There Are No Girls on the Internet - The New Weaponization of Plagiarism [PATREON UNLOCKED]

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Harvard donor Bill Ackman pushed for the resignation of Harvard's first Black woman president, Dr. Claudine Gay, for what he says is a history of academic plagiarism. An independent review panel cleared her of misconduct, but the allegations continued and led to her resignation. Now Ackman’s wife, Dr. Neri Oxman, is also being accused of plagiarism in her academic work.    In the aftermath of Dr. Gay’s resignation from Harvard, here’s how Ackman has responded to the allegations against his wife. Meanwhile, their troubling connection to Jefferey Epstein resurfaces.    Full video of this episode is available on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/tangotiSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. Why are we all so obsessed with romance? On the radio 831 podcast, join us, Sanjana Basker and Tyler McCall. As we unpack all the trending tropes, fuzzy adaptations, book talk drama, and celebrity love stories with hot takes and sharp guests. Each episode digs into what these stories reveal about desire, fantasy, identity, and how we love now. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So last week, we did an episode about Dr. Claudine Gaye residing from Harvard University. And after we published it on Friday, the story really continued. Bill Akman, that billionaire donor to Harvard, who was calling for Dr. Gay to resign,

while his wife was also accused of plagiarism. Their connection to Jeffrey Epstein resurfaced, and really, Bill Akman just had a meltdown about the entire thing. I could not stop thinking about it, and I had a lot more to say. So I did a video rundown on the aftermath of Gay's resignation in the Patreon over the weekend. The story has continued, so I wanted to unlock that Patreon episode with everybody here in the main feed, too. Y'all, this story is a wild one.

I cannot stop thinking and talking about it. So please let me know what you think. You can hit me up via email at hello at tangodi.com. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Hey, it's Bridget. It's Sunday, January 7th. It's about 10 o'clock at night, Eastern Time.

I'm here with some herbal tea because I'm getting my dry January on. Thank you for being here. Okay, so let's get into it. We did an episode this week in the main There Are No Girls on the Internet Feed about Dr. Claudian Gay, the first black woman and first black president of Harvard, who basically stepped down.

She did resign earlier this week after right-wing education activist Chris Rufo surfaced plagiarism accusations against her. So in the episode, first of all, I just have to say I was pretty emotional. So thank you to everybody who listened. I'm sure that was a bit of a departure from the kind of content that you're used to from me. I am not terribly emotional on mic most times.

And so just genuinely, thank you for letting me feel like I can really bring my full self to these conversations. And in case you're wondering, like, I am okay, I am fine, that conversation, we taped it during a particularly weird and emotional time for me. Like the holidays are weird. Coming back from the holidays is always weird for me. So it was a time I just felt like I had a lot going on emotionally. To quote mean girls, I had a lot of feelings. So thank you for giving me space to be so vulnerable. And yeah, I'm doing great.

So in that episode, we broke down Christopher Rufo's campaign against Dr. Gay. Rufo had this, like, very gleeful, like, victory lap he was doing after Gay resigned. and he was openly taking credit for her resignation. And pretty explicitly in my book said that the reason why he was going after gay and why he wanted to force her to resign was race-related, right? Like he explicitly said in that political article that we were talking about, it was about DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion. So DEI, like regardless of how you feel about it or what you think about it, it is pretty clearly about race. And so from his own admission, he wanted to push out this woman out of her job because of race. So we talked in the episode about one of the people that he worked with to accomplish that, Bill Ackman,

a billionaire hedge fund manager who was also a donor to Harvard. It basically sounds like Ackman had his own unrelated beefs with Harvard before Dr. Gay ever even was at the helm there as president. And that he used this scandal, I use that in air quotes, deep air quotes, this scandal around her to finally have the opportunity to push her out because of like long existing beefs that probably didn't have a lot to do with her. Although I do think that even if he had these longstanding beefs, I think having a beef with a university that has a black woman at the helm probably hit differently for him. I just know the energy when someone feels like because you are a black woman they, you owe them something or that you were going to be differential to them in some way as a

