Black Star News Editorial
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
Conservative billionaire Bill Ackman’s response to the Business Insider’s story documenting his wife, Neri Oxman’s, plagiarism exposes his disingenuousness in the face of his campaign to fire Harvard’s now former president Claudine Gay. The story reveals that—unlike Gay—Ackman’s wife is a real plagiarist who “plagiarized both before and after she received her Ph.D. in 2010.”
As the saying goes: “If you live in a glass house don’t throw stones.”
Ackman has previously stated that plagiarism is “serious.” Here are a few questions for Mr. Ackman. First, didn’t your wife express any reservations to you before you went on your plagiarism crusade? Weren’t you aware of your wife’s plagiarism? Did she keep this secret from you?
In responding to the Business Insider story, Ackman claimed the article was a hit piece targeting him through his family.
“It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family,” Ackman said. “This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews.” In an apparent act of revenge, Ackman reportedly said he will be doing an investigation into MIT president Sally Kornbluth, and other faculty members at MIT, supposedly for plagiarism.
This is likely because he is furious that MIT insiders helped to expose his wife’s plagiarism. His wife, Oxman, is an MIT alumnus who taught there.
However, despite Ackman’s pathetic attempt to characterize the Business Insider article as “attacks on my family” the story gave numerous examples showing that what his wife did is closer to plagiarism than the instances of minor mistakes that were made by Claudine Gay. As the Business Insider article stated, “The instances of plagiarism BI found on Friday are closer to a more common definition of plagiarism.” The story cited “multiple instances of plagiarism in which she [Oxman] passed off writing from other sources as her own without citing the original in any way.”
For example, the Business Insider article found that “At least 15 passages from her 2010 MIT doctoral dissertation were lifted without any citation from Wikipedia entries.” The story used side-by-side illustrations to document Ackman’s wife plagiarism.
Bill Ackman’s attacks on Claudine Gay created the blowback that has now unmasked his wife as a plagiarist. But those of his ilk never take any responsibility when real misdeeds hit close to home.
Hypocrites, like Ackman, who criticize distinguished people like Gay (who have to legitimately work and fight hard to achieve their goals, especially because of America’s institutional racism) make all kinds of excuses when they are proven to have done much worse.
In the wake of Claudine Gay’s resignation, Ackman has called for the resignations of those on Harvard’s Board who defended Gay’s works.
Will Ackman now call for his wife to be fired from any projects or jobs she receives henceforth because of her tainted doctorate?
