There was no racial component to it although we do belong to a religious minority, come from low-income backgrounds and were homeschooled. I personally felt some prejudice at various times on account of these characteristics.

In my case I was a 16 year old high school dropout taking a history class at a Junior College. My prof had a lengthy conversation basically trying to get me to admit my parents wrote an essay for me and eventually gave up, although clearly unconvinced.

In my brothers case a few years later (different college, different prof) I believe he was given a zero on a test and had to file a grievance to be able to redo the work or retake the test. This is circa 2000 so my memory is a bit fuzzy.

In both our cases there was no evidence - just the perceived mismatch between our presentation and ability prompted the accusations. (We were bookworms and in a family of bookworms despite being poor and lower class.)

My only comment and the only relevance to the linked story is I remember how OUTRAGED I felt at the accusation. It wasn't even the accusation of cheating - that I would be dishonest. It was the condescension, the implied "obviously you are not good enough to have produced this" attitude that hurt the most. In my case the professor was obviously trying to give me a break and be friendly but I remember how hurt I was and in my brother's case... I don't think he would ever speak to the prof again.

Being judged incapable of producing your own work BURNS.

However, we don't know why the professor came to the conclusion that she plagiarised. Maybe they jumped to conclusions on limited evidence, or maybe this paper was written with vocabulary and sentence structure which was inconsistent with the student's earlier work. Either way, it's incredibly unlikely that an academic professor of sociology would be a closet racist.

tl;dr It's unfair to be accused of plagiarism for submitting a paper which sounds "too intelligent", but it's also unfair to be accused of racism for attempting to enforce academic standards.

Unfortunately, this a story which is going to press the internet's hot buttons.

To be clear, the beyond a jerk move part is doing this in front of the class with such flimsy evidence. I have see this before. It happened to a black woman friend. In this case the professor's flimsy evidence was a shift in tone which happens in editing all the time.

That said, hence is an adverb and not a conjunction. Hence there is no comma after hence. BTW, this punctuation mistake argues strongly against plagiarism.

Considering how viciously accusations and personal vendettas can be carried out online, I think it's a great mark of character that she refrained from such tactics and explained the injustice she felt in a levelheaded way.

However, this doesn't excuse the alleged behaviour of the professor in the article. When making a plagiarism accusation, is it common to call this out openly without attempting to address 1-1 first in academic settings?

Its a terrible thing to be falsely accused. Especially so when it is by a person in authority and in front of others and when the accuser has the power to issue a grade. I hope that this article helps professors deal more sensitively with their concerns over plagiarism in the internet age.

"Hence" is fairly common in modern English, but is it common in the writings of this student?

One such example of this is that one of my students used a "while not in" loop which they had never done before. I looked at it puzzled for a second and then went "wait a minute, one of my other students used this in every lab since we introduced the while statement". I pull up the code, compare it, and BAM! I've got a match.

Just because something is possible/correct in a language and that the person wiring the piece has every bit of ability to use the complex structure at had it doesn't mean they would normally do so. Sure it's not accurate, and sure you may not be right with every call (hasn't happened to me yet but other TAs have called people out and have turned out to be wrong), but it's something that I'd call a "clue" that something is different.

Either the student put more time into the work and found a better/alternate way of approaching the problem, the student asked a friend to help with describing the structure (or in this case what wording to use), or in the only case that presents malice: they copied it.

The only way you can find out is by going to the student and confidently saying something to the effect of "I know you've engaged in some questionalbe academic behavior, this is your time to explain yourself before I contact my boss and have them run a more though investigation". Cheaters usually crack instantly. (pro-tip for anyone on the outside who is cheating: just lie to us, we're probably not going to follow up unless it's extremely obvious if you've got a 1/4 way decent explanation).

I see nothing wrong with this. Just talk to the professors boss and they'll sort it out. This is especially true for cases where you actually did write the work.

Also, I highly doubt anyone questions the intellect of the writer. They are obviously a gifted person.