default. From all my time on this earth as a black woman, I suspect that had something to do with it. So since we put out that episode on Friday, this story has really continued to evolve. So I had to revisit it and fill y'all in on some of the new updates and some of the new stuff that, frankly, I have learned, stuff that's been out there, but I only recently was like, oh, that was them. Oh, yikes. So let's get into it. Basically, Ackman's wife is Dr. Neum. Mary Oxman, who I actually had never heard of before this whole situation. Dr. Oxman is a designer who studies things like 3D printing, art, and fabrication. She was born in Israel and graduated with a PhD in architectural design and computation from MIT in 2010. That detail is going to

be important in a moment. So I have to say if Dr. Oxman, Ackman's wife had not been connected to this larger situation with Ackman, pushing out a black woman. from her position at Harvard, I probably would have thought that Dr. Oxman was like kind of a cool person, maybe, question mark. Or maybe that means I would have been like susceptible to a glamour media campaign that is meant to make people like me think that people like Dr. Oxman are really cool. There's this New York Times profile about her work and the vibe of the profile is like, oh, who is this woman? She's so cool and artsy. Like the article is about how she worked with Bjork and I talked about how maybe she was dating Brad Pitt.

So it is hard to describe it, but you know it when you see it. Dr. Oxman just has this sort of personal or public persona that just kind of reads like cool, techy, artsy woman, like lots of images of her like looking slightly off camera or gesturing what with her hands while wearing like a black blazer and like one of those microphone headsets, you know? Just someone who, like she's someone who I think does a good job of signaling and taking a kind of photo that is meant to signal like, I am an interesting person who does interest in work. That's just my take, like, your mileage may vary on that, but if you have any sense of, like,

what I'm describing, it is exactly what you're imagining. So here is the problem. In the wake of her husband, Ackman, his crusade against Dr. Gay for these sloppy citations in her PhD and during her academic record at Harvard, which he says is plagiarism and, like, proof that she is unqualified and proof that she should not be in leadership at Harvard, business insider looked into his wife, Dr. Oxman's history while she was at MIT. And it sounds like the results were kind of not great. We talked about this in the last episode, but like I'm not an academic. I don't have a PhD. I don't do academic writing. So, you know, what the hell do I know about what is or is not plagiarism? However, one of the big issues that Business Insider found is that apparently it appears

as if Dr. Oxman lifted entire sections of her doctoral dissertation from Wikipedia. So I'm not an academic currently, but before I dropped out of my PhD program, I taught many, many, many, many, many, many college courses, mostly 101 and 102, like, introduction to composition or rhetoric courses. I thought a lot of that in my career. And in the training that I received for doing that, we were taught specifically to tell students to not use Wikipedia. as a source because it's just not a reliable source. Anybody can edit it, all of that. And so instead, the party line was to tell these students that, like, they should scroll

down to the bottom of whatever wiki entry they were looking at, check out the sources links there, read those, and cite them if those sources are legit. Rather than citing Wikipedia, that was like a big, glaring no-no. But even if you were to cite Wikipedia properly, it was still a big no-no for, like, undergrad 101 students. So certainly it would be a big no-no for somebody who is trying to submit a PhD dissertation. And again, she's being accused of not citing the passages that she copied from Wikipedia. So using Wikipedia at all, bad, using Wikipedia and then not even citing it and passing it off as your own, doubly bad. Let's take a quick break.

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Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yarn birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Huber me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music.

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Atman is kind of having a meltdown about this whole thing on Twitter. And I feel like his tweets are very telling. So let's talk a little bit about those. So by the time you listen to this, whenever you're listening to this, I know that he will have tweeted quite a bit more because he's having one of those kind of like tweet storm. He has been just tweeting nonstop all weekend. I mean this like very literally.

The longest tweet I have ever seen in my entire life. Like longer than I ever thought that you would be able to tweet in one tweet. I am going to be honest and say that I 100% did not read it. And I don't know a single soul who would read that tweet unless they were being paid for it or if it was their job or something. But then for as long as that tweet is, like you scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll. At the bottom, it still says tweet continued below, which like, yeah, you know that meme that's like, sorry that happened to you or happy for you, but I am not reading all of that. I am not reading all of that. End of story, period.

So I will give you a couple of what he is tweeted. I didn't read his whole like novel, but I did read some of his shorter tweets. So he says, how can one defend oneself against an accusation of plagiarizing Wikipedia for a dissertation written 15 years ago in 2009? Isn't the whole point of Wikipedia that is a dynamic source of info that changes minute by minute based on edits and contributions from around the globe?

