Plagiarism Alleged in Duke Student's Commencement Speech

[Bostondevil]

I'm sure Duke will treat this like an isolated incident instead of taking a hard look at themselves. Duke could start to stand out from the highly selective college crowd by at least trying to upgrade the ethics of their admitted students but I doubt they will. Again - I am not casting aspersions on every Duke student, I am casting aspersions on the process. When the process does not reward ethics and sometimes favors those who bend (or break) the rules, bending the rules becomes commonplace.

[CameronBornAndBred]

In a word, yes.

Name one area of modern life where ethical behavior is rewarded though.

Politics! (no, wait, that's not right...)

Religious leadership!! (wait...almost there...)

Formal scholarship!!! (Nevermind, I give up)

[Bostondevil]

I'm guessing some of her Duke professors are now using that software to go through some of the papers she submitted.

I appreciate the efforts of the person who figured this out but I'm curious what would lead one to spend their time cross-checking her speech with another speech from a different school several years ago.

I found her LinkedIn page and she is quite the over-achiever. It looks like she interned at Credit Suisse last summer and had an offer to return.

Oh crap. I just checked that same LinkedIn page - I think I met her at the Duke Women's Alumni weekend in Feb 2020, just before the world shut down. I am dismayed to discover that she majored in statistics buffered slightly by the discovery that she also majored in economics. If she is the young woman I spoke with about some of my activities in public health, she really did not need to do this, being the student speaker at graduation is not that much of an honor.

[cato]

In a word, yes.

Name one area of modern life where ethical behavior is rewarded though.

In my career I have consistently seen ethical behavior rewarded. One of the truisms I have seen play out is that it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a moment to tear it down.

[Bluedog]

I'm sure Duke will treat this like an isolated incident instead of taking a hard look at themselves. Duke could start to stand out from the highly selective college crowd by at least trying to upgrade the ethics of their admitted students but I doubt they will. Again - I am not casting aspersions on every Duke student, I am casting aspersions on the process. When the process does not reward ethics and sometimes favors those who bend (or break) the rules, bending the rules becomes commonplace.

Duke has pretty harsh penalties for in-class plagiarism...But harder to punish when it's an already graduated individual and where it was an optional "extra-curricular" activity where the plagiarism occurred, I suppose.

[Bostondevil]

In my career I have consistently seen ethical behavior rewarded. One of the truisms I have seen play out is that it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a moment to tear it down.

what is your field? And does it only reward ethical behavior? Because if it rewards both the ethical and the unethical, I'm not inclined to give the field credit for a random draw.

[bundabergdevil]

In my career I have consistently seen ethical behavior rewarded. One of the truisms I have seen play out is that it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a moment to tear it down.

That sounds like “don’t get caught” to me!

I have a pretty dim view of people and think there is way way WAY more unethical, illegal and immoral activity that ever gets brought to light, let alone punished.

[Bostondevil]

Duke has pretty harsh penalties for in-class plagiarism...But harder to punish when it's an already graduated individual and where it was an optional "extra-curricular" activity where the plagiarism occurred, I suppose.

Yeah - this wasn't for a grade. I don't see them revoking the degree. The only people harmed by this act of plagiarism were the other students who submitted speeches to be the student graduation speaker. The one who spoke at mine spelled out D-U-K-E, you know, D is for dedication or some such nonsense. I hope it wasn't a plagiarized speech, but it was hardly an original idea. And it was boring as heck.

Since this story has hit the internet, in the end, the speaker herself is the most harmed by it, but she's probably not going to suffer all that much career wise because do we really think anybody at Credit Suisse is going to care?

[CameronBornAndBred]

In my career I have consistently seen ethical behavior rewarded. One of the truisms I have seen play out is that it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a moment to tear it down.

I don't care what your career is, I support this.
My career is small business computer repair shop owner. And just like most other small business folks, my worth is my word and honesty. Word of mouth is how I survive, all it would take is for one complaint to "go viral", and poof, my phone would be very silent. And thankfully it's not, because said word of mouth has been very positive.

[Bostondevil]

I don't care what your career is, I support this.
My career is small business computer repair shop owner. And just like most other small business folks, my worth is my word and honesty. Word of mouth is how I survive, all it would take is for one complaint to "go viral", and poof, my phone would be very silent. And thankfully it's not, because said word of mouth has been very positive.

