Favorites Tim Walz, Scott Pelley and Kermit the Frog may have fallen to an underdog: “musician and activist” Evelyn Harris (whoever she is) may have succeeded in embarrassing her host school the most of all with her 2025 commencement speech.
For some reason, Smith College, which has apparently become too woke to function, included Harris, a relatively obscure singer (but more importantly, an activist) among its all female honorees this year. The most prominent one of these would probably be far-left historian Danielle Allen, who has several items in her Ethics Alarms dossier. Or maybe it would be the (historic!) highest ranking trans official in US history, former assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service Rachel Levine, one of Biden’s DEI appointments. Then there was new age-y guru Preeti Simran Sethi, the only one of the four who is a Smith grad. All of these, however, whatever their issues, at least managed to compose their own speech to give to the graduates.
Harris didn’t. Smith officials learned that her entire speech had been cribbed from other sources without attribution (you know, like Joe Biden once did), and had to inform the Smith community that it had been deceived. “It has come to our attention that one of our honorary degree recipients — musician Evelyn M. Harris — borrowed much of her speech to graduates and their families from the commencement speeches of others without the attribution typical of and central to the ideals of academic integrity,” the letter read in part.
In response to her having been caught cheating, Harris gave back her honorary degree. She is getting plaudits for this, which I believe is excessive; she was almost certainly told that her choices were to give back the degree and look sort-of ethical, or having it taken away, which would have been another humiliation. So far, nobody has revealed which speeches she stole from, but her opening line, “Four score and seven years ago” sure sounded familiar.
Sorry. I couldn’t resist.
Harris’s excuse for her laziness and dishonesty was genuinely funny, however: she claimed that she “sought to infuse the words of others with her own emotional valence.” Oh. So if she spoke some of the words in a whiny voice, for example, that would make the speech original? That’s like claiming that it isn’t plagiarism if you publish “War and Peace” under your name because your version uses a different font.
Naturally, because performers of all stripes tend to be ethically inert, some of Harris’s colleagues didn’t see anything wrong with Harris ripping off her speech. Two of Harris’ band mates in the cover band Young@Heart defended her in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, writing, “[P]lagiarism works a little differently for us….We sing lyrics and play music written by others without explicitly crediting them from the stage, without asking their permission, but often getting the original artist’s enthusiastic response when they eventually hear our version.We imagine Evelyn may have been doing something similar in her speech and was honoring the words of others.” Nice try, but that’s absurd. When musicians sing songs, they do not get an “enthusiastic response” from the song’s creators if they imply that the songs are theirs rather than the intellectual property of the real composers and lyricists.
Other similarly unethical supporters blamed Smith. “Smith College hastily, with a singular goal toward shuffling unwanted negative publicity away from itself, chose to deliberately humiliate Evelyn by telling the world that she violated Smith’s academic standards by borrowing some of the words of others to encourage the new graduates to live their lives authentically,” wrote Tolley Jones, a black New Hampshire columnist. She saw nothing wrong with Harris stealing a speech because the musician is “not an academic.” At least Jones didn’t accuse Smith of being racist: that may have been one benefit of the college deeming only non-white women and one former white man for honors.
Ethics Alarms 
“She saw nothing wrong with Harris stealing a speech because the musician is “not an academic.””
Is this a new rationalization? Someone getting an honorary degree from a university can plagiarize a speech and it’s acceptable because that person is not an academic?
I think it’s even too stupid to be a rationalization.
I wonder if Claudine Gay thought about trying that one.
I saw the “musicians steal riffs from each other all the time” rationalization coming from a mile away, maybe two.
Hold on, I’m going to log into ChatGPT and get my comment prepared for me. It might be my first Comment Of The Day award.
Shoot, I guess I have too much integrity to take credit for work that isn’t mine. Now if I had had different parents it might have been otherwise.
It’s not going to be long before there are very few if any US institutions left with any integrity or credibility. Between plagiarism and AI authored papers and speeches authentic creative human effort may become thing of the past in the coming decades.