So no, Ackman, that is not actually how Wikipedia works. Like, Wikipedia has a very clear, edit history with like time stamps and dates of when it was edited. Sometimes it even tells you who edited it. So it really is like really easy for anybody to tell when an entry on Wikipedia was added or edited. So it sounds like maybe Ackman is suggesting that somebody could have edited the Wikipedia entries to match his wife's dissertation after the fact. But you would know that. And the business insider reporter who wrote this story has already confirmed that she checked because it's really easy to know. So sorry, Ackman. No. He also asked,

Is Wikipedia even copyrighted, which like the reason why it is not cool to copy and paste bits of Wikipedia into your PhD dissertation without citations is not because it's breaking copyright law. It's like breaking academic norms. Like he completely is like grasping at things to prove that this is fine. He also objects to the fact that business insider reached out to his wife on Friday night right before Shabbat. I will just say this. It is really clear that he sees this as a direct attack on. family. He tweets, it is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family. And this is my thing. Dr. Gay also has a family. And it sounds like when he is

looking into the academic records of people like Dr. Gay, that is him like taking legitimate actions to protect academic integrity or whatever. But when someone looks into the academic record of his wife, now that's an attack on his family. It also needs to be said that Dr. Gay in her resignation that she published in the New York Times, her like letter about what happened. She said that she has gotten more racial slurs and death threats. And I actually read that her house has been put under police surveillance because of so many attacks that she's gotten and threats that she's gotten. And so it's pretty telling to me that Ackman is not necessarily seeing those as attacks against gay. The only person here who is being attacked in his book is his

family. He defends his wife saying, what makes my wife human is that she, She makes mistakes. And again, like, why is his wife allowed to make mistakes in her academic writing and Dr. Gay is not? And it's telling that, like, he sees his wife as human. Then what does he see Dr. Gay as? Like, not human, not allowed to make mistakes. And I think it really comes down to that dynamic that we were talking about in that episode. Like, it's bad when you do it, but it's different when I do it.

I get to surveil the behavior of other people to make sure that their behavior is on the up and up. But if someone dare tries to do the same to my behavior, then that's an attack. Because it all comes down to who is seen as a rightful person belonging in a space and who is automatically looked at or treated with suspicion. And also, who gets to act like the authority of who belongs and who doesn't, who deserves to be surveilled and who doesn't, who gets to be looked at with suspicion and who doesn't. You know, when people like Akman and Rufo and Jason from the All In podcast, who boy did I have a mouthful for him in that episode, I know,

when they say things like, oh, we need to return to like a colorblind merit-based society. I think what they're really saying is that we need to make sure that we have a society where the things that people like me and people who look like me get are not questioned or challenged, while the things that people who are not me and people who do not look like me are always viewed with suspicion. Like Bill Ackman clearly sees himself as the authority at Harvard, a place where he has no real connection other than like donating a pretty small amount of money. Yet he still thinks that he should have the ultimate say and how these places are run. And all of that said, though, this might be a little bit of an unpopular opinion. And I genuinely do want to know like if you're listening what you think.

But I am actually not thrilled about what is happening to Dr. Oxman. I know I get it. I don't want to be a wet blanket here. And, like, I'm also not above enjoying the memes and the tweets and all of that. I think there's some real kind of karma, what goes around, comes around stuff happening here, which I love. I enjoy that too. However, I know that it's super hard to resist the lure of all of that. But I am worried about this idea of what happens when weaponizing plagiarism accusations

becomes a thing, you know, where accusations are not coming from peers or academic colleagues, but just like randos with an axe to grind. Obviously, like, I'm not crying too many tears because Ackman definitely started this and, like, can certainly dish it out, but doesn't seem to be able to take it. But ultimately, I think that what is going to happen is that academia is going to suffer, the institution of, like, education is going to suffer. This is not what academia is about, and so many of our institutions have just become these way to, these weapons to hurl at each other. And I legit do not know if Ackman's wife has any kind of connection to this Dr. Gay thing other than having the misfortune of being married to a man like Ackman. Like was she beating the drum for Gay to resign alongside her husband or like what she genuinely had nothing, like said nothing about it publicly and like now is all mixed up in it.

