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Saudi dentist alleges discrimination in lawsuit against Harvard
By adamg on Tue, 06/29/2010 - 9:25am
A Saudi dentist charges professors at Harvard School of Dental Medicine did everything they could to keep her from getting a doctorate there - including charging her with plagiarism on a test when, she says, she was just using memorization techniques taught to all Saudi students.
Ons Alkhadra filed her suit yesterday in US District Court in Boston. She is seeking unspecified damages as well as reimbursement of her tuition money.
In her suit, Alkhadra, already a dentist, says she was granted admission to an advanced-degree program at the dental school in 2003. Her suit charges one professor in particular had it out for her and asked her "inappropriate" questions before and during oral exams. Finally, she was given one last chance - a written, "closed book" test. On one answer, she wrote out an answer that was a long verbatim copy of a journal article on the topic; she says she did not have the article with her but was simply applying the skills Saudi students use to learn and recite the Koran.
Alkhadra charges the professors resented her presence and blamed pressure from the Saudi government as the sole reason to accept her.
Harvard has yet to reply to the suit.
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Comments
Redundancy
"...asked her "inappropriate" questions before and during oral exams".
Aren't all dentist exams oral?
Just sayin'.
I think it's interesting that
I think it's interesting that she seems to think that memorizing another persons work and repeating it is somehow not plagiarism. It is. It doesn't matter if she memorized it or copied it out of a book in front of her. If she's passing off someone else's work as her own it's plagiarism.
Yup. She misunderstood the
Yup. She misunderstood the definition of plagiarism, which is unfortunate for her, but you can't sue someone over your own misunderstanding of the rules.
It depends
The complaint is more that she cheated on the test due to it being "closed book" and her being able to verbatim write out something from a paper she shouldn't have had access to at the time. If the exam question asked "What did Ke$ha do before leaving the house when she woke up in the morning?" and you answer "She was feeling like P Diddy, got her glasses on. And Before she leaves, brush her teeth with a bottle of Jack 'Cause when she leaves for the night, she ain't coming back." That's not plagiarism.
If it instead says "Plan the morning of a partied-out, drunken whore-teen." and you say the same answer without saying "as described by a known drunken whore-teen, Ke$ha, in her song 'Tik Tok'", then it's plagiarism.
WIN
Best illustration of plagiarism evar.
Yeah, gold star
I was just thinking that. Can we, like, print you up a certificate or something? That was amazing. (I rewrote (and performed! How embarrassing!) that song for my law school talent show - "Woke up in the morning feelin' like Cardozo..."))
Actually, it's still
Actually, it's still plagiarism unless the question specifically asked for a recitation of the text of the article in question.
Almost any other conceivable question would be some variation on the theme, "tell me what you know about X." When the response to that is a verbatim copy of another text-- cited or not-- the student has not answered the question. By presenting the text of another as their own answer to the question "what do you know about X" they have plagiarized the author of that text. That text does not represent what the student knows about X. It represents what the author knows about X. It is entirely possible that a student may memorize one or more complete texts on a subject without understanding a single word; tests are there to measure the student's knowledge and understanding of the topic, not their ability to recall an arbitrary sequence of words.
I might have thought one could not have been at Harvard long before someone explained this concept to the student.
Oh Please
It is plagiarism ONLY if it is passing it off as her own work.
Wrote memorization and regurgitation is plagiarism, then lets sue every piss poor elementary school teacher who seems to expect that instead of actual thinking.
Better yet, next time you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you'll be hearing from the lawyers of the estate of the guy who wrote it.
Huh?
What are you talking about? Did you completely miss what he said? Reciting something is not plagiarism unless the recitee has been asked for original thoughts. Reciting the pledge is not in response to a request for original content. But a question on a test is, unless the question is, "what are the exact words in the Pledge of Allegiance?" or something similar. And let's not confuse Harvard or any other university for what may or may not be an accurate depiction of elementary education.
Unless
As you say, "reciting something is not plagiarism unless the recitee has been asked for original thoughts." This is precisely the problem: the student was not asked for original thoughts. The student was asked for an answer to a question. The test did not specifically ask for "original thoughts," just an answer. In response, she recited (in writing) an answer that was not judged to be incorrect by anybody.
Rote recitation is a legitimate educational practice that is currently out of favor in this country. It remains in practice in many other countries. It is old-fashioned, but it is not without value.
If you want to find a poor pedagogical practice, how about a "closed-book" take-home written exam?
You can be certain that many of the students who passed this test cheated (cheating is rampant in American schools) by cribbing from open books, but American students have learned through years of practice how to sufficiently muddy someone else's work in order to pass it off as their own.
Wouldn't it have been better if they'd spent years of practice learning how to memorize texts exactly? Wouldn't an excellent and precise memory (and loads of great poetry ready at the drop of a hat) be a better skill to bring to adulthood?
