If you enjoy watching a Harvard professor revealing herself as complete asshole to colleagues, students, the news media, everyone, really—and who doesn’t?—-you’ll love this story.
Harvard professor Jennifer L. Hochschild was one of the scholars ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay plagiarized on the way to academic infamy. She was also one of those who lacked the integrity to agree to what should have been obvious, which is that having a record of serial ethical misconduct was something no president of Harvard could or should weather. Like many on the DEI side of the culture, her response to the revelations of Gay’s lack of fitness for her job was to attack the conservatives, notably gadfly Christopher Rufo, who uncovered the damning evidence that Gay was a cheat. Rufo cites among his own credentials“a master’s from Harvard,” and Hochschild set out to tar him as a hypocrite for this, tweeting,
Even if the criticism of Rufo were justified—more on that in a nonce—this was a damning tweet…for the professor. Attacking the messenger who carries unwelcome but accurate information is a logical fallacy, an ad hominem attack, and exactly the kind of weak reasoning and unethical practice the world’s most self-congratulatory university is supposed to purge from its graduates. But those determined to protect Gay, Harvard’s diversity-hire, “historic” female president “of color” by any means possible, stooped to this gutter tactic en masse and almost the second Gay’s embarrassing performance at a congressional hearing focused national attention of her deficits and the sick university culture she represented. Her performance was just fine because conservatives criticized it.
The tweet was especially odd for Hochschild, who teaches at the very same Harvard Extension School whose students she slammed as “not really Harvard grads.” The “X” community quickly slapped a “context” note on the tweet…
…ironic, since it was Gay’s comment before Congress that whether or not anti-Semitic chants on campus were unacceptable at Harvard depended on their “context” that started her downward spiral.
It got worse for Hochschild from there. After several made the same point about the HES that X users did, Hochschild tried to explain, again with a tweet: “Rufo could have proudly and honorably said, “I pulled myself up by bootstraps;to prove it I have master’s degree from Harvard extension school, along with other smart and gutsy students.”Instead he used weasel words to try to attach himself to Ivy status and prestige.Insecurity??” Rufo responded adeptly, “What on earth are you talking about? I’ve been very forthcoming about this, including on the day I exposed your friend Claudine Gay for plagiarism. I was proud of my degree, but if it means I’m associated with you, I’m considering giving it back.”
Touché!
Then the Harvard Extension Student Association responded to Hochschild’s slur and her slur trying to soften the slur, writing that they “are deeply concerned and disappointed by the recent comments made by a Harvard Extension School professor on the social media platform, X.” ” Although the professor attempted to backtrack on her statements, the initial message conveyed a different sentiment, one that undermines the value and reputation of our institution,” the HESA wrote. “Generalizations that denigrate HES students do more than unjustly diminish individual achievements; they erode the foundational values of diversity, respect, and academic rigor that are essential to the fabric of Harvard University, and all of its degree-granting schools.”
Trapped, Hochschild defaulted to the classic defense of the self-revealed asshole: “I didn’t say what I said, and if I did I didn’t mean it, and my words were misconstrued anyway.”
As you will notice, this is essentially the opposite of what her tweet stated when attacking Rufo. It’s a reversal, not a “clarification,” and it wasn’t “requested,” it was made necessary after Hochschild denigrated her own students and they objected. Rufo, of course, enjoyed rubbing the prof’s metaphorical nose in her mess:
Make that three times: In a Harvard Crimson story recounting the details of her obnoxious behavior in the, she was quoted as “explaining,”
“I am sorry that my comments were understood to imply a ‘sentiment . . . that undermines the value and reputation of our institution,’ and that they caused HES students and staff distress. That is far from my views; Harvard is rightly proud of the quality of and access to education manifested every day by HES…My point, which was clearly phrased badly in the original tweet, was that students should proudly state their HES degree. I have apologized to HES staff and students for inadvertently involving them in a silly debate (of course an HES degree is a real Harvard degree—who said otherwise??) and in an inappropriate challenge to what they should be proud of.”
