Harvard's Prez Academic Credentials are Plagerized & Lacking, Trump Leads Biden in Popular Vote, Iranian Rebels Could Destroy 12% of Global Trade (The Five for 12/13/23)
Plus, one of the largest poaching takedowns in U.S. History.
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Now, let’s dive into the news.
[one]
Fox News reports:
Harvard University has been rocked in the news cycle after its president Claudine Gay's congressional testimony on antisemitism last week sparked national outrage.
Now, a look at her academic work has scholars saying Gay "definitely" plagiarized almost 20 authors in four of her 11 peer-reviewed academic papers, including her doctoral dissertation.
The Manhattan Institute's Christopher Rufo and Karlstack’s Chris Brunet published the initial report alleging plagiarism by Gay on Sunday.
Rufo and Brunet lay out several instances of alleged plagiarism by Gay, including taking a full paragraph from Franklin Gilliam’s and Lawrence Bobo's paper "Race, Sociopolitical Participation, and Black Empowerment," which Gay used nearly verbatim in her 1997 Harvard political science doctoral dissertation, "Taking Charge: Black Electoral Success and the Redefinition of American Policies."
The pair noted that while Gay referenced both Bobo and Gilliam in the paper, she did not use quotation marks for the language she pulled and only changed a few words.
The Washington Free Beacon analyzed 29 potential instances of plagiarism in Gay's work that appeared to be lifted from almost a dozen scholars.[
Dr. Carol M. Swaine, One of the authors Gay pulled from took to X (formerly Twitter) to voice outrage at Gay’s theft of her intellectual property.
Note that I didn’t use the phrase “alleged” in regards to the accusations, because Harvard’s board has acknowledged the “lack of citations,” according to the Boston Globe.
Typically, tenure track professors will publish a minimum of four peer-reviewed papers per year, but Gay has only published 11 total (and four were plagiarized), which calls into question her academic credibility to lead the nation’s most prestigious university…but Harvard’s board and faculty alike are sticking by the President.
More than $1 billion in donations have been pulled from Harvard over the school’s lax attitudes towards antisemitism…but given the school’s $51 billion endowment, that’s a drop in the bucket by comparison.
Harvard also collects more than $3.3 billion each year from government contracts and grants, which some lawmakers are promising to defund in the wake of recent campus events
[two]
Donald Trump has a monster lead in Iowa, one month out from the first Presidential primary.
Donald Trump has a huge and expanded lead over his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in a new poll in Iowa, the state that kicks off the party's nominating contest on Jan. 15.
The former president has 51% first-choice support from people likely to take part in the Iowa caucuses next month, according to a NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll released on Monday, up from 43% in the same poll conducted in October.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has 19% first-choice support in the poll - up from 16% in October - while former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley is at 16%, unchanged since the last poll.
Iowa uses a different system to pick presidential candidates than most other states where a traditional ballot is employed. Voters in Iowa - or caucus goers - will gather for several hours in thousands of locations on Jan. 15 to debate the candidates before ranking them. Polling Iowans' first-choice preference is the best indicator of candidates' support.
Nationwide, Trump leads Biden in the popular vote…which is a reversal of 2016 and 2020, with the 45th POTUS losing the popular vote in both elections.
[three]
The Houthi Rebels, an Iran-backed faction in Yemen’s Civil War…have turned their attention towards attacking any nation’s ships that may have ties to Israel.
A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels slammed into a Norwegian-flagged tanker in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen near a key maritime chokepoint, the rebels and authorities said Tuesday.
The assault on the oil and chemical tanker Strinda expands a campaign by the Iranian-backed rebels targeting ships close to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into apparently now striking those that have no clear ties to Israel. That potentially imperils cargo and energy shipments coming through the Suez Canal and further widens the international impact of the Israel-Hamas war now raging in the Gaza Strip.
Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree issued a video statement saying the rebels only fired on the vessel when it “rejected all warning calls.”
The U.S. military’s Central Command said an anti-ship cruise missile “launched from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen” hit the Strinda.
“There were no U.S. ships in the vicinity at the time of the attack, but the USS Mason responded … and is currently rendering assistance,” Central Command said. The Mason is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer that has been involved in several of the recent incidents off Yemen.
France’s Armies Ministry separately said its frigate Languedoc shot down a drone that was “threatening” the Strinda during the attack near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which separates East Africa from the Arabian Peninsula and sees some $1 trillion in goods pass through it annually.
The Suez Canal is so important for international trade that 12% of all international goods pass through. Unless stopped, the Houthis have the chance to make a significant negative impact on the world economy.
[four]
A U.S. comedian was kidnapped and murdered in Columbia, allegedly by a Cartel.
Fox News reports:
Tou Ger Xiong, 50, an Asian American man from Woodbury in Minnesota, was in the country on holiday and had met up with a woman with whom he had connected with on social media when he was abducted by a group of men, according to reports.
Xiong, who was born in Laos and spent four years of his childhood in a refugee camp in Thailand, called a friend in Colombia at around 7 p.m. Sunday saying the men were demanding $2,000 (8 million Colombian Pesos) in cash for his release, according to local newspaper El Colombiano.
He also told his friend that he was being held at gunpoint.
Meanwhile, as he was being held captive, police said a woman was raiding his apartment at around 4:40 p.m. but when police arrived on the scene she managed to escape. It is unclear if this was the same woman he had met up with earlier.
But before any payment could be made, Xiong’s body was found in the water of a ravine in La Corcovada, northwest of Medellín, with multiple stab wounds and blunt force trauma, according to El Colombiano. He also had bruises caused by an apparent fall from more than 60 feet. Police say they are investigating whether the group decided to kill Xiong because he may have tried to escape captivity.
Xiong had previously appeared on America’s Got Talent.
[five]
In one of the worst cases of poaching in American history, two men are looking at years behind bars for kiling more than 3,600 eagles in Montana over the course of several years.
Simon Paul and Travis John Branson are accused of poaching bald eagles and golden eagles on the Flathead Indian Reservation and elsewhere from January 2015 to March 2021 and then illegally selling them on the black market, according to the indictment posted online by the Daily Montanan.
“During the investigation, law enforcement uncovered messages from Branson and others describing the illegal taking of eagles by stating, ‘[O]ut [here] committing felonies,’ and telling buyers he was ‘on a killing spree’ to obtain eagle tail feathers for future sales,” the indictment states.
So…they went down because they bragged about it on the internet?! Nobody said criminals were smart…
Until the next one,
-sth