plagiarism check personal statement

Free Online Plagiarism Checker

Possible plagiarism detected!

If you submit this paper, your institution may take disciplinary measures against you. The content requires editing and modification of parts. We know how to make it unique.

This is weighted average of all matches in your text. For example, if half of your paper is 100% plagiarized, your score would be 50%

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Get a 100% accurate report from an advanced AI-powered writing assistant. Our plagiarism checker works with all common file formats.

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How to avoid plagiarism?

Proper citation style.

Avoid plagiarism by always listing the source and formatting it correctly when you are note-taking. Take care of the proper formatting and citation style when using content from outside sources.

Write on your own

Avoid borrowing and overusing large pieces of the content from outside sources, especially from Wikipedia. Write your own thoughts and use sources only to support your opinion (remember to cite it though!).

Rewriting Service

PapersOwl expert can rewrite up to 75% of your content, edit and proofread your paper to make it plagiarism free and ready to use.

Editing Service

PapersOwl expert can edit up to 50% of your content, proofread and polish your paper to make it plagiarism free and ready to use.

Writing Service

PapersOwl expert can rewrite your paper from scratch according to instructions and guidelines and make it plagiarism free and ready to use.

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Plagiarism Checker Review

Get speed and uniqueness when you use the free Papersowl plagiarism checker that accepts an unlimited word count compared to other platforms.

Online Plagiarism Checker For Students

Writing an academic paper can be challenging when you’re not sure if it’s original enough to pass a plagiarism check. Of course, students take information from various sites before writing their own text. Sometimes, it just so happens that certain parts are very similar to your resources, making your professor think that you’ve just copied work from somewhere. That’s why it’s crucial for any modern college or university student to ensure that their work has 100% original content to maintain academic integrity.

Luckily, a free plagiarism checker online can solve this issue quickly and easily. Many professional writing services use a plagiarism checker for research paper. However, students sometimes forget that they should too. But with so many options that pop up when you ask Google to “check my paper for plagiarism”, how do you choose the right one for detection? We’ve got the solution in the form of PapersOwl’s free plagiarism checker tool! Our simple tool makes it convenient to check any writing task without having to spend a dime. It works quickly and highly accurately, ensuring that you get the top grade you deserve. So, if you want to check plagiarism online before turning your task in, head over to our website and get started!

Accurate Check for Plagiarism with Percentage

Many students wishing to produce original content aren’t quite sure how to get an exact percentage of plagiarised text in their work. This percentage is important since many universities have a certain limit of non-unique words you can have in your essay for it to be considered okay. If your plagiarism search doesn’t give you the exact percentage, you can’t be sure if your assignment will go through or not.

When using a free plagiarism tool, it’s essential to have this data provided to you. Only when you have it can you decide which parts to change and which ones to chuck out to achieve your desired results. Plagiarized content is a big issue in modern educational institutions, so getting reliable and trustworthy results is vital. This is the most essential requirement when you check plagiarism.

PapersOwl’s plagiarism detection tool gives you all the information you need to fix plagiarized content. Whether you’ve fallen victim to accidental plagiarism or have tried to make your life easier by copying some text from different sources, you’ll get an accurate percentage with our plagiarism checker online. If you’re wondering how to check paper for plagiarism, it’s nothing complicated at all! Simply visit our site, paste your whole essay into the relevant text box or upload the text file, click on Check For Plagiarism, and you’ll get accurate plagiarism results in a matter of seconds. You’ll see the problematic parts with plagiarism detected highlighted, with links to where similar content exists. Our service with plagiarism detector will also give you the option to check my paper for plagiarism and then to hire a professional writer to fix your task quickly if you’re busy with other things!

The Fastest Plagiarism Checker Online

Gaining insight into duplicate content only works if you get your results quickly. There are so many free plagiarism software online that promise to do the job for you. However, a lot of them are clunky, slow, and inaccurate. How can you produce original work without similarity detection you can trust?

PapersOwl stands out in this regard because it will detect plagiarism in seconds. This is a plagiarism scanner that’s able to perform a Swift Check to give you a uniqueness check right there and then. It also conducts a Deep Search, going through millions of sources on the internet to check for plagiarism. A document of about 1500 words takes only about 10 seconds to get processed! You get a clear plagiarism score of how much text is plagiarized and how much is original. All the sources that your essay matches are listed based on how much similarity there is in your academic writing. And on top of that, you get a handy Make It Unique button that’ll take you to an order page where you can ask our expert writers to rewrite your work and make it 100% unique.

All of this is done almost instantly, allowing students to continue working on their assignments without missing a beat. Not every plagiarism detection software works this quickly, making ours the best one you’ll ever use.

Plagiarism Checker Helps Boost Your Grade

A lot of students make the mistake of considering their papers automatically free from plagiarism. After all, they’ve written it themselves, so how could it be problematic? What they don’t realize is that it’s very easy to borrow some information mistakenly. Turning such a paper in can cause multiple problems, as your professor might think you haven’t done the work at all.

That is why you should always use a plagiarism scanner to test for plagiarized content in your college papers. Our online plagiarism checker for students is designed for this exact purpose. A simple, free plagiarism check could help you check plagiarism, fix any mistakes you see, and submit high-quality text that no one will question.

Our plagiarism detector has a lot going for it. It makes plagiarism detection easier than ever before. Unlike copying and pasting each passage individually into Google, simply upload the whole file into our plagiarism checker free for students, and you don’t have to do anything else. All the matches are highlighted so you know what to change.

The plagiarism test will give you a uniqueness percentage too. This will help you figure out where you stand and how much time you need to adjust anything if required. So, using our copyright checker online free to check your writing is essential. This way, you’ll submit the task only when you’re sure it meets the level of uniqueness required by your school. As a result, your grades will drastically improve when you check for plagiarism.

Benefits of Free Plagiarism Checker for Students

Our professional online plagiarism checker work offers too many benefits to ignore. With our plagiarism detector, you can enjoy highly accurate results as a comprehensive report. The plagiarism checker for students is designed to help you achieve 100% uniqueness without hassle. Here are the key advantages you can enjoy when you check plagiarism free with our plagiarism detection tool:

It’s completely free! We know you are on a tight budget and should be able to check your paper for plagiarism without worrying about payments, so we’ve made the best similarity checker free for all!

Our software detects plagiarism swiftly. It’ll show you detailed results in as little as 10 seconds so you can continue working immediately.

The report from our plagiarism tool gives you access to all the links from where it has detected similarities in your work. You can head to the relevant sites and see which information you must rewrite to improve your results.

Our best free plagiarism checker doesn’t require any skills and presents its services in a simple-to-use interface that anyone can use.

The plagiarism test allows you to get professional help with your work if you’re short on time. Simply ask one of our writers to rewrite the problematic parts of your text and enjoy top grades.

With PapersOwl plagiarism detector, there’s no need to search the internet for an accurate tool. We have many satisfied students worldwide who can vouch for our plagiarism-checking services. Give our online plagiarism checker free tries as often as you want and see how easy it is to produce original essays without spending a penny!