I don't know. And I also know that like with the plethora of AI tools like turn it in that are used to sort of check. for plagiarism, but are routinely very janky and specifically, like, return false positives for cheating when a writer or plagiarizing, when a writer is a non-native speaker, like they're much more likely to flag writing by somebody who has learned English as a second language as having been plagiarized, right? So it just seems like a really scary precedent when all these tools are everywhere. They're so janky. And I just feel like it will definitely, if weaponizing plagiarism in this way becomes the norm, it will definitely.

harm people who are already marginalized. And so I don't like any of it. I understand why people are making it about Ackman's wife's plagiarism record, but like I don't think it sets a good precedent. It doesn't feel good to me. It feels kind of icky. I don't like where this will ultimately end up. So again, Ackman is kind of going scorched earth here. He is vowing to use his vast wealth, like he is a billionaire, to investigate every faculty member at MIT and business insider to see if they ever wrote anything that could be considered plagiarism. And it just seems like he is somebody who can really only direct outward. Like anger and suspicion can only be directed from me to others. It will never be directed inward to examine his own behavior, for instance. It is always

someone else who has done something wrong. And yeah, it's just like a very weird situation. I saw this tweet, I think it might have been deleted by now, that really summed it up nicely, which is like, imagine if you had plagiarized your dissertation for Wikipedia had gotten away with it for like 15 years, went on to become an academic celebrity, and then your spouse flung your work into the national spotlight because he was on a separate crusade about DEI. Like how pissed would you be? Yeah, I would be pretty angry. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Oden.

to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard,

you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's. twice as large as the next two combined.

So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcast presents soccer moms.

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This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drink. Sidebar. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they had a bogo. Well, then you got it. Do you want a white collar or something here?

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I love this team and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on. Oh. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. So even beyond these new plagiarist, some accusations against Ackman's wife, Dr. Oxman, even more like wild than that is their connection to Jeffrey Epstein, which like, it's just really something. So heads up, this might get a little, a little tough because we're talking about Epstein. So you might have listened to

the episode that we did in our very first season back in 2020 with former MIT student, Ottawa Mboya. She was a grad student at MIT, and she was actually the first person to call for Joy Ito, who then was the head of MIT's Media Lab to step down after it was revealed that Joy Ito had taken donations from Epstein after Epstein was already a convicted child sex predator. Epstein pled guilty in 2008 to a sex crime involving a child, and his donation records to MIT continued until like 2017, so well after he had already pled guilty and been convicted of a crime involving a child. So yeah, a child sex predator. So in that episode, we talked about how that year, the organization, Me Too in STEM won MIT's Media Labs Disobedience Award. The Disobedience Award is a pretty

big deal. It is a 250,000 no strings attached prize for recognizing individuals and groups who engage in the website says responsible, ethical disobedience aimed at challenging norms, rules, or laws that sustain societies and justices. So the fifth. The fifth, physical award is this like glass orb sculpture. And that year, when Me Too and STEM won the Disobedience Award for calling out sexual abuses in the sciences, Jeffrey Epstein also got a replica of the disobedience award that Glass Orb because he donated to the Media Lab. I remember this being like a viscerally disgusting, enraging detail about the coziness that MIT had was somebody who would already been convicted and pled guilty to a sex crime against a child.

Like, that is just something that I remember doing that episode that, like, sticks with me. And it turns out that Ackman's wife, Dr. Oxman, was the one who was in charge of, like, having that award made and presenting it to Epstein. And because she ran the mediated Matter Group at MIT's Media Lab. And she, her organization that she ran within the lab, got a $125,000 donation from Epstein. after he had been convicted, which she says that she was required to keep confidential by the university because he was a sex criminal. So Dr. Oxman, like, I feel like it gets so much worse. She didn't physically make and deliver the award herself.

It really sounds like she kind of forced her grad students to do it on her behalf. One of them, according to reporting from the Boston Globe, actually sent her an email with like a paper trail that was like, hey, this guy is super sketchy. Are you sure you want me to do this? Are you sure you want to be connected with them? So, yeah, I really feel bad for the grad students who were sort of forced into doing this by Dr. Oxman. And it sounds like they really had like registered some objections and didn't want to do it. So after MIT's connection to Epstein was finally all coming to light, but before Joy Itto resigned from the media lab,

it sounds like there was media interest in reporting on who did what as it pertains to Epstein at MIT. And Dr. Oxman's husband, Bill Ackman, was the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, one beating the drum against Dr. Gay at Harvard was sending, like, vaguely threatening emails to Joy Ito, basically saying that he better keep his wife's name out of this if he knows what's good for him. I have to give it to Ackman here. He is a man who can write the fuck out of a threatening email. Like, it is clear what is being threatened here, but he never outright comes out and says, like, hey, Joy, if you include my wife's name in this, I will blow up your spot, but he communicates that that is the intention very well without ever saying it clearly.

