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This is so frustrating and so scary. Why would anyone in the media listen to Rufo since he has no credentials to criticize anyone's research. This type of harm also happens to women in academia in any discipline. When I went up for full professor I had the unanimous support of my department as well as the Dean of the Business School. However, the chair of the school-wide Promotion & Tenure Committee had a reputation of not approving females for promotion to full, since he believed they were "unworthy". He intimidated other members of the committee so the vote was split. While I also had the near unanimous approval of the Provost's Advisory Committee, the Chair of the school-wide committee went to the Provost and told her that I had plagiarized some sentences and paragraphs in my published research. His argument was that I used some sentences and paragraphs from older articles I had published in more recent articles, and since I had to sign away my copyright to the journals, I had violated copyright and plagiarized. The Chair was an economics professor and didn't publish in business-related journals. I met with the Provost and demonstrated that most business journals (at the time), including the ones I published in, did not require the author to sign away their copyright and that I was being accused of plagiarizing my own work. I also speculated on how I might write an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education discussing the discrimination against women in higher ed promotions. My congratulations letter was slipped under my office door that evening. The Rufo's of the world don't want free speech and want to force everyone to abide by their point of view. Unfortunately, it's a battle that never ends.

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Sorry you had to go through this. Absolutely insane standard. You can't plagiarize your own work! Right now I worry that these sorts of tactics will be weaponized to go after faculty on a massive scale.

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