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How Does Plagiarism Checker Work?

• If you already have a completed text, all you need is just to copy-paste the whole thing in the special box of the chosen plagiarism tool or website, choose suitable settings (if any), then press “check for plagiarism”. It is quite simple and takes just a few moments.
• Once you have pressed “check for plagiarism”, the system will analyze your text and compare it with different sources to find similarities. As a rule, the duration depends on the text’s length. A standard free online plagiarism checker with percentage can give you the result within five minutes or less.
• When the system finishes the work you will be transmitted to the reporting page – it contains the comprehensive report on your work, a percentage of its uniqueness, and a list of sources on which similarities were detected. Often, such tools also highlight the overlaps that were found.

As you can see, it is simple. However, for the best and reliable result you have to be careful. There are tons of programs and online tools that can be used but keep in mind that many of them work differently and not all are good for you. To be confident in the truthfulness of the received result, you need to select the best plagiarism checker because only a professional and high-quality software can detect all similarities and give you a reasoned assessment.

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Advantages Of Plagiarism Checker By PapersOwl

Why choose us? Our service offers a professional online plagiarism checker with report that will provide you with a comprehensive report to make you confident in the 100% uniqueness of your paper. Our free plagiarism checker for students guarantees the best check and here are the key advantages of using our tool that prove this:

You don’t need to pay anything to check your paper for plagiarism because we know the value of original and unique works.

One of the main benefits of our antiplagiat checker online is that it works so fast that you will not even have enough time to make yourself a cup of coffee while it analyzes your text, and it is safe!

We use the latest and the best algorithms and software in order to provide you with an advanced check and help you receive the high-quality papers.

It is simple in use and won’t take much time!

Many students have already confirmed that our free tool is a great and convenient feature that helped them detect and fix errors that could lead to a failure. With us, you will no longer need to look for a different scanner!

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Plagiarism Checker FAQ

Can i check my essay for plagiarism free online, can i use papersowl plagiarism checker as a student for free, can i check my research paper for plagiarism for free, will the papersowl plagiarism report be the same as at my university, what are the consequences of plagiarism, why wait place an order right now.

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Plagiarism Checker

Detect accidental plagiarism with
 scribbr’s free plagiarism checker.

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What you get with a premium plagiarism check

Catch accidental plagiarism with high accuracy with Scribbr’s Plagiarism Checker in partnership with Turnitin.

AI Detector

Detect AI-generated content, like ChatGPT3.5 and GPT4, with Scribbr’s AI Detector.

AI Proofreader

Find and fix spelling and grammar issues with Scribbr’s AI Proofreader.

* Only available when uploading an English .docx (Word) document

Rely on the most accurate plagiarism checker of 2023

Scribbr’s plagiarism checker, in partnership with Turnitin, detects plagiarism more accurately than other popular tools — particularly when texts are edited. This makes it the go-to plagiarism checker for students in the UK.

See test results

Find out if your writing contains potential plagiarism

The free plagiarism checker, in partnership with Turnitin, will give you a heads-up if your writing is similar to the content in our database.

View your top 5 matching sources

The Sources Overview shows you the top five sources that match your writing. You can see the domain, database, and the number of matching words for each source. It’s important to cite these sources!

Identify spelling and grammar issues in your document

In addition to checking for plagiarism, powerful AI software scans your English text for spelling and grammar issues. The free check gives an overview of the issues per category.

Submit your paper with confidence, knowing it’s free of plagiarism

Make your writing plagiarism-free with the premium plagiarism checker.

Get a precise similarity percentage

The premium plagiarism checker provides you with an accurate similarity score that tells you what percentage of your paper is not original.

Review highlighted text snippets for missing citations

Similarities in your document are highlighted for quick and easy reviewing. Each color corresponds to a source in the Sources Overview.

Compare your writing to the original text side by side

Use the comparison feature to see how similar your writing is to the original without leaving the plagiarism checker report.

Check for self-plagiarism by uploading previous assignments

Upload previous assignments or a classmate’s paper to catch (self-)plagiarism that is otherwise difficult to detect by regular plagiarism checkers.

Review your spelling and grammar corrections in Word

Writing issues are corrected automatically when you upload a Word document. To review the corrections, you can download a Word document with Track Changes.

Price per document

Prices are per check, not a subscription

Volume pricing available for institutions. Get in touch.

Request volume pricing

Institutions interested in buying more than 50 plagiarism checks can request a discounted price. Please fill in the form below.

Name * Email * Institution Name * Institution’s website * Country * Phone number Give an indication of how many checks you need * Please indicate how you want to use the checks * Depending of the size of your request, you will be contacted by a representative of either Scribbr or Turnitin. * Required

Excellent Review score

Scribbr’s plagiarism checker is rated 4.9 out of 5 based on 12,912 reviews.

Privacy guarantee

Submissions will never be added to our content database. Therefore, no other plagiarism checker will see your text.

Scribbr's plagiarism checker is perfect for you if you:

• Are a student writing an essay or paper
• Value the confidentiality of your submissions
• Prefer an accurate plagiarism checker
• Want to compare your work against publications
• Can benefit from an AI Detector

This plagiarism checker is not for you if you:

• Are a copywriter, SEO, or business owner
• Need to check lots of documents for plagiarism

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The go-to plagiarism checker for students and academics

University applicants

Ace your personal statement for your university application.

Compare your UCAS personal statement against billions of webpages, including other essays.

• Avoid having your personal statement flagged or rejected for accidental plagiarism.
• Make a great first impression on the admissions officer.

Submit your assignments with confidence.

Detect plagiarism using software similar to what most universities use.

• Spot missing citations and improperly quoted or paraphrased content.
• Avoid grade penalties or academic probation resulting from accidental plagiarism.

Take your journal submission to the next level.

Compare your submission to millions of scholarly publications.

• Protect your reputation as a scholar.
• Get published by the journal of your choice.

You don't need a plagiarism checker, right?

You would never copy-and-paste someone else’s work, you’re great at paraphrasing, and you always keep a tidy list of your sources handy.

But what about accidental plagiarism ? It’s more common than you think! Maybe you paraphrased a little too closely, or forgot that last citation or set of quotation marks.

Even if you did it by accident, plagiarism is still a serious offense. You may fail your course, or be placed on academic probation. The risks just aren’t worth it.

Scribbr & academic integrity

Scribbr is committed to protecting academic integrity. Our plagiarism checker, AI Detector , APA Reference Generator, proofreading services , and free Knowledge Base content are designed to help educate and guide students in avoiding unintentional plagiarism.

We make every effort to prevent our software from being used for fraudulent or manipulative purposes.

Ask our team

Want to contact us directly? No problem. We are always here for you.

• Chat with us
• Email [email protected]
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Frequently asked questions

Extensive testing proves that Scribbr’s plagiarism checker is one of the most accurate plagiarism checkers on the market in 2022.

