allegation, that Nichols acknowledges my exist to some extent in nearly every academic paper, particularly when it comes to phrasing or footnoting. He's reinforcing and agreeing with what Prof Muhammed said; that it is death from a thousand paper cuts and that the University should be the one to render a judgement about whether it rises to the level of academic misconduct. The capability of AI search tools to root out all kinds of supposed plagiarism was clearly used as a weapon by rightwing activists like Christopher Rufo (note his tweet mentioning Gay....scalped!) who seek to makeover notions of academic freedom in their image.

Second, these activists claim they want to base academic achievement based merit, without defining what that merit is. It should be noted that merit and diversity are NOT mutually exclusive. But they want to frame it that way. Why? Because it is a concerted effort and because broader inclusion threatens their own sense of entitlement. This, of course, bleeds over into the MAGA critique of "elites." What they're really saying is not only that diversity threatens their power position, but also that education needs to be constrained against dangerous ideas like built in social inequity. There are powerful donors behind this and Rufo and others make no effort to hide that fact.

Ultimately, Harvard with its massive endowment and reputation will survive this type of attack. Not so clear is how state universities will fare. The right continues to go after colleges as hot beds of leftist teaching and the scourge of inclusion. One only has to look at Rufo and DeSantis's targeting of New College in Florida, not to mention tenure at other colleges, to see where this is going. I think it is an attack on the concept of academic freedom itself by replacing it with a new orthodoxy driven by so-called conservatives.