Plagiarism and the Succulence of Detection

This essay explores the emotional and hermeneutic appeal that the act of detecting plagiarism holds for its detectors, particularly among anti-DEI activists who have turned to plagiarism as a choice weapon in the new culture wars. Cast as irrefutable evidence in the battle against wokeness, the detection of plagiarism has the appeal of a judgment without appeal, the pull of a form of proof whose self-evidence shatters the façades of fakery and shores up the edifice of the true and authentic. Relating the hunt for plagiarism in higher education to the backlash against pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses, this essay argues that both are symptomatic of larger problems plaguing the contemporary academy as well as the ways we as a polity collectively interpret and make sense of this world.