The software detects everything from exact word matches to synonym swapping. It also has access to a full range of source types, including open- and restricted-access journal articles, theses and dissertations, websites, PDFs, and news articles.

Scribbr’s  Plagiarism Checker is powered by elements of Turnitin’s Similarity Checker , namely the plagiarism detection software and the Internet Archive and Premium Scholarly Publications content databases .

The add-on AI detector is powered by Scribbr’s proprietary software.

Your document will be compared to the world’s largest and fastest-growing content database , containing over:

• 99.3 billion current and historical webpages
• 8 million publications from more than 1,700 publishers such as Springer, IEEE , Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, and Taylor & Francis

Note: Scribbr does not have access to Turnitin’s global database with student papers. Only your university can add and compare submissions to this database.

At the moment we do not offer a monthly subscription for the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker. Plagiarism checks can be bought separately — prices depend on the size of your document.

Your writing stays private. Your submissions to Scribbr are not published in any public database, so no other plagiarism checker (including those used by universities) will see them.

The free report tells you if your text contains potential plagiarism and other writing issues. The premium report gives you the resources you need to review issues in detail and resolve them.

Generating your (free or premium) plagiarism report takes between 1 and 10 minutes, depending on the document size.

In that time, your document is compared to the world’s largest content database, with over 99 billion webpages and 8 million publications.

Scribbr’s plagiarism checker offers complete support for 20 languages, including English, Spanish, German, Arabic, and Dutch.

The add-on AI Detector and AI Proofreader are only available in English.

The complete list of supported languages:

If your university uses Turnitin, the result will be very similar to what you see at Scribbr.

The only possible difference is that your university may compare your submission to a private database containing previously submitted student papers. Scribbr does not have access to these private databases (and neither do other plagiarism checkers).

Luckily, many papers, theses, and dissertations are also published in public databases that Scribbr does have access to.

Empower students to do their best,

Original work.

Advance learning with an AI writing detection solution built for educators

Our advanced AI writing detection technology is highly reliable and proficient in distinguishing between AI- and human-written text and is specialized for student writing. What’s more, it’s integrated into your workflow for a seamless experience.

Student success starts here

Uphold academic integrity.

Ensure original work from students and safeguard the value of writing.

Assessments with transparency into AI usage

Flexible solutions enabling educators to design and deliver student assessments their way, while shaping AI-enhanced student writing with integrity and confidence.

Foster original thinking

Help develop students’ original thinking skills with high-quality, actionable feedback that fits easily into teachers’ existing workflows.

Customer stories

University of leeds widely adopts gradescope for online assessment.

With campuswide digital transformation in mind, rollout to thousands of faculty across disciplines took only two months, far quicker than anticipated.

University of Maryland Global Campus builds a culture of academic integrity by pairing policy with technology

Keeping student and instructor needs at the core is key to upholding their rigorous standards of integrity while centering students in their learning.

Solutions made just for you

See solutions for Higher Education

Prepare students for success with tools designed to uphold academic integrity and advance assessment.

See solutions for Secondary Education

Help students develop original thinking skills with tools that improve their writing and check for similarities to existing works.

See solutions for Research and Publication

The rigorous academic research and publishing process gets a trusted tool to ensure the originality of scholarly work.

Keep integrity at the core of every assessment.

Everything you need no matter how or where you assess student work.

Feedback Studio

Give feedback and grade essays and long-form writing assignments with the tool that fosters writing excellence and academic integrity.

Originality

Check for existing as well as new forms of plagiarism - from text similarity and synonym swapping to contract cheating, AI writing, and AI paraphrasing.

Grade paper-based, bubble sheet, and code assignments faster than ever while giving more robust feedback and gaining valuable insights.

Address potential gaps in curriculum and assessment to prepare students for their careers and meet accreditation requirements.

This robust, comprehensive plagiarism checker fits seamlessly into existing workflows.

iThenticate

Screen personal statements for potential plagiarism and ensure the highest level of integrity before matriculation.

The Turnitin difference

Complete Coverage

Your coverage is comprehensive, with the largest content database of scholarly content, student papers, and webpages.

Extensive Support

Have the help you need with 24/7 tech support, curricular resources created by real educators, and customized training and onboarding services.

Human-Centered AI

Our people-centered approach to artificial intelligence improves academic integrity and makes assessment better for all.

Unparalleled Access

Access Turnitin tools at scale through integrations with over 100 systems in the educational ecosystem.

Further Reading

The Plagiarism Spectrum 2.0 identifies twelve types of unoriginal work — both traditional forms of plagiarism and emerging trends. Understanding these forms of plagiarism supports the development of original thinking skills and helps students do their best, original work.

An educator guide providing suggestions for how to adapt instruction when faced with student use of AI.

Plagiarism Checker by Quetext

Free plagiarism checker: how it works, enter text into plagiarism detection tool.

We make it simple. Just copy and paste all content from your document into our plagiarism checker and hit the ‘Check Plagiarism’ button to get started.

Evaluate text for plagiarism

Our plagiarism detection tool uses DeepSearch™ Technology to identify any content throughout your document that might be plagiarized. We identify plagiarized content by running the text through three steps:

• 1.) Contextual Analysis
• 2.) Fuzzy Matching
• 3.) Conditional Scoring

Accurate plagiarism results

After evaluating the text against billions of internet sources, you will be provided with a plagiarism score showing the percentage of text that is an exact or near-match to existing text online.

Resolve plagiarism risk and use citations

Our ColorGrade™ feedback feature highlights exact matches vs. near-exact or “fuzzy” matches with corresponding colors. From there, you can resolve plagiarism issues by deleting or altering the at-risk copy. Or, you can use our handy “Cite Source” feature to generate citations in MLA, APA, and Chicago formats and insert the citations directly into your document.

Plagiarism Checker Benefits

Whether producing original content or verifying that of others, there’s a lot to gain from using a plagiarism checker. Accurate, automatic detection of duplicate content facilitates the copy-checking process for teachers, students, content writers, and more. Results showing the exact percentage of plagiarized content allows users to see exactly how much text has been copied and where they need to re-word.

For Teachers

Before homework can be graded for quality, it must first be confirmed as original. Our easy-to-use tool arms teachers with a simple, effective way to verify and grade students’ work. Educators at all levels can benefit from ensuring academic integrity through a comprehensive plagiarism check. From K-12, all the way through higher education, teachers are faced with the task of verifying the originality of the work of dozens, if not hundreds, of students each year. Automating this process frees teachers up to focus on the quality of work, rather than be bogged down by its originality.

For Students

While the prevalence of academic plagiarism is on the rise, much of it is arguably unintentional. A simple, yet accurate and comprehensive, plagiarism checker offers students peace of mind when submitting written content for grading. It is much easier to do a quick check for potential plagiarism before submission rather than convince a teacher after the fact that your academic integrity is not in question. And Quetext even takes checking for plagiarism a step further, helping students identify and cite the source itself with our built-in citation generator.