When complaints "go viral", I usually question the ethics of the complainer and the person making the video, if there is a video involved. I give small business owners the benefit of the doubt unless they have nothing but bad reviews. In general, I think people are way more motivated to go to places like Yelp and complain about "bad" service than they are to rave about good service, so, I figure a business with a ratio of 3 bad reviews to 1 good is worth a try, especially if the bad reviews are of the entitled type.

[CrazyNotCrazie]

Yeah - this wasn't for a grade. I don't see them revoking the degree. The only people harmed by this act of plagiarism were the other students who submitted speeches to be the student graduation speaker. The one who spoke at mine spelled out D-U-K-E, you know, D is for dedication or some such nonsense. I hope it wasn't a plagiarized speech, but it was hardly an original idea. And it was boring as heck.

Since this story has hit the internet, in the end, the speaker herself is the most harmed by it, but she's probably not going to suffer all that much career wise because do we really think anybody at Credit Suisse is going to care?

Within the last year or so CS lost over $5B in its dealings with Archegos, a family office that was engaged in some shifty trading. Several other banks also took a hit on this, but CS took the biggest and had the most press about it. One can put some of the blame on CS for this as they seemed to have lousy internal controls in place, but they were also the victim of unethical behavior. So if they are made aware of this, they are not likely to look favorably upon it as they try to rebuild their reputation.

I have spent much of my career working at large banks and do not recall any egregiously unethical behavior by those around me, but really bad behavior by those in other parts of the banks (at one bank in particular) have had a direct impact on my ability to do my job as the reputational hits the bank took made others unwilling to do business with my department, despite the fact that we had nothing to do with it, but they did not want to be seen doing business with this bank.

[Stray Gator]

Yeah - this wasn't for a grade. I don't see them revoking the degree. The only people harmed by this act of plagiarism were the other students who submitted speeches to be the student graduation speaker. The one who spoke at mine spelled out D-U-K-E, you know, D is for dedication or some such nonsense. I hope it wasn't a plagiarized speech, but it was hardly an original idea. And it was boring as heck.

Since this story has hit the internet, in the end, the speaker herself is the most harmed by it, but she's probably not going to suffer all that much career wise because do we really think anybody at Credit Suisse is going to care?

I realize that I'm an old-timer with antiquated beliefs, but it's disheartening to me that others don't see this act of blatant dishonesty as a serious transgression that warrants punishment, or at least demands that the plagiarist be held responsible for her wrongdoing and suffer some kind of adverse consequences. The way I see it, we may never know whether the student who plagiarized another's work product did so because she was too lazy or too lacking in creative intelligence to compose her own speech; but we can be absolutely certain that she is a thief -- and a stupid one at that, to have pilfered from another commencement speech that was so readily accessible. At a minimum, I believe this incident should be entered as a red flag on her Duke transcript so that prospective future employers will be aware of the wrongdoing, which some may justifiably feel casts doubt upon her judgment and her integrity.

[CameronBornAndBred]

When complaints "go viral", I usually question the ethics of the complainer and the person making the video, if there is a video involved. I give small business owners the benefit of the doubt unless they have nothing but bad reviews. In general, I think people are way more motivated to go to places like Yelp and complain about "bad" service than they are to rave about good service, so, I figure a business with a ratio of 3 bad reviews to 1 good is worth a try, especially if the bad reviews are of the entitled type.

I'm talking on a very local scale. And I'm guessing that you or anyone else on social media have seen it.

"I got a slice of pizza at Mario's, and it was soggy!"
"oh yeah, that happened to me too, and the waitress was rude"
"Yeah, and I heard that the owner's name is really Mark, not Mario!"

And that's all she wrote. For weeks after, poor Mark/Mario is paying heavily for one customer that wasn't happy over a slice of pizza, but had time enough in her day to complain to the world about it. After she ate it.

[bundabergdevil]

I realize that I'm an old-timer with antiquated beliefs, but it's disheartening to me that others don't see this act of blatant dishonesty as a serious transgression that warrants punishment, or at least demands that the plagiarist be held responsible for her wrongdoing and suffer some kind of adverse consequences.

I don’t think anyone has said they don’t see it as a serious transgression. I certainly think it is. I also think transgressions are fairly common and usually go undetected, let alone appropriately punished.

[cspan37421]

I'm talking on a very local scale. And I'm guessing that you or anyone else on social media have seen it.

"I got a slice of pizza at Mario's, and it was soggy!"
"oh yeah, that happened to me too, and the waitress was rude"
"Yeah, and I heard that the owner's name is really Mark, not Mario!"

