposter syndrome (which we all have, to some degree), we can convince ourselves of all sorts of things.
Those Ivy League schools again
Last year, when along with an excellent team of producers I made and hosted the podcast series Gatecrashers, about the history of Jews in the Ivy League, I had no idea that the work we were doing was so timely. The idea came to me, about two years ago now, when I was walking west on Chapel Street in New Haven, near the Alternate Universe comic books store and the Dunkin’ Donuts (I realize every corner in New England is near a Dunkin ’ Donuts), and I thought, “Jews in the Ivy League—people would listen to that podcast. Plus, the concept fits snugly into eight episodes.”
As you know, the issue of antisemitism on campuses has blown up big-league (which is what I am convinced Trump said, because I remember people saying it in the 1980s; not “bigly”).
And now I am getting calls from reporters at The New Republic and the Times and elsewhere; I am expert du jour on the history of Ivy League Jews. If this interests you, I commend to you one excerpt from The New Republic (below) and then the whole podcast, which I remain proud of (and it has a five-star rating with 200 reviews, which tells you something). OK, here is your excerpt, from author Eric Alterman:
… While it is true that the percentage of Jews in Ivy League schools has declined, Mark Oppenheimer, director of open learning at American Jewish University and host of the excellent Gatecrashers podcast on the history of Jews in the Ivy League, explains that the decline “has nothing to do with antisemitism. Rather, it’s a result of many other factors: a stagnant or shrinking pool of Jewish applicants (Jews have low birth rates and intermarry more and more; of half- or quarter-Jewish teenagers, some identify as Jewish, some don’t), the big push for increased numbers of international students (never from countries with a lot of Jews), the desire to enroll first-generation college students (few of whom, by now, are Jews), and the push for non-white students (Jews are classed, sometimes controversially, as “white”). When you hold steady the number of athletes on most campuses (among whom Jews are under-represented), the result is way fewer Jews.” What’s more, he adds, “Jews have spread out, geographically, and it was never going to be the case that the same high numbers of us wished to attend the elite northeastern schools.” Needless to say, these controversies quickly become hoisted into use by politicians. Republican politicians could hardly be expected to resist the urge to exploit the complicated dilemmas facing universities seeking to protect their commitment to free expression, their funding streams, and the feelings of Jewish students who feel themselves under siege. (The feelings of Arab students are an afterthought at best.) At the recent Republican Jewish Coalition confab, candidate after candidate sought to tie pro-Palestinian expressions to the notion that, as Ron DeSantis put it, the schools have “been captured and corrupted by a woke agenda.” He proudly issued an order for Florida to shut down all state SJP chapters as well.
What I’m reading
I’d be remiss if I didn’t update you on the proverbial book pile (which in my case is not a pile by the side of the bed, because I don’t read in bed). Two books underway at the moment (the Lou Reed bio on pause, just because I craved a different mojo for a week or two).
First, Mrs. Oppenheimer bought me for Hanukkah the latest book from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music. It’s a compendium of short essays about his favorite songs; basically, it’s the same book as Nick Hornby’s Songbook, except by a professional musician instead of a professional writer. And it’s worse than Hornby’s book in expected ways (because Hornby’s the writer), and better in certain ways (because Tweedy’s the musician). Some of the songs Tweedy writes about are ones I knew (“Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” “Happy Birthday"“) and some I had never heard of. One obscure track that Tweedy loves is “Before Tonight,” by the band Souled American (yeah, me neither), and you can see Tweedy covering the track on YouTube here:
I also just today finished Joe Ide’s latest crime thriller, Fixit, which I got out of the terrific New Haven Free Public Library (note to self: make annual donation to the library before the end of the year). I really dig Joe Ide’s main character, Isaiah “IQ” Quintabe, who is black but seems to have a Japanese last name (like Ide, who is black but grew up in South Central L.A. and mainly writes black characters). Snoop Dogg has optioned the IQ novels for a TV series, which I sure hope is coming, because the whole cast of characters—IQ, his friend Dodson, his off-again girlfriend Grace, Deronda the soul-food entrepreneur—are so alive on the page that I can only imagine how great they’d be on the screen.
Here’s some Joe Ide for you:
Merry Christmas, to all who celebrate.
Should you non-subscribers choose to subscribe to this here newsletter, I can tell you what I’ll spend your money on: year-end donations to worthy causes, purchases from indie booksellers, used vinyl from the local purveyor on Fountain Street, and ice cream cones for my children, because we New Englanders eat ice cream in all seasons.