For Copywriters

Plagiarism risk is not restricted to academia. Anyone tasked with writing for an individual or business has an ethical and legal responsibility to produce original content. On top of that, content writers are often tasked with producing content on topics outside of their wheelhouse, leaving them reliant on the work of others for their research. Our plagiarism checker gives content writers a quick and easy method to prevent copyright infringement. Checking even lengthy pieces of writing takes only a few minutes, keeping companies’ public content in check and writers’ integrity intact.

Types of Plagiarism

It’s important to understand that plagiarism expands far beyond just copying someone else’s work word-for-word. There are several different types of plagiarism that should be avoided.

Self-Plagiarism

Many believe that, as long as they produced the work at some point in the past, they can include it in future pieces. However, even if you were the original author, that original work must be cited in order to not be flagged as plagiarism. Treat your past self as a totally separate author; be sure to include all relevant citations and quotations, the same as you would for any other source.

Patchwork Plagiarism

Patchwork plagiarism is the act of piecing together a "patchwork" of existing content to form something new. Assembling unoriginal content in this manner often involves some paraphrasing, with only slight changes. This type of plagiarism can be tricky and can certainly occur unintentionally, especially in academia. Since academic writing is largely based on the research of others, a well-meaning student can inadvertently end up plagiarizing.

Mosaic Plagiarism

Mosaic plagiarism is synonymous with patchwork plagiarism. It describes the process of loosely rearranging or restating another's work without issuing proper credit. It can occur accidentally or intentionally. For authors, mosaic plagiarism endangers their academic integrity or reputation as a writer. For those checking content originality, such as teachers, mosaic plagiarism can easily appear to be original content, which can make mosaic plagiarism especially difficult to detect manually.

Accidental Plagiarism

Plagiarism doesn’t have to be intentional to still be considered plagiarism — even in early academia, where students are just learning how to properly cite others’ work. While there may be no ill intent from the student, most schools have policies explicitly treating accidental plagiarism the same as intentional plagiarism. Students are expected to know how to properly issue credit to other authors. Similarly, content writers risk damage to their reputation if they produce plagiarized content, regardless of intent.

Plagiarism Checker FAQ

What is plagiarism.

Plagiarism is representing someone else’s work as your own. In educational contexts, there are differing definitions of plagiarism depending on the institution. Plagiarism is considered a violation of academic integrity and a breach of journalistic ethics.

What percentage of a paper can be plagiarized (or copied) and still be considered unique?

Generally speaking, similar or exact copies of another source should be kept under 15% for the total text of the article/paper/essay. As a best practice, citations should be used whenever using another source word-for-word.

What’s the difference between deliberate and accidental plagiarism?

Deliberate plagiarism is purposely copying works from books, articles, webpages, or someone else’s paper and representing it as your original work. Alternatively, accidental plagiarism occurs in a few different ways:

• Incorrectly citing another person’s works
• Failing to paraphrase another person’s works - even when citing it correctly
• Reusing your own previous papers and inadvertently representing it as a new idea

What are the consequences of plagiarism?

The consequences for plagiarizing another person’s works vary. But broadly speaking, the types of consequences can be grouped by person and profession.

Plagiarism consequences for students

Maintaining academic integrity is a top priority for every educational institution. As already mentioned, ignorance of how to properly cite sources is not an excuse for plagiarism. It is the student’s responsibility to ensure they are submitting work that has not been plagiarized.

Failure to do so can result in disciplinary action, including an automatic failed grade, removal from a class, or expulsion from a school or university. Students who are allowed to continue at their institution following an act of plagiarism may encounter mistrust and additional scrutiny from teachers and instructors.

Plagiarism consequences for copywriters

Copywriters stake their reputation (and by extension, that of their client or company) on their writing. All copywriters must produce completely original content for their clients.

The consequences for plagiarism here are clear: Copywriters who plagiarize the content of others will quickly find it difficult to obtain paying assignments. Similar to academic situations, it is the copywriter’s own responsibility to ensure that their content is 100% original.

Plagiarism consequences for journalists

Journalists are held to exceptionally high standards of integrity in their writing. A journalist who produces plagiarized content jeopardizes the trust of their readers and publishers. Plagiarism can instantly reduce a journalist’s career by a large margin. The ethical and legal standards issued to journalists are clear: Produce original, well-cited content or find another field.

Fast and Reliable Results with Quetext

Personal Statement Plagiarism: Avoid It In 5 Simple Steps

Plagiarism in personal statements isn’t common, but being accused of it is often a worry for applicants.

When readers detect plagiarism, it is likely that it will detrimentally affect the application, with rejection being a very real outcome .

With so much depending on a successful application, how can you avoid being accused of plagiarism in your personal statement?

Personal statement plagiarism can be avoided if you focus on writing original content and you acknowledge your sources and quotations throughout. By doing your own research, relating personal experiences to your application and writing your own statement, you will create original, unique content.

I’ve broken down the details of each of these elements below. They’ll give you a fuller understanding of how to avoid being accused of deliberate deception in your personal statement.

If you’re concerned about falling foul of the UCAS plagiarism checker, you can download the UCAS guidelines on fraud and content verification, along with other relevant documentation here .

Do not use Content Created by Other People

As you begin writing your personal statement, the chances are that you will be presented with a range of pre-existing examples, ‘model’ responses and extracts all designed to help you understand the kind of style and content you are aiming for.

There are numerous examples of model personal statement examples here .

When you have immediate access to a range of well-written content, the danger is that sometimes it seems better than anything you believe you can create for yourself.

This is where some applicants can be tempted to copy and paste unoriginal content into their personal statements.

Aside from the fact that this will almost certainly result in a weaker personal statement, as it doesn’t genuinely reflect your experiences and ambitions, there is a high chance that including already published material will flag your work to an online plagiarism checker.

It is also worth bearing in mind that if you are given unpublished examples of effective personal statement content at school or college, the chances are that previous applicants may have used similar content, and that your peers might use it too.

Levels of similar content from as little as 10% have flagged ucas plagarism software in the past, so writing content from scratch is the only way to be certain of creating an original personal statement that won’t flag any alarms.

If you want to search for a range of resources to help you develop your academic writing, check out the deals on these writing guides .

Acknowledge Your References and Quotes Throughout

Using quotations in your personal statement can be a highly effective way to convey authority, research and depth of knowledge. You can learn more about exactly the right ways to use quotes in personal statements in this post .

However, when it comes to beating a plagiarism checker, it is important that you make sure you acknowledge quotes or references that aren’t your own words.

Look at the quote below. It might be similar to something you have read in an industry publication or heard in a lecture. Let’s imagine that it encapsulates the way you feel about Economics as a field of study, and you think it would be a valuable piece of content for your personal statement.