Don't forget the classic:

"Their food is terrible!"
"I know! And the portions are so small ..."

[Bostondevil]

I realize that I'm an old-timer with antiquated beliefs, but it's disheartening to me that others don't see this act of blatant dishonesty as a serious transgression that warrants punishment, or at least demands that the plagiarist be held responsible for her wrongdoing and suffer some kind of adverse consequences. The way I see it, we may never know whether the student who plagiarized another's work product did so because she was too lazy or too lacking in creative intelligence to compose her own speech; but we can be absolutely certain that she is a thief -- and a stupid one at that, to have pilfered from another commencement speech that was so readily accessible. At a minimum, I believe this incident should be entered as a red flag on her Duke transcript so that prospective future employers will be aware of the wrongdoing, which some may justifiably feel casts doubt upon her judgment and her integrity.

My problem with this kind of a reaction is what I said before - if we do something like this we are just pretending that this is an isolated incident when it is not. Granted plagiarizing a commencement speech may be isolated, but the pressure to behave unethically exists in the system and we mostly do not go after unethical behavior. If we are only going to care about plagiarism, we are hardly addressing the problem. Where do we draw the line? Are we going to care about fairness or aren't we, because if we aren't going to care about fairness all the time, I don't think we should pick and choose when it suits us. I wouldn't consider that ethical behavior either.

Going after Ms. Parkash without addressing the system that encourages such behavior is no kind of solution, if you ask me.

As for Credit Suisse, perhaps they won't hire her after all - because of the optics, not because of a change of heart about ethics. CS took a hit recently because they had lousy internal controls? I think having lousy internal controls is one more example of what I'm talking about. It is a lack of concern for ethics that leads to lousy internal controls. They may clean up shop now until the optics are better, I doubt the culture has changed much.

[Wander]

Eek, that was a painful video to sit through.

To attempt a positive spin, good for The Chronicle and the student and editor-in-chief who wrote the article, Milla Surjadi. I can imagine it being a tough decision to make to write and publish that.

[jimmymax]

Most of the good speeches have been given.

[Stray Gator]

My problem with this kind of a reaction is what I said before - if we do something like this we are just pretending that this is an isolated incident when it is not. Granted plagiarizing a commencement speech may be isolated, but the pressure to behave unethically exists in the system and we mostly do not go after unethical behavior. If we are only going to care about plagiarism, we are hardly addressing the problem. Where do we draw the line? Are we going to care about fairness or aren't we, because if we aren't going to care about fairness all the time, I don't think we should pick and choose when it suits us. I wouldn't consider that ethical behavior either.

Going after Ms. Parkash without addressing the system that encourages such behavior is no kind of solution, if you ask me.

As for Credit Suisse, perhaps they won't hire her after all - because of the optics, not because of a change of heart about ethics. CS took a hit recently because they had lousy internal controls? I think having lousy internal controls is one more example of what I'm talking about. It is a lack of concern for ethics that leads to lousy internal controls. They may clean up shop now until the optics are better, I doubt the culture has changed much.

I disagree with the first bolded statement in your message, and I find the second bolded statement incomprehensible.

As far as I'm aware, we do "go after unethical behavior." We just aren't able to uncover it and punish it with anything approaching uniformity. In my opinion, the fact that all incidents of plagiarism may not be caught does not justify allowing those that are caught to go unpunished. The enforcement of rules can never be completely "fair and evenhanded," simply because some violations will go undetected and some violators will find a way to evade or minimize their accountability. Such inconsistency is an unfortunate reality in an imperfect world. But the world would be a lot more imperfect if we relied on that rationale to dispense with enforcement of the rules altogether.

In my experience, people who engage in unethical practices may enjoy success for a while, but in most cases their perfidy eventually comes back to bite them. At some point, they lose the trust and confidence of those with whom they have dealt unfairly; and as their reputation for unethical behavior spreads, others refuse to deal with them. Credibility is still a valuable asset, even today.

[YmoBeThere]

At a minimum, I believe this incident should be entered as a red flag on her Duke transcript so that prospective future employers will be aware of the wrongdoing, which some may justifiably feel casts doubt upon her judgment and her integrity.

While I agree with the spirit of this, I can also see a potential issue here. Would she have grounds for action against the university if they did something with her transcipt, as was noted by others, a voluntary activity on her part? And the university and her transcripts should be commenting omly about her academic work? That she volunteered to expose her plagiarism in this way is clearly a lack of judgement and self-awareness on her part. Above and beyond the plagiarism itself.