asa defense of christina cross

Christina Cross, an Assistant Professor of Sociology, was recently subject to bad faith accusations of plagiarism by Christopher “incite a moral panic over Critical Race Theory” Rufo. Rufo leveraged similar allegations against Claudine Gay into forcing her resignation. Cross’s alleged plagiarism involves similar text to other articles… in the boilerplate description of large, commonly-used survey datasets like the PSID. Harvard Crimson discusses the story here.

The American Sociological Association has issued a response, reproduced in full below because I could only find it as a pdf linked from the site formerly known as Twitter and I thought folks might want to be able to link the text to a stable URL not requiring a login.

In Defense of Sociologist Christina Cross

March 26, 2024

The American Sociological Association condemns, in the strongest possible terms, unfounded accusations of plagiarism against Harvard University Assistant Professor of Sociology Dr. Christina Cross for her straightforward description of public data. Her description is both standard procedure in the field and good science that allows subsequent researchers to replicate her findings.

We are also deeply disturbed by political actors misrepresenting the scientific process. These false claims of plagiarism are a political attack that exploits the gap between the normal scientific process and the public’s understanding of that process. These actors also appear to be working to undermine faith in the research process and delegitimize academic knowledge by attacking racial diversity and the inclusion of highly qualified Black faculty and leaders in
colleges and universities.

Bad-faith accusations as part of a broader set of politically motivated attacks on diversity and social science are deeply destructive to a healthy democracy.