Side note: There is a typo in the title of your post: “In a Competitive Commencement Season, Evelyn Harris Makes a Trong Bid For Most Unethical Speech of 2025″ You have Trong instead of Strong
Fixed it even before I saw your alert, but thanks.
One of her defenders implied that Smith College was at fault for not telling her that plagiarism is frowned upon when she asked for guidelines for her speech and for not catching it when she turned in the speech for review weeks prior to the ceremony.
If they read it and edited it before she gave the speech, then, yes, they should have caught it sooner, but that still doesn’t excuse what she did nor does it make them responsible for her word theft.
I’ve tried to find whom she plagiarized, but I’m not getting any good results. Grok did tell me, “students identified similarities between Harris’s speech and Toni Morrison’s 2004 commencement address to Wellesley College.” I can’t find a transcript of Harris’ speech online, so I can’t check for myself.
In other news, you all can look forward to my new audiobook, “The Bluest Eye” which will be totally mine and original because I’ll be reading it with my “own emotional valence”.
I saw “own emotional valence” and wondered what that even means. So, I asked Grok. This is what Grok told me:
“‘Own emotional valence’ refers to the inherent positive or negative emotional quality or tone that a person, object, event, or situation carries for an individual, based on their personal experiences, perceptions, or associations.
“For example, a song might have a positive emotional valence for someone if it reminds them of a happy memory, but a negative valence for another person if it’s tied to a sad event.”
jvb
…..much to do about nothing….I have not seen her presentation, but must have had substance appropriate for the occasion….she submitted her presentation prior to delivering it, and that was the opportunity for Smith to take exception….”four score and seven years ago”….is that plagiarism….I doubt it ….wonder who the squealers are….they need to get a life…..many graduation speeches follow the same theme….get over it…..didn’t know her before this debacle, but I do now, and it makes me want to “like” her….and yes like Tolley Jones in her defense said Smith owes her an apology ….until someone called her out, my sense is that she felt that she had done nothing wrong….to this I concur …..let’s stop the feeding frenzy, because “it’s all in the eye of the beholders” who apparently derive some pleasure in putting an accomplished woman down….”Let it Be”….
So you don’t get that cheating thingy any more than Harris did! Good to know. Tell you what: read through the rationalizations list (the link is to your right) on the home page before you comment again. This might be the most ethics-challenged comment to a post I’ve had since the guy from “Chimpmania.”
1. Smith wasn’t looking for plagiarism because commencement speakers are usually of a higher character.
2. The fact that they passed on the speech didn’t validate it, any more tha not getting caught in a crime makes it legal.
3. The Lincoln reference was a joke, but if someone presented it as their own work, of course it would be plagiarism.
4.Reporting misconduct isn’t “squealing,” its maintaining academic standards.
5. “Get a life” is a moronic response to someone properly calling out a cheater. That is a life: an ethical one.
6. “many graduation speeches follow the same theme”= #1 on the rationalization list: “Everybody does it.”
7. “The same theme” is not “the same words.”
8. You like cheaters and plagiarists! Also good to know.
9. As a writer who has had people steal my work without permission, I assure you that it is wrong, and also a violation of intellectual property law.
10. “let’s stop the feeding frenzy, because “it’s all in the eye of the beholders” who apparently derive some pleasure in putting an accomplished woman down”—wow. That night be the most fatuous, empty platitudes I’ve ever seen strung together in a sentence, all to execute what I call “The moral shrug.”
You have as much business commenting on an ethics blog as I would have on an aeronautics website. If you come back with anything less that a brilliant treatise on Kant (look it up), you’ll be banned under the Ethics Alarms “Stupidity Rule.” I suggest you try this site instead. It’s more your speed.
Heh…
PWS
Indeed. “Mutley” was a later version of Quickdraw McGraw’s (funnier) dog “Snuffles.”