Having a command of both programming and systems analysis is crucial when in pursuit of a higher level of understanding of international commerce. Sandra MacKenzie, Senior Investment Partner at Hoff Finance

A suitable way to incorporate this into your personal statement without plagiarising the content would be as follows:

A similar passage, but one which would be an example of plagiarism, might look like this:

Relate Personal Experiences to Your Application

Another important way to avoid trouble with a personal statement plagiarism checker is to make sure that you write from your own personal perspective. It is vital to link each point you make with clear, valid examples that illustrate to the reader that you are a unique applicant.

If you use pre-written formats or templates, or use generic phrases and examples, the chances are that your content will not only fail to help you stand out, but will match the content written by other applicants.

Admissions teams look for evidence of original perspectives and ambitions, and the more you can evidence the connections between your personal experiences, your skills and the specific demands of the course, the stronger your personal statement will be.

Equally, there is no chance of it containing content plagiarised from another source. This post shows you exactly how to come up with an original, compelling set of unique ideas for your personal statement .

Take Time to Write Your Personal Statement Yourself

There are two key elements here. Firstly, you should make sure that you plan ahead and give yourself plenty of time to research and write your personal statement.

One reasons that applicants become tempted to use generic or plagiarised content is due to time pressure; a deadline looms, and in a panic, they mix their own content with a version they have found online. Inevitably, this will lead to charges of deception and unoriginality, and there is a high chance that your application will be rejected.

By facing the challenge positively, and following the advice here , you’ll avoid falling into this trap.

Getting someone else to write your personal statement for you is unethical. It’s a bit like copying someone else’s essays and handing it in with your name at the top. Lucy Parsons, Life More Extraordinary

The quote above, from Lucy Parsons , clearly justifies the requirement to write your own personal statement. Partly because to not do so is unethical and potentially fraudulent, but also because writing the personal statement successfully is a key indicator to a university (and to the applicant) that they are well suited to the demands of the course.

If you persuade or pay someone else to write it for you, you are unlikely to know whether that person is themselves committing an act of plagiarism. You might find that they have copied the content they send you from a previous application, and your application might be rejected on that basis.

Working alongside a reputable expert, and making use of the support services provided on this site can be valuable, because the aim is to get the best out of the applicant through guidance, advice and collaboration. Asking someone else to write your personal statement from scratch certainly ticks the plagiarism boxes.

Structure Your Story Clearly and Don’t Write Lists

Order your content in a way that seems appropriate to you, that takes the reader logically through your motivations, experiences and ambitions, and develops compelling arguments in a way that promotes your application. You can find out more about how to structure the paragraphs in your personal statement here .

Creating an original structure will help you avoid plagiarism as the form and content will all speak with your own original voice.

Quite a lot of plagiarised content available online and in hardcopy has been created to meet a range of imagined ‘tick boxes’ of the kind of content that is assumed to be required. As such, it can often read like a list of accomplishments, skills or opinions, without offering any personal connections or a sense of logical development.

To avoid writing in this way, use a wide range of sentence starters , content and ideas to keep your personal statement original and effective.

Good luck with your personal statement, and don’t forget to contact me if you’d like some 1-1 support.

You’ve got this! D

Research and content verified by Personal Statement Planet.

David Hallen

I've worked in the Further Education and University Admissions sector for nearly 20 years as a teacher, department head, Head of Sixth Form, UCAS Admissions Advisor, UK Centre Lead and freelance personal statement advisor, editor and writer. And now I'm here for you...

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Does UCAS Check for Plagiarism?

In University by Think Student Editor October 22, 2023 Leave a Comment

The UCAS application is the main part of the application process to university in the UK. It takes a lot of time, effort and thought to make the best application you can. This includes everything from carefully filling out personal details, to researching and deciding on the best course and universities for you, to the dreaded personal statement. It can be really daunting to try and show universities why they should accept you in so few lines.

Many students read example personal statements, perhaps from school or older siblings, to help them get an idea of what to write. However, it is really important that your own personal statement is original – both to stand out to universities, and to avoid plagiarism. But what exactly counts as plagiarism? And what is the UCAS policy on it?

UCAS does indeed scan every single personal statement for plagiarism using a service known as Copycatch. The Copycatch software works by scanning every personal statement against previous personal statements that have been submitted, to check for similarities. If more than 30% of a personal statement is regarded as similar, this would be flagged as a potential plagiarism issue. This may even result in the whole application being withdrawn.

Keep reading for everything you need to know about plagiarism in a UCAS application, including how it is checked and what happens if you are found to have plagiarised.

Table of Contents

Does UCAS check for plagiarism?

Yes, UCAS does check your application for plagiarism, specifically, the personal statement.

Plagiarism involves copying someone else’s work and passing it off as your own. The personal statement is intended so you can tell universities about your unique skills and experiences which make you as an individual suitable for this course.

Therefore, plagiarism, as well as being morally wrong, defeats the purpose of the personal statement in the first place! This is why UCAS has a strict policy to make sure any plagiarism is detected.

UCAS uses a service called Copycatch to scan personal statements, comparing them to previous personal statements from their archive. You can read more about how, exactly, this process works in this document from the UCAS website.

It is worth being aware that, as of 2023, there is discussion about replacing the personal statement with a set of questions for future application cycles. You can read more about this on this page of the UCAS website.

However, it is likely that whatever form the personal statement takes, it will still be scanned for plagiarism. It is really important that UCAS makes sure students don’t get an unfair advantage by copying good personal statements or using other people’s words as their own.

What does UCAS check for plagiarism?

There are lots of different parts to the UCAS application. However, it is only the personal statement that is scanned for plagiarism.

Of course, they don’t need to scan things like your name and course choice for plagiarism – you can’t steal these and pass them off as your own! The other part of the application that people sometimes wonder about is the teacher reference.

The reference is often a lesser-known part of the application, as students are not really involved in it. It is generally written by your teacher and is less important to universities than your personal statement. In fact, most students never see their references – have a look at this article from Think Student for more.

In short, UCAS does not scan the teacher reference for plagiarism. There are a few reasons for this. For instance, teachers are generally writing similar things about the majority of students. Additionally, the universities already know this isn’t the student talking about their own experiences – they don’t need a plagiarism checker to confirm.

What counts as plagiarism in a UCAS application?

It can be hard for software to tell between someone who is actually copying another personal statement, and someone who is just using common words and phrases.

UCAS regards 30% or more of a personal statement being flagged up as similar as a potential plagiarism issue, according to this document from their website. This is a relatively high percentage, so it is likely that anything showing up on these checks is intentional, rather than a few similar words.

Additionally, the software does not include common words like ‘and’ or ‘the’ in their checks, as well as common personal statement phrases like ‘Duke of Edinburgh’. This makes it even more likely that the statements that are flagged up are actually cause for concern, not just accidental.

Another worry that some people may have is if they have applied through UCAS before. Generally speaking, you can reuse your personal statement – which you can read more about in this article from Think Student.

This isn’t something to worry about. If you are applying with the same name, you won’t be checked against your previous applications , so you won’t be pulled up for plagiarism – you can’t plagiarise from yourself.

