S7 Ep. 16: Former Biden Speechwriter Nate Rawlings on Claudine Gay, Neil Gorsuch, and the Politics of Plagiarism

Journalist Nate Rawlings, who spent a stint as a speechwriter for then-Vice President Joe Biden, joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the politics (and nuances) of plagiarism. Rawlings discusses how plagiarism accusations derailed Joe Biden’s presidential run in 1987. He examines how the right-wing activist-led plagiarism accusations against former Harvard President Claudine Gay fit into the context of prior plagiarism scandals, and considers the possibility that new technologies like AI will intensify future politically motivated attacks. He also reflects on why some plagiarism allegations stick and shift opinion, and others don’t.

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This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Nate Rawlings

Nate Rawlings | TIME.com

Others:

"The North’s Jim Crow" by Andrew W. Kahrl|The New York Times, May 27, 2018

"How We Squeezed Harvard to Push Claudine Gay Out" by Christopher Rufo | Wall Street Journal

Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America by Cody Keenan  

What It Takes: The Way to the White House by Richard Ben Cramer

"Plagiarism charges downed Harvard’s president. A conservative attack helped to fan the outrage" by Collin Binkley and Moriah Balingit | AP

Elise Stefanik

Claudine Gay

“Echoes of Biden’s 1987 plagiarism scandal continue to reverberate” by Neena Satija | The Washington Post, June 5, 2019

Democratic Primary Debate, August 23, 1987

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 46, “Samuel G. Freedman on What Hubert Humphrey’s Fight for Civil Rights Can Teach Us Today”

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 16, “Chatbot vs. Writer: Vauhini Vara on the Perils and Possibilities of Artificial Intelligence”

Nadia Schadlow, Small Wars Journal

Peggy Noonan

“Boys of Pont du Hoc” speech by Peggy Noonan for Ronald Reagan, June 6, 1984

“I see the boys of summer,” by Dylan Thomas

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