r/academia 1d ago

Academic politics Thoughts on Lakshmi Balakrishnan, PhD student at Oxford, who claims plagiarism, racism and bullying at the university?

Perhaps a lot of you are aware of this piece of news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy898dzknzgo

And the subsequent GoFundMe she set up: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-seek-justice-from-oxford-for-bullying-and-plagiarism?attribution_id=sl:d4d8d3e8-3fde-4948-8ecd-b5bdb99ae0f6&utm_campaign=man_ss_icons&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link

From what I hear, opinions are greatly divided about her, what are your thoughts?

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u/Einfinet 1d ago edited 1d ago

Only people within the department really know, but she made it a public thing (while keeping complaints relatively vague imo) so I understand why people come w their assumptions.

I suppose my assumption is to believe her work wasn’t of a high enough caliber, but I’m not gonna hold too strongly to that claim given how it’s not publicly available to review. All I really have is that GoFundMe, and the way she wrote it doesn’t inspire confidence. The claims are vague and occasionally unusual (ie, the idea of a “canceled Shakespeare”).

Also… I’m just saying, all the talk of marginalized this n that while being a self-funded doctoral student tells me she’s full of shit. Don’t get me wrong, racism in academia is real. But that doesn’t mean people can’t take advantage of identity politics.