I find the story hard to believe only because it is so terrible -- and that an academic would be stupid enough to accuse a student of plagiarism without concrete evidence (in particular, the text from which they plagiarised). However, even if the academic in question had such evidence, they still should give the student the chance to defend themselves.

http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/5/9/2281

Simone's Maxims are possibly the best piece of career advice anyone ever gave me.

At least she's learning this early in the game. She's clever and tough and will either go far or be smart enough to make much more money at a real job.

Her prof? Not so much.

I'm not saying that's the case, because I have no evidence either way.

Also, it's not like she's going against the grain here. Academia, especially where the humanities are concerned, is overwhelmingly leftist in this country. An accusation of racism in one of these departments is socially damning. If she were a conservative Catholic arguing in defense of sexual morality during a gender studies class at one of our glorified ivy league universities or women's colleges, then I'd say she's got courage. However, this is not the case. Her choice of language indicates that she is riding briskly and blandly on the profitable coattails of the oppression gravy train. Whether it is calculated or merely the result of intellectual error upon intellectual error is another matter altogether.

Bottom line: these shows of support she's receiving are not only inappropriate, but presumptuous. This idea that we must believe what people say on their own authority, or based on their feelings (constrained by the prevailing ethos, of course), with no evidence is a worrying trend in left-leaning humanities departments.

I've come across jerk teachers myself. I have been suspected of plagiarism when my essays exceeded the average length for the class. I've had arrogant teachers presume things in ways that defy common sense. Just because some teacher is an ass (and for the purposes of this post I'll grant her that much) doesn't mean there's any reason to invoke all of that baggage. Victimization ideology is a pathological condition that's being propagated by leftist academics that does severe harm to those concerned. It's used for political gain in the Alinsky style and has the effect of entrenching poverty and cultural pathologies. Sure, upper middle class white (or occasionally black, etc) academics can generate this vile substance with no effect on them, but it does have a real affect on those whom it concerns.

If he or she just handed her the paper back with that scrawled on it that's a dick move, absolutely, but she's reading a lot into "those aren't your words" and doesn't provide any information that backs up her claim her prof is racist.

I checked out her blog and the comment section is full of posters piling on the prof for being "racist".bHow do they know this? Became a stranger on the internet says so? The mob mentality that self-righteous liberals exhibit doesn't help them much in the credibility and integrity department.

I

From Strunk & White: "Exclamations. Do not attempt to emphasize simple statements by using a mark of exclamation.

The exclamation mark is to be reserved for use after true exclamations or commands."

When I read this piece, I immediately flashed back to my first week of college, decades ago.

Apparently on the basis of my entrance essay, the school decided I should skip English 101 and placed me in ENGL102 the first semester. When we received the first assignment (a criticism and synopsis of some article I don't remember) back from the professor, held back the two he thought were the best to ask those students to read them to the class as examples of what he wanted to see.

It was too early for him to know our names so he called the first name and gave that student his paper to read. Then he called my name and I raised my hand. I'm black. He did an obvious double-take, looked down at the paper to verify that he had picked up the right one, then looked up, raised his eyebrows slightly and brought it to me. It was impossible to miss the subtext and I just stared at him for a few seconds, then shrugged internally and read the damn thing.

You don't always have the benefit of knowing all sides to a story, but often, even knowing only one side, conclusions can be drawn fairly accurately.

I'd say the professor was wrong in this situation no matter what happened for publicly humiliating a student and also thinking one suspicious word warrants an accusation of plagiarism. However there is nothing in the article that indicates that the professor was specifically targeting her for her race, other than 'I deal with racism every day'. Without knowing more about the situation it's hard to say more. Despite this, there's quite a few comments in this thread already that seem emotionally loaded.