If you have changed your name since your last application and are using the same or a similar personal statement, it is worth getting in contact with UCAS to make sure they are aware of this.

Ideally, do this before you send off your application. You don’t want to wait until you have been flagged for plagiarism, because the software doesn’t know it is the same person applying as before.

How do you make sure you don’t accidentally plagiarise in your UCAS application?

Some students get worried that they will accidentally plagiarise, by using common phrases, or unconsciously copying a nice sentence they read in a friend’s statement.

This isn’t something to be concerned about. As we’ve discussed, it is highly unlikely that the service will flag up anything that is just due to accidental similarity.

You won’t get ‘caught’ for plagiarism just by using common phrases such as ‘I am extremely interested in’, or ‘I want to study this course because’. That being said, it can be good to branch away from these widely used openings – just because it makes you stand out to universities more! Check out this article from Times Higher Education for advice on writing an original personal statement.

If you are pulled up for plagiarism, and know it was not intentional, it is worth checking over the similarity report you will be sent to see what exactly has caused this. There is more information about this report in the FAQs from UCAS, linked here .

If you are still worried about accidental plagiarism, there are plenty more tips for avoiding it in this article from The Uni Guide.

What happens if you are pulled up for plagiarism on your UCAS application?

If the software detects your personal statement as potentially plagiarised, you will be notified and sent a similarity report, and your university choices will also be told.

At this stage, it is a good idea to contact the universities and get their advice for next options. It may be that they don’t use the personal statement as much in their admissions process – perhaps they use interviews instead.

On the other hand, they may have a very strict policy, and reject your application. This decision is up to the university that you have applied to and so it is best to look at their policies on their website or to contact them directly to learn more.

Ultimately, it is never worth trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own.

You have plenty of experiences and talents to help convince universities you are right for their course. Use your own words to talk about these, and you will not have to worry about UCAS’s plagiarism checks. Best of luck with your application!

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Frequently Asked Questions?

  what is considered plagiarism.

"According to Oxford: “Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgment.”

It involves:

1. Copying and pasting someone else's text

2. Paraphrasing someone else's work without proper attribution

3. Using someone else's ideas without giving them credit

4. Using someone else's images, videos, or other media without permission

5. Submitting someone else's work, such as a paper or project, as your own

  Is it plagiarism if you copy and paste but cite the source?

Presenting someone’s idea as your own is considered plagiarism if not properly cited. If you copy and paste but cite the source with proper formatting, then it's not plagiarism.

  Is the usage of plagiarism detector Illegal?

Educational institutions highly recommend plagiarism detector to prevent copying of others’ work. Even research work is not considered authoritative without a plagiarism report. So, using plagiarism-checking tools is legal and necessary.

  What are the consequences of plagiarism?

Plagiarism involves serious consequences as it is a crime.

Its Academic consequences range to:

• Failing the assignment
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Its Legal consequences cost you:

• Intellectual Damages
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• Loss of your employment

Its Personal consequences can affect you with:

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• Damage of Reputation
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• Slowing down your career, especially in Education

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The plagiarism checker is supported by all kinds of platforms, including desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. Since it’s a web-based utility, you can access and use it from any device’s browser by just connecting to a stable internet connection.

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5 Things To Know About ChatGPT

Generative ai tools and resources at ut-austin.

ChatGPT is one of many generative AI tools now being used in educational contexts. We expect that new tools designed for specific purposes and applicable to different disciplinary contexts will be rapidly emerging in the near future. To that end, this resource, focused on ChatGPT, is designed to be adapted to fit different tools and pedagogical approaches. The CTL will continue to update our site with links to UT resources, News articles focusing on generative AI tools, and outlines of suggested approaches to adopting these tools. 

The following is a list of existing UT resources. We will continue to add to this list as new resources are developed. 

• Recommended Practices for Requiring the Use of Generative AI in the Classroom : The Office of Academic Technology (OAT) and the Office of Academic Affairs have developed recommendations for instructors who wish to require the use of generative AI tools in their classrooms. This guidance will be updated on an ongoing basis. If you have questions about these recommendations, please contact the OAT at  [email protected] .
• Addressing the Limitations of Using Generative AI for Learning : The Office of Academic Technology (OAT) has developed a set of guidelines for evaluating the limitations of generative AI tools. 
• Acceptable Use of ChatGPT and Similar AI Tools : This policy-based resource, from the Information Security Office (ISO) at UT-Austin, provides guidance on how to use generative AI Tools safely, without putting institutional, personal, or proprietary information at risk
• Statement on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools in Art & Design Courses : Developed by the AI Tools in Education Taskforce, Arts and Design faculty subcommittee at UT Austin, this document includes resources on best practices for instructors specific to the adoption and use of tools in their classrooms, including syllabus script recommendations.
• Statement on Artificial Intelligence in Writing Flag Classes : The Faculty Writing Committee in the Center for the Skills and Experience Flags has been reviewing ChatGPT in light of other writing-related AI tools such as grammar checkers, plagiarism detection services, and automated citation systems. This resource is a summary of the committee's guidance, followed by a fuller discussion of high-level key points. Suggestions are grounded in essential writing pedagogy for the use of AI, including chatGPT, in the writing classroom.
• Texas McCombs' Instructional Innovation Resources : Developed by the the McCombs School of Business, this Canvas resource provides guidance on integrating technology into courses. It contains a rich set of resources and recommendations for ChatGPT/Generative AI. 
• "Reconsider ChatGPT for Academic Use" ( Daily Texan , February 16, 2023): This article offers the perspective of several students on the use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools. 
• Summer 2023 Webinars Recordings : Playlist of Summer 2023 CTL sessions on ChatGPT and GenerativeAI 

While questions about the impact of artificial intelligence in higher education are not new, the emergence of a new tool called ChatGPT that uses increasingly popular chatbot technology to generate human-like, long-form writing has opened the door to new curiosities and concerns.

This document provides suggestions for instructors who wonder how this tool may affect their course design and teaching. The content has been generated by our team, our campus community, and nationally/internationally recognized teaching and learning professionals. Please note this is a rapidly evolving issue with new perspectives, articles, and resources emerging regularly. CTL will continue to monitor developments and share them with the campus community as we are able, as well as create new resources and opportunities for interactions to guide our collective thinking.

1. What is ChatGPT? How does it work?

ChatGPT is a type of artificial intelligence model trained to generate coherent, human-like pieces of writing on a given topic. “ChatGPT was optimized for dialogue,” (1) which means users interact with a chatbot in a conversational context, and the chatbot will compose text based upon the user’s prompts. The bot is capable of generating text on a variety of topics and in a variety of styles, “you simply type in a question or give it a command and it generates text for you.” (2)

You may be interested in experimenting with the tool to learn more: https://chat.openai.com   Please be aware that ChatGPT is “free” because it collects information from its users (e.g., when and how users interact with the tool, users’ IP address, browser type, time zone, type of device, operating system, and country) and may share information with third-party vendors and affiliates (3). For those reasons, we suggest you avoid submitting any sensitive or personal information. In addition, we suggest you review the privacy policy and terms of service with students as a learning exercise.