Unless the question is "what
Unless the question is "what are the exact words of text X?" then the requirement is original thought. But, neither of us actually knows what the question was, we are only making assumptions. However, if the question were phrased in such a way as to require recitation, I don't think Harvard would claim plagiarism.
The crux of the matter is whether we can trust Harvard's interpretation. Does Harvard have a history of dealing with international students from educational backgrounds that focus on rote memorization? Yes. Does Harvard have a history of alleging plagiarism against these students? Not so far as we know. This is the first publicized allegation.
Given that Harvard has a history of dealing with students from differing cultural backgrounds and associated learning styles, we should either expect many to have similar problems to this woman, or we should be ready to see her case as something different from the norm.
Her own work?
She wasn't passing it off as her own work. She was repeating it as an answer to an exam question. If you were unable to answer exam questions as people had previously answered those questions, exams would be impossible.
You have a strange concept of
You have a strange concept of impossible. Why can't she answer the question as SHE would answer it? Certainly lots of students answered that question before her, and she has no knowledge of those texts.
At worst, it's plagiarism-- substituting another text as her own. At best, she simply failed to show a grasp of the material, because repeating a memorized text does not demonstrate understanding.
She could have paraphrased the article in a way that demonstrated she understood the material. That's impossible? She could have paraphrased two or more articles, properly cited, demonstrating a broader knowledge of the topic than a single article, and also showing understanding. That's impossible?
She did
She did answer the question as SHE would answer it. The way SHE would answer it is by precisely presenting the best information she knew of that answered the question. She was apparently unfamiliar with the American tradition of pretending to do creative, original work through paraphrasing and bowdlerizing. We get lots of practice substituting worse words for better in our childhood essay tests. In her tradition, exact memorization of the best words is prized. They speak clearly in their "plagiarism." We mumble ours, and pretend it's better that way.
She wasn't asked to do original work. An exam question is not the place to do original work; it's not a dissertation, not an article for publication. Any correct answer would have at the least summarized someone else's work. It's true she could have paraphrased the article. She had the whole thing memorized, so she could have written any part of it down she wanted to. But why should she imagine her answer would be better if she muddied it up a little? It would have made her answer not better, but worse. And don't forget that the whole purpose of the exam is so she can be a dentist. Do you really want a dentist doing creative, original work in your mouth? I don't. I want them doing exactly what the best dentist would do.
This has nothing to do with
This has nothing to do with the great American tradition of paraphrasing. It has to do with the belief that learning something means you can explain it in your own words. If I ask two people how to make spaghetti, they'll use two different sets of words, even if they explain the exact same process. And neither of them will be verbatim what the spaghetti box says.
I understand if you come from an academic tradition where memorization of texts is valued, but just because many Americans memorize poems as a kid doesn't mean they recite journal articles to answer questions. That's just weird.
Weird
Yup, this case has everything to do with weird. She's just weird. She's weird mostly because she's from a different culture. One that does not share our cultural belief that learning something means you can explain it in "your own words."
If you ask two people to make spaghetti, and one of them recites verbatim what the spaghetti box says, they won't be wrong. They'll just be weird.
But drumming someone out of school for being weird rather than wrong is ... wrong.
She did not claim to "pioneer
She did not claim to "pioneer a research" nor was it supposed to be her work. She was simply being tested on the material she had studied, hence why it's more appropriate even in her case to have identical answers as her textbooks. I study Business, and it's often that we cannot come up with a better rephrasing of the answers explained in our books, especially regarding key concepts, nevermind us being non-native English speakers.
Not plagiarism
When Answering a question in the test and copied the answer from a book or article by memorization is NOT plagiarism, unless it was one of the rules of this exam specifically.
Only if you are writing an article and copied someone work is plagiarism, but not answering an exam question.
Apparently you guys misunderstood plagiarism, right?
It is very interesting that
It is very interesting that this woman's sister has filed a similar lawsuit in Cincinnati.
What are the odds of two women from the same family being harrased by a medical university?
This is funny
on multiple levels.
it is EXAM
you guys misunderstood the point of plagiarism??
this is regular exam as I understood not a publication.
so if someone asked you what is the capital of United states? the answer is clearly possible in one way not more so answering it not consider cheating however if you want to do publication then answering it will require you to reference the answer of this question since it is not your answer...
just opinion......
have you looked over the complaint?
Apparently it is not only the plagiarism thing, which wouldn't have been an issue if she just cited the journal she got her answers from, lots of professors would pass over that after confirming where the student got the idea from, I mean hello, we all forget sometimes especially if we were so excited that we know what to answer! This case is bigger, it has discrimination written all over it! The fact that they were shrugging her off for a year or more telling her different things and omitting how she can improve her situation and just leaving her to end up in a mess only to tell her in the end that she wasn't doing things right. I can understand how the whole communication gap can be like and how awkward it may be to be around a saudi muslim and why people may think they have poor performance basically because of English.. I don't know but this makes a really good case. Let's see what happens.
Hmmmmm
What are the chances that harrassment strikes twice in one family? Why don't people quit making excuses for their own shortcomings?