Of course, that’s not what she wrote when she was trying to protect Gay by impugning Rufo. Who said an HES degree isn’t a real Harvard degree? Hochschild did, when she wrote that HES graduates are not what people “think of” as Harvard grad students.
Finally, proving that Harvard may not teach the crucial life competence lesson that when one is in a hole, the best course is to stop digging, she tried again on “X”…
…promptly making it more indisputable than ever that the woman is a total asshole. HES students didn’t get “dragged” into the Gay ethics train wreck by some mysterious agency, she dragged them in herself. Her words didn’t “suggest” that she didn’t admire the HES students, they said outright that she didn’t consider them genuine Harvard grads, because she questioned Christopher Rufo’s “integrity” for referring to his holding a Master of Liberal Arts degree from Harvard, even though the extension school is the only school at Harvard that issues Master of Liberal Arts degrees.
What an asshole.
And now everyone knows it.
Ethics Alarms 
Not much to say on this, except by analogy.
Former Senator from Nebraska, Ben Sasse, was graduated from Harvard. Then, he got a Master’s Degree from my Alma Mater, St. John’s College, before getting additional degrees from Yale.
As a Republican Senator, he drew the ire of liberal members of the alumni who were upset that perhaps the most prominent alum from the college this side of Francis Scott Key was a Republican.
So, the criticism went out that he went through the Master’s Program at the College, an abbreviated Great Books program as compared to the Undergraduate Program. The College, of course, makes no such distinction. The College understands that, to a great extent the student body is pretty self-selecting: people who apply to St. John’s College are probably the type of people who would do well at the school. They are, in some fundamental way, kindred spirits.
I have an alumni chapter meeting tomorrow. We are reading Richard II, as our local Guthrie Theater is staging a Trilogy of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V this spring. We have graduates from the 60’s 70’s 80’s, 90’s and 00’s; most are from the Undergraduate Program, some are from the Master’s Program, and one member never graduated, while another took more than a decade to do so. There is no hierarchy.
-Jut
Wow. I would liove to see the Guthrie’s productions. Enjoy.
They did the same thing in the early 90’s and attended an all-day performance of all 3 plays.
It was really enjoyable, as, a few years earlier, I had attended a similar all-day showing of Henry VI, Parts 1-3 and Richard III put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London.
They were kind of early examples of binge-watching.
-Jut
Years ago, I worked for a company who’s President would say, “I don’t need to force bad employees out. Instead, I give them rope and eventually, they just hang themselves.”
Twitter/X has become “the rope” for lots of people whose brains are slower than their fingers. Dr. Hochschild may not lose her job, but she just “hung herself” in public for all to see who want to.
Your assessment of Dr. Hochschild is spot on. She believes students of HES are less than those she considers REAL Harvard students. She considers HES degrees to be of lesser importance and value than “REAL” Harvard degrees. Her backtracking is just lies.
Now maybe she will change her mind and think differently going forward, but her thinking up until this moment has been revealed.
Not a good look at all…
I wonder what Hochschild thinks of “Doctor” Jill Biden’s degree.
I liked this line in The Crimson:
“…Hochschild apologized for the way her posts were construed.”
Thanks…I meant to mention that, but was overwhelmed.
It is even worse. In the original tweet, Rufo states that he received his Master’s through the night school and it isn’t considered as prestigious as the normal graduate school. Her clarification about what he SHOULD have done are exactly what he did.
In other academic ethics news, Marc Tessier-Lavigne is stepping down as Stanford’s president. He is having to retract 3 papers (2 from Science) and is being allowed to ‘correct’ 2 more papers from Nature for data manipulation. Science and Nature are the 2 most prestigious scientific journals in the world. Of course, there was an investigation, but the investigation was only allowed to look at 15 of his dozens of publications and the witnesses were required to publicly state their comments. The problems with his work (which date back as far as 2001) were ‘identified’ by a freshman. The papers include his ‘groundbreaking’ Alzheimer’s study which probably made his career. He is going to remain a faculty member and is continuing brain research. Much like Boeing’s issues, how is this possible if the system isn’t corrupt?