For more information about ChatGPT, our colleague from the Office of Academic Technology Dr. Juile Schell created this brief video on what ChatGPT is, how to sign up for it, and how it works.

Another helpful resource to learn more about Chat GPT is this presentation developed by Dr. Torrey Trust (U Mass Amherst) that includes a variety of previously submitted prompts and completed output. (4)

2. Why is ChatGPT significant?

Students can enter an assignment prompt and receive a product they can turn in as their work. The text generated by the chatbot could be a well-composed and accurate response depending on the complexity of the assignment and the student’s skill in creating effective prompts. Many higher education instructors and scholars testing the tool report mixed responses, including: 

• ChatGPT-generated papers received B+ to A- minus grades according to a set rubric. 
• A ChatCPT-generated paper did not flag the Turnitin plagiarism detector tool (i.e., no plagiarism was detected).
• ChatGPT chatbot produced grammatically well-written papers relevant to the topic, but struggled with creating detailed responses that demonstrate deep understanding
• ChatGPT was able to do everything asked, including using APA formatting and correct citation; for Nursing content, it was accurate and specific.

In addition, many higher education scholars and practitioners have noted that the tool might be appealing for students in large courses where it can be a challenge to integrate personal approaches to teaching writing and providing in-depth feedback.

3. What are the downsides?

• Submitting personal information to the OpenAI website without an awareness of how the data will be used by OpenAI
• Students not mastering skills needed to succeed, such as audience design, global organization, and researching a topic
• Ethical violations, a lack of integrity
• Uncritical use of digital technologies

At the same time, there is also a downside to banning this technology and neglecting to understand why it was created and the problems it is attempting to solve.

4. Where is ChatGPT going?

The applications of artificial intelligence technology will continue to evolve in ways that currently may not be clear, requiring ongoing conversations focused on ethics, instructional values, and effective pedagogy.

5. What are the implications for UT Austin instructors?

As a first step, learning about this tool will help instructors gain awareness and know to seek assistance when issues related to ChatGPT arise. In addition, the release of ChatGPT encourages us to revisit the best ways to assess student learning in a variety of instructional contexts (5). It invites us to ask important questions, such as:

• Why and how do we best equip students as strong writers?
• What other ways can students demonstrate learning in addition to written papers? 
• What is the best way to solicit student writing that is meaningful and authentic?
• If students rely on ChatGPT as a source of information to answer factual questions, how will that affect their development of research skills?

This focus on the relationship between students and instructors and the educational mission of the university fits with broader efforts underway to reinforce the importance of the process of learning, including making and correcting mistakes. The university is in the process of refreshing our honor code and honor code affirmation to renew our commitment to supporting students in their journey to master complex knowledge and skills. 

With these types of questions and issues in mind, we have gathered a variety of suggestions you can pick and choose to incorporate in your teaching practice if students’ use of ChatGPT is relevant for you.

Incorporating one or two of the following approaches may help ease concerns and challenges that could arise with the introduction of the ChatGPT tool:

As you get ready to begin your class by preparing course documents and resources, make sure that you address appropriate or inappropriate uses of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT in a section of your syllabus. You may choose to place it within or near statements address academic integrity. Please explore the Provost's "Your Syllabus at UT Austin" website as well as UT's Student Conduct and Academic Integrity site for additional options and resources.  

As you craft your syllabus statements, you may wish to adopt one of the following three models and use them as templates: 

"The use of artificial intelligence tools (such as ChatGPT) in this class:

• …is strictly prohibited. This includes using AI to generate ideas, to outline an approach, to answer questions, to solve problems, or to create original language. All work in this course must be your own or created in group work, where allowed).
• …shall be permitted on a limited basis. You will be informed as to the assignments for which AI may be utilized. You are also welcome to seek my prior-approval to use AI writing tools on any assignment. In either instance, AI writing tools should be used with caution and proper citation, as the use of AI should be properly attributed. Using AI writing tools without my permission or authorization, or failing to properly cite AI even where permitted, shall constitute a violation of UT Austin’s Institutional Rules on academic integrity.
• …is permitted for students who wish to use them, provided the content generated by AI is properly cited.

If you are considering the use of AI writing tools but are unsure if you are allowed or the extent to which they may be utilized appropriately, please ask."

For additional suggested syllabi statements, please visit our CTL webpage that contains a range of different statements that you may use and adapt.

• Be clear on what you want your students to know and be able to do or demonstrate by the end of the course and why that knowledge is valuable to their lives. (See this resource for assistance in developing learning outcomes for your course.) Help students see that the ways you are assessing their learning are key to understanding what they are gaining from the course and where they may need extra coaching and support. (6)
• In particular, “If you can explain to students the value of writing, and convince them that you are genuinely interested in their ideas, they are less likely to reach for the workaround.” (7)
• Have an open discussion with your students about the ethical implications of ChatGPT and the value of authentic learning for students’ lifelong development as learners. This may include having conversations around digital literacy and bias in research and scholarship, as AI writing tools like ChatGPT are limited to the public source material they have access to on the internet. Don’t feel you have to have all of the answers, as this is a continually evolving issue. (6)
• Ask students to reference and/or cite class materials, notes, and sources ( particularly sources that are normally behind paywalls but available through the UT Libraries subscription databases and journals. ) in their written assignments. This instruction is valuable because ChatGPT draws on text models from public websites.
• “Require students to reflect more deeply and critically on course topics. This tip is always a good assessment strategy and ChatGPT currently performs better on more superficial and less detailed responses.” (8)
• Use in-class time for students to demonstrate knowledge and understanding in a variety of ways through low-tech, low stakes in-person activities like freewriting and live presentations.
• Craft an assignment where you generate a ChatGPT output based on a prompt and ask your students to critique the response, indicating where it did a good job of articulating key points and what nuances it missed. (For 10 other ways to creatively use ChatGPT in course assignments, see “Update your course syllabus for ChatGPT” ; keep in mind that asking students to engage with ChatGPT may generate privacy concerns, so it may be better practice to provide them with a copy of ChatGPT responses that they can use.)
• Give a hug: empathy, collaboration, communication, and leadership skills;
• Solve a mystery: generating questions and problem finding; and
• Tell a story: finding what's relevant in a sea of data or applying values, ethics, morals, or aesthetic principles to a situation. (9)
• Carefully scaffold assignments with time and space for students to complete each step along the way, and consider whether the number of time-intensive tasks might require more bandwidth than students have to spend. Students are more likely to utilize a tool like ChatGPT when they are short on time. (6)
• Treat ChatGPT as a tool that some students may want to use to help get started writing. For example, students who have difficulty starting writing assignments might be encouraged to generate a paragraph with ChatGPT as a stub that enables them to continue writing. As long as the student ultimately adds significant new material and thoroughly edits or ultimately eliminates the output from ChatGPT, they are producing a document that reflects their own work.

