The anecdotes in Hedrick Smith’s “The Power Game” may be 40 years out of date, but the core insight into the US system of governance remains the same: power is fluid, fleeting, and indeterminant. A shocking variety of people can, for a given moment, find themselves to be the most powerful person in the US. Sometimes it is in fact the president, but it can just as easily be a block of senators, or a particularly flush and motivated donor. It can be losing candidate in a three-way race who, simply by considering dropping out, finds a moment of irresistible political leverage. Power in our republic is a constantly changing and uncertain mantle, almost as much projection as reality. I would also argue that it is the central selling point of our system: people think twice about how to go about swinging a sword if they’re not sure who’ll be swinging it tomorrow and what end they’re actually holding on to today.
Which brings me to plagiarism.
Bill Ackman wants use AI to investigate academics for plagiarism at scale. The scale here is key, the implication that AI will allow a wide net to be cast. Plagiarism never struck me as a particularly widespread problem in high level research, but I could at least feasibly be wrong and I’m in no position to tell him how to spend his time. What is fairly clear to me, however, is that there is amongst some the perception that academics have too much power. The ambition behind, or at least the gleeful anticipation for, these hypothesized plagiarism purges is to reduce that power and influence.
But where does this perception come from and why plagiarism? Power is fluid, based as much on perception as reality. In an age when the quantity of information is never in question and the price is approaching zero, the short-side of the market will always be quality, credibility, and context. Maybe we’re entering into a golden age of power and influence for academic scribblers, and that’s a reality some would like to head off at the pass. An accusation of plagiarism could stunt a career. A mass accusation of “rampant” plagiarism could diminish the broad credibility of scholars, reducing the perceived quality of the information relayed and the context they provide for policy and social discussions.
The US has three branches of federal government, four military branches, and 50 states, all sitting on top of thousands of municipal governments. As far as spreading power goes, that’s a pretty good start. If the 3,982 degree-granting institutions in the US have to be added to the registry of power, that’s fine, but I’ll have to admit that my students don’t seem all that awed by any power I’m currently wielding. Going by the focus of the media and Ackman, maybe we only need to add institutions in Cambridge, MA to the registry of power, but that doesn’t make power any less fluid and fleeting. It’s just political whack-a-mole, which I would remind everyone is a game where you can smack one source of power down, but you can’t control where power pops up next. Maybe power shifts to Silicon Valley. Maybe a cluster of TikTok influencers whose politics makes the median MIT professor look like Barry Goldwater. Be careful what you wish for…
Economist Writing Every Day 