Think about it this way: A while ago an article was posted about discrimination against conservative Christians in academia, and some of the discussion here was appallingly hypocritical; the same kinds of people advocating diversity in race, culture, and thought were openly admitting that they don't think Christians, as a group, should be allowed in decision-making processes, because they're obviously all gullible idiots. Does that mean when I go for my PhD I would be justified in writing my own teary blog post should someone act condescending and rude to me? Would I be justified regardless of whether the discrimination was real or perceived? Would such a post be received with positive feedback? Would I be allowed to call academia 'completely broken'?

That's probably true in the sense of using racial slurs or joining the KKK or something like that, but IME of academia in grad school as an adjunct, lots of people are paternalistic or condescending—often without quite realizing that they are (which would be consistent with the original article).

Efforts to be culturally sensitive can also backfire in incredible, spectacular ways (for example: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/22/how-do-you-know-when-your...).

1. There's no such thing as a single reason for doing anything. Humans are too complex for that. So to frame this as a question of "she did it because of race" vs "race has nothing to do with it" is naive at best.

2. It's more or less impossible for anyone to be unaffected by race. Sociology professors are no exception. When you meet someone you've never met before, you can't (no matter how hard your try) encounter a "blank slate" of a person. Your brain would be dangerously inefficient if you didn't jump to conclusions for superficial reasons literally all the time.

Taken together, this means:

3. Clearly race had something to do with it. This shouldn't be a question. The question is exactly how much did it have to do with it.

The fact is, when you really get down to it, most people are subconsciously racist. Not a joke - most people. There have been studies on it and everything.

Just as unlikely as a priest being a pedophile.

It is simply never OK to try and put someone down, even more so when you are someones administrative superior.

Your priors are naive. To be honest.

As disgusting and racist as the kinds of haters they claim to oppose. About the only one that seemed especially fair among the supporters of her claims was one claiming the post itself might be highly-biased due to it being a catharsis of sorts that may lead to a constructive response to her situation she hasn't elaborated on. I could easily see that possibility being it's her personal blog & she left identifying information off. Past that, I knew I shouldn't comment as specific people there would disqualify it on color/gender, imply I couldn't conceive similar things, imply the stated bias was true since it was a minority that claimed to experience it, and drag me into a bunch of tangents unrelated to data original source provided. That's what they did to the others. Hence, my suspicion it would happen to me.

[1] I review this from perspective of a white male who grew up in mostly black areas where hating on whites was norm and redneck areas that weren't big on intellectual or "soft" types. I experienced subtle and overt racism + discrimination constantly that hurt my education, cost me jobs, got me targeted by authority figures more, got me served last at lunch lines, question whether I was the problem, etc. So, I have to work extra hard maintaining balance and rational approach to reviewing stuff when the comments basically act like I never experienced that or play it off as existential vs circumstantial or some other nonsense. Yes, we do experience it with those of us in minority areas experiencing it at the level of blacks except there's more beatdowns of us and murder in general. That they keep pretending we don't despite our claims and journal introspection being almost identical to theirs is itself a form of racism. I always point that out in case someone assumes I'm a white, suburban guy from middle class home in a white area going to college on a football scholarship or something.

For some reason, I immediately thought of that popular video: "Don't talk to the police." Today, I'd probably assume that if you're fishing for a confession, then you don't have any evidence, and your "boss" doesn't exist. For instance, when I was an adjunct, I didn't have support like that from my department.

What I don't know is how I'd have reacted as a college student with less confidence and street smarts, and with a possibly justifiable fear of antagonizing a teacher.

    > This morning, my professor handed me back a paper (a literature review) in front of my entire class and exclaimed “this is not your language.”

So the next time your write an HN comment and don't misspell "hand" we will know that you've plagiarized.

Whether they wrote it themselves comes out pretty quickly, even if they won't admit to cheating. If a student can't explain his or her work, then you have a basis for giving a lower grade or pressing on the cheating accusation.

The professor did the first and evidently only the first.

This isn't a trial, and no one is trying to raise a pitchfork army, as far as I can tell. So, what else do you believe she should do to make it acceptable for her to tell this story, or for people to express sympathy for her unpleasant experience?