Leftist academics circle the wagons after another Harvard race obsessive is called out for plagiarism

Another race obsessive on the faculty at Harvard University was outed as a likely plagiarist last week.

Rather than acknowledge that assistant sociology professor Christina Cross may have wrongfully passed off the work of others as her own or that Harvard might be intellectually bankrupt, Cross' colleagues have cried racism and circled the wagons.

Quick background

Cross, an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty affiliate of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, is the latest race obsessive at Harvard University exposed as a potential plagiarist.

Claudine Gay resigned her post in disgrace on Jan. 2 after nearly 50 plagiarism complaints were filed against her, implicating nearly half of her published works along with her doctoral thesis.

Later that same month, affirmative action expert Sherri Ann Charleston, the university's chief DEI officer, was slapped with a complaint identifying 40 examples of alleged plagiarism in two of her academic works.

In February, Harvard Extension School administrator Shirley R. Greene was accused of 42 instances of plagiarism in her 2008 University of Michigan dissertation.

Blaze News previously reported that a complaint was filed this month with Harvard's office of research integrity against Cross, claiming her work contains multiple instances of plagiarism, including "verbatim plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, uncited paraphrasing, and uncited quotations from other sources."

Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo detailed the complaint for City Journal, noting Cross has been accused of appropriating "an entire paragraph nearly verbatim from a paper by Stacey Bosick and Paula Fomby — the latter of whom was her dissertation adviser — without citing the source or placing verbatim language in quotations" in her 2019 dissertation.

Cross also allegedly plagiarized another full paragraph from Bosick and Fomby elsewhere in the paper as well as the ideas of others without attribution.

'Professors for plagiarism!'

Fomby, who served on Cross' dissertation committee, along with dozens of sociologists from various academic institutions, released a statement Thursday, expressing deep concern "about this false allegation of research miscondudct [sic]."

"It's not simply that Dr. Cross's writings do not constitute plagiarism," continued the statement. "Rather, her description of a large public dataset in this standardized way is simply good research practice - helping to ensure replicability and transparency."

The Manhattan Institute fellow replied, "Professors for plagiarism!"

On Monday, Harvard's Department of Sociology similarly released a statement defending Cross.

"We are deeply disturbed by the false allegations of plagiarism made against our colleague Christina Cross. The allegations are absurd," said the statement. "The claim that may sound most serious involves a description of a widely used dataset, in which Dr. Cross describes its features in the terms used by the people who assembled it – in the most accurate terms possible."

The sociology department suggested further that Cross' race may have been a motivating factor behind the complaint.

"We find these bogus claims to be particularly troubling in the context of a series of attacks on Black women in academia with the clear subtext that they have no place in our universities," continued the statement. "We are fortunate to have [Cross] on our faculty, and she has our full and unalloyed support."

The department appears to have embraced the desperate line of defense appealed to on exit by Claudine Gay and by other leftists since, namely that the effort to combat plagiarism is "fueled by racial animus."

Blaze News previously noted that Heba Gowayed, a leftist associate professor of sociology at CUNY Hunter College, similarly suggested that Cross' scholarship had been reviewed "solely because she's Black."

Gowayed added, "It's KKK level s**t."

Georgetown University professor Don Moynihan claimed that the scrutinies of Cross and other academics by Rufo and others "are examples of backlash, of a post George Floyd Politics."

Marcy Carlson, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, defended Cross and amplified Moynihan's attempt at narrative curation, writing, "Describing a well-known national public data set in similar words to another paper is not plagiarism!"

Rufo responded, "They are openly defending the violation of their own written policies."

The Journal of Marriage and Family, an academic journal published by the National Council of Family Relations, also leaned into the racial framing of the plagiarism complaint against Cross, tweeting, "We condemn the contemptible attacks aimed at undermining and threatening scholars focused on race and racism, in particular Black women academics. We support and stand with our valued colleague Dr. Cross."

Cross happens to be a member of the journal's editorial board.

Rufo was ready with another pointed response: "Academic journal openly defends plagiarism, arguing that exposing academic misconduct by 'Black women' is equivalent to 'threatening scholars focused on race.' They have replaced integrity with intersectionality. The standards are gone."

Rufo also refuted the racism suggestion, tweeting, "For the record, I have asked my source to also search the academic work of white scholars in grievance departments at Harvard and, thus far, they have not turned up plagiarism."

"This is not a large-scale study, but it's certainly plausible that lower academic standards for 'diversity and inclusion' hires could be correlated with a disparity in plagiarism and other forms of academic incompetence. This is, in one way, definitional to DEI hiring," added Rufo.

While the DEI critic went scorched-earth on those so-called scholars bending over backward to defend possible plagiarism, Cross thanked them.

Cross tweeted Monday, "Thank you, Dear Ones, for your relentless support. Moments like this show you how deeply loved and cared for you are...I'm going to keep doing what I do & do the best work I can do for the families whose stories, all too often, go untold."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!