One way to help encourage students to make better decisions about using tools such as ChatGPT is to design your classroom climate to engender mastery approaches to learning, which involve a focus on deeply understanding the knowledge and skills rather than simply achieving a particular score on an assessment. In a mastery-oriented classroom, students are more likely to engage in strategies that will help them truly learn the material rather than for the goal of performing a task and receiving a grade for their work.

Three simple tips for encouraging mastery approaches in higher education classrooms include:

• offering flexible evaluation design: consider providing opportunities for students to revise and redo specific portions of assignments; 
• focusing feedback on process and effort: offer feedback oriented toward student effort and their learning processes rather than on high grades and performance relative to others. When possible offer elaborative feedback rather than feedback based simply on correctness.
• building a sense of belonging: discuss, emphasize, and model that making errors and mistakes is part of everyone's learning processes rather than something that only poor performers or people who "don't get it" do.

Larger, Ongoing Issues for UT Austin & Higher Education

UT Austin is putting in place a structure to respond to new developments such as ChatGPT. The Academic Affairs team consists of experts in teaching and learning, assessment, and academic technology. The team also engages with faculty from across campus and welcomes your participation in our activities. This portfolio will convene campus conversations to evaluate investments in tools, technologies, and instructional practices that help us accomplish the objectives articulated in the strategic plan. Excellence in these areas of work can be achieved through strong partnerships and collaborative vision. 

Next Steps for CTL 

• Continue to learn about the tool and stay updated on new developments
• Convene campus conversations to hear from multiple perspectives
• Create resources to support the teaching community
• Identify policies and practices that advance authentic assessment in courses

In-text citations

• ChatGPT FAQ | OpenAI Help Center
• AI ChatGPT Overview.pdf, Center for Teaching and Learning, American University of Armenia
• ChatGPT, Dr. Torrey Trust
• ChatGPT & Education, Dr. Torrey Trust
• What If We Create a Culture of “Transparent Assessment” (AI & AI), Maha Bali
• Update Your Course Syllabus for chatGPT | by Ryan Watkins | Dec, 2022 | Medium
• Will ChatGPT Change the Way You Teach? EdSurge Podcast
• https://utexas.instructure.com/courses/1293240/pages/chatgpt-faculty-resources (unauthorized)
• 3 Things People Can Do In The Classroom That Robots Can't : NPR Ed

Additional resources

• Faculty Writing Committee Statement on AI in Writing Flag Classes
• "Teaching" Newsletter, Jan. 5, 2022, Chronicle of Higher Education
• Some ill-formed thoughts about AI, robot colleagues, resistance, refusal. Anne-Marie Scott
• Teaching Experts Are Worried About ChatGPT, but Not for the Reasons You Think, Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education
• How People Learn II  (See page 121) - Mastery Learning Resources

Acknowledgements:

The content of this document is inspired by the format from the Educause “7 Things You Should Know About” series.

In addition, many of the perspectives and strategies shared in this document were formed through conversation with our colleagues on campus who support teaching and learning at UT, including Brandon Campitelli, Mary Crawford, Linda Neavel Dickens, Rachelle (Shelly) Furness, Mario Guerra, Jeannette Herman, Kristie Loescher, Art Markman, Michele Ostrow, Julie Schell, George Schorn, and Sean White. We are grateful for this growing network of partners that help us respond to rapid changes affecting higher education.

General election latest: Abbott tells rally she won't be 'intimidated' - as minister defends Truss over far-right podcast

Diane Abbott has arrived at a rally calling on Labour to let her stand for the party at the general election, as Sir Keir Starmer comes under mounting pressure to make a decision over the veteran MP's future.

Wednesday 29 May 2024 20:20, UK

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• Live reporting by Faith Ridler

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• Matthew Thompson: Why polls don't tell full story for Lib Dems
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There's been plenty of back and forth this week about Diane Abbott, who had the Labour whip restored yesterday.

Despite this, questions remain over whether she will be able to stand for the party - with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer insisting she is not barred.

Speaking at a rally in her Hackney North and Stoke Newington constituency, she said: "By any means possible I will continue to stand as the candidate for Hackney North."

"I'm not going to allow myself to be intimidated or frightened by forces beyond all of our control," she added.

The rally was only organised last night when reports first emerged that she might be barred from standing.

Ms Abbott said she was "shocked" to hear the reports.

She didn't make clear during her speech at the rally whether she'd be prepared to run as an independent.

On 12 June, Sky News will be hosting an election leaders event in Grimsby - a key marginal seat and one of our Target Towns this election year.

The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and the Conservative leader Rishi Sunak have been invited to attend, and we are looking for a live audience to join us on the night.

Sir Keir has agreed to take part, with talks ongoing with Mr Sunak's team.

A spokesperson for the Conservatives said: "Rishi Sunak would be delighted to travel Grimsby to take part in Sky News leaders' event and answer questions from voters, on the condition that he and Keir Starmer take those questions on stage together.

"This will give viewers the best opportunity to see the clear choice the country faces at this election."

Peter Craig , a journalist who has worked in Grimsby for 40 years, said this year's general election is "undiscovered territory" for the constituency.

The constituency of Grimsby and Cleethorpes is historically Labour, but switched to Conservative at the 2019 general election.

He says: "This is undiscovered territory, it's like shifting sands every day.

"We've got two of the main candidates announced, but we've also got a Conservative defection - a young Conservative councillor who has gone to be a Reform UK candidate for Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

"So you can't keep your eye off it for a minute."

That's it for tonight's  Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge  - the show will be back at the same time tomorrow.

Sophy Ridge   is presenting her show tonight from Grimsby, a key target town for Labour and the Tories.

She spent some of the day meeting voters to get their take on the election campaign so far - and asked them what they'd ask Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer if given the chance...

Sophy Ridge 's conversation with shadow social care minister  Andrew Gwynne now turns to the NHS - and plans to bolster appointments and cut waiting lists.

"We know that we are going to inherit an NHS that is struggling with a huge backlog of over seven million people on the waiting list," he says.

"If this backlog can't be curtailed, the kind of growth that we are seeing under the Conservatives… the list will just continue to grow and grow.

"This is a real concern."

Turning to Labour's policy to curtail this, Mr Gwynne says the party will send in "crack teams" to "work at cutting NHS waiting lists from day one of a Labour government".

This includes introducing 40,000 extra appointments a week.

He says this will be funded by "clamping down on tax dodgers".

Sophy questions this, saying such a pledge is becoming "meaningless" given it only seems to come up during election campaigns.

But Mr Gwynne insists this NHS plan has been costed for "some time".

Up next on the show is shadow social care minister  Andrew Gwynne  of Labour. 

He's asked by Sophy what the latest on Diane Abbott is, given the degree of confusion surrounