Notices by Don Moynihan (donmoyn@sciences.social)

Chris Rufo, who coordinated the attack on Claudine Gay, announced he was creating a fund to investigate academics for plagiarism. We are now seeing the fallout which is to target scholars of color. Rufo recently posted bogus accusations against an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Harvard.
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/open-season-on-scholars-of-race

This is Rufo's strongest example of plagiarism, which is that she describes a dataset and its variables in the same way as someone on her dissertation committee.
This is not plagiarism! Set aside that there is no accusation of substantive stealing of ideas. There are simply only so many ways you can describe a dataset’s name and variables. If this is your standard of plagiarism, then everyone using widely available datasets is a plagiarist.

New, from me: three tales about the weirdo hypocrites behind the book bans.
Case 1: a woman said that the image of a kiss in a kids book triggered a porn addiction and called for the publisher to be banned. Did not mention she works for a rival publisher.
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-weirdo-hypocrites-behind-the

The Biden administration has approved the cancellation of nearly $132 billion in federal student loan debts for more than 3.6 million Americans.

$44 billion in student loans forgiven in the last year alone.

Rather than stop trying when SCOTUS overruled their loan forgiveness program, the Biden admin doubled down on making broken programs function.

Competence matters folks!

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/06/1217552875/government-efforts-to-erase-student-loan-debt-have-now-reached-3-6-million-borro

New, from me: We are learning new details about Trump's plans to build an authoritarian state. He is recruiting lawyers who will use government power to protect him, attack his enemies, and not let the constitution block his far right agenda.
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trumps-criminal-lawyers

New, from me: a University of Chicago student was accused of cyber bullying an instructor.
Elon Musk replied to a thread the student posted about his activities, generating millions of views, including 550K views where he again targets the instructor.
Where does protected speech end, and harassment begin? https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/where-does-speech-end-and-harassment

Well, it happened. Schools in Florida under Ron DeSantis are run by the type of parental mobs The Simpson's satirized more than 30 years ago.

Principal fired after parents complain about lesson featuring Michelangelo's David