What I mean by that with Boeing is that in aerospace manufacturing, someone doesn’t just tighten a bolt. A second person must come behind them with a calibrated device and check that the bolt is the correct tightness, followed by a signature that the check was done. For bolts on multiple planes in multiple places to be loose, you have to have people (a) lying about tightening AND checking that the bolts are tight or (b) lying about calibrating the instruments properly. In science, peer reviewers are supposed to check all those figures and the data.
Speaking of Nature:
Is the Peer Review Process a Scam?
MONEY QUOTE: In November 2014, Nature, the international weekly journal of science, published an article about PEER-REVIEW RINGS, where peer-reviewers colluded to review each other’s work, WITH GLOWING REVIEWS OF COURSE (bolds/caps/italics mine)
PWS
…and now we see how so much climate-change garbage became “settled science.”
PWS
You are only half-right. From what I have seen, there are 2 separate reasons for the decline in scientific peer-review.
(1) The first reason is the decline in the quality of the reviewers. It takes a reviewer with confidence and competence to put in writing the things they found wrong in the paper of a Nobel Prize-winner in your field. You have to do this, even though you will look foolish if YOU are wrong. It generally takes a first rate person to do this. Now, in the last 30 years, there has been an explosion of schools granting graduate degrees in science and/or requiring publication for tenure. This means a lot more people are publishing papers. When you publish a paper, you are enrolled as a reviewer. So more papers from more people at lower-tier institutions = more lower-quality reviewers. This also makes it difficult for the journal editor. It used to be pretty obvious who to assign as reviewers; you just pick the 3 biggest competitors for that research group. You pick their biggest competitors because they are the most knowledgeable about the field and they have a vested interest in ripping this paper to shreds. Now, with all the additional people publishing, the reviewers for a major paper may not be significant players in the field, and may not even be competent to review the article. Quite frankly, we have expanded the graduate offerings of schools and wasted our research money on mostly nothing projects. We have flooded the scientific literature with noise, making it hard to find the good work that is out there. In the process, we also weakened peer-review.
(2) The second reason is ‘Cooperative Science’. Science has traditionally been a competitive field. If you want to solve a problem, you get a groups of talented people to work on it and see who can come up with a solution first. Christopher Wren offered a book as a prize for the first person who could explain the motion of the planets in Kepler’s Laws, Newton’s work on motion and gravity were the result. Newton’s competition with Hooke and the animosity between them was a feature, not a bug of the system. This competition often brought out the creativity in people. It also created the ideal environment for peer-review, the competing scientists can be trusted to critically review their peers. In the 1980’s and 90’s, there was a lot of criticism that this competitive system was ‘patriarchal’ and sexist. It was argued (without proof) that if everyone worked together cooperatively, more work would get done because you wouldn’t duplicate work. While this ‘cooperative hypothesis’ is interesting, the big problem is how it destroys peer review in science. If everyone is on the same ‘team’, team members who sink people’s papers risk being voted off the island. ‘Team player’ environments are not good environments for vigorous oversight. How many times have you seen ‘We investigated ourselves and found that we did nothing wrong’? The first field this was tried on a large scale was global climate change. Team players were promoted, people who rocked the boat were thrown overboard, banned from grants and publishing. This is how you build a ‘scientific consensus’ and it is anti-scientific. Governments and government agencies have embraced this idea because it promises to increase productivity while eliminating anyone with a contrary, perhaps problematic, opinion. This is how you can demand that a journjal retract a mask study that was done propely, just because the ‘correct’ result changed from the time of the study’s acceptance for publication and the actual publication of the paper.
Yes. This is part of the reason that air travel has historically been the safest way to travel. The airlines have had to overcome a somewhat instinctive reaction of people that flying is inherently dangerous (actually with justification) and have shown that they’ve made it safe.
If memory serves, Boeing is one of NASA’s prime contractors. The aerospace industry totally adopted submariner’s checklist concept and took it a step further. When you ignore that, when you subvert those safeguards, planes and spacecraft do have a tendency to fall out of the sky.. Air and space travel is actually dangerous, but ingenuity and dedication have tamed them, for the most part.
Comment eaten
PWS
And now regurgitated….