So here's a little bit of what I mean. So this is an email that Bill Ackman wrote to the head of the MIT Media Lab, Joy Ito, about his wife's connection to Epstein. Neri forwarded your email to me. I would please ask that you copy me on all Epstein-related communications going forward as I and members of my legal and communications team are working to help her. And Neri already has enough on her plate breastfeeding, a three-month-old baby, a very beautiful one might I add, without a baby nurse until early September. So, first of all, I hope I never find myself using the line. Please copy me on all Epstein-related communications going forward. Also, that little detail, she's breastfeeding without a baby nurse. Can you imagine? No baby nurse? My God. What a saint.

So he goes on the same. I mean, this is how you know that, like, they are very privileged people, the fact that he would throw that in there, the way that like a billion women have to breastfeed and take care of their children every single day, she's doing it without a nurse. The fact that he has to throw that detail in there is very telling to me. So he goes on to say, our advice on handling the recent press request,

I would suggest that on background, that you let the press know that Epstein did not receive a disobedience award, but he, like other donors to the lab, donor A, B, C, D, etc., received a gift from the media lab of a unique design object. So here's subtle threat number one. I don't think it is necessary for you to say

that it was at your request, which I understand it was in this case, but it is very important that you don't mention Neri's name or otherwise get her involved, or she will have to issue her own statement to protect her reputation, explaining why it was sent and at whose request, who else received similar gifts,

how she met Epstein, and who else at MIT received funding from Epstein, why she declined to attend meetings and dinners with Epstein's and which other faculty members attended. This will, of course, blow this entire thing up even more. We would certainly not like to see that happened. The fact that Neri as the designer of the Media Lab was asked to produce nearly all, if not all,

physical gifts for donors, using her students' time and resources at either of your Raphael's office, Nina's and Jess's request, is not a good reason for Neri to be outed as a supplier to Epstein. Because of Neri's profile, her upcoming MoMA show,

and the large amount of recent media attention around her, she would be an appealing target for the press, as I'm sure you understand. Like, 10 out of 10 as far as vaguely threatening emails go, I hope that nobody ever has to write this level of vaguely threatening email on my behalf, but 10 out of 10 on this one. And so here's another thing that I want to say. If you knew that there were emails out there,

like, I'm just trying to think, like, if I knew there were emails out there about me trying to obscure my partner, connection to Jeffrey Epstein, comma, literal, sex criminal, literal, like, child sex abuser, I would probably have, like, really turned down my public profile. I certainly

would not be picking, like, national front page fights with other national public figures. And I especially would not be doing it the very same week that a trobe of documents about Epstein is unredacted. And I guess, like, that is my

that these people do not operate in the same realities that you and I operate in. You know, I was thinking, like, wow, this person really is not self-aware. Ackman really has no self-awareness, wow. But I don't think that's it. Like, I just think that they think that their behavior is always above reproach, and it always will be. Surveillance and scrutiny is for other people's behavior, not his behavior. Dare I say that surveillance and scrutiny is for black women's behavior, not for behavior of white billionaires like Bill Ackman. Anyway, I really want to know what you think. Let me know what you're thinking in the comments.

Also, happy New Year. I hope that folks had a happy holiday or a merry holiday. Whatever you celebrate, I hope you had a good one. I hope you had a good new year. How's it going? What do you want to hear about? Where are you at? What are your thoughts?

Don't be shy. Tell me how it's going. Thanks for listening. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative.

Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends.

me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us. From IHeart Podcast, Saigon. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart. It's for Vietnam. They're pouring patril all over here. Freedom for Vietnam! There's a fire coming to this country, and it's going to burn out everything.

Listen to Saigon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The story I've told myself can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage. the possibility of connection. This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast Deeply Well with Debbie Brown if you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole. This podcast is for you to hear more.

Listen to Deeply Well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.