Does plagiarism still matter? I think it does. But I don’t think it should be weaponized to cancel someone’s career. Billionaire Bill Ackman brought down Harvard’s president Claudine Gay with charges of plagiarism. With perfect karmic timing, the universe disclosed that his wife, Neri Oxman, also committed plagiarism on her doctoral thesis. If Claudine Gay paid the price, shouldn’t Neri Oxman?

Let’s see, who else has committed the grave sin of plagiarism?  Joe Biden! Senator Joe Biden was accused of plagiarism, proclaimed guilty, and forced to remove himself from the 1988 presidential election campaign. He admitted that he plagiarized his text and failed to provide the right citations. Melania Trump! Melania used Michelle Obama’s words in a speech she gave in 2008 without attribution, to her great embarrassment. And the list goes on. And the beat goes on.

The fact is plagiarism is fairly ubiquitous.  Why do people commit plagiarism? Many reasons, but often it is accidental, unintentional, or just plain sloppiness. Laziness is also a factor. The rules of attribution and citation are fairly rigorous and hard to follow. That is no excuse, but no one should be canceled for forgetting to place a few quotation marks around a few well-placed sources.

As for Claudine Gay, I find it a little hard to sympathize with her as she is a tenured Harvard professor with a $900,000 a-year salary and the real reason she had to resign was her tepid response to a question posed to her regarding free speech advocating the annihilation of the Jews. She and the other University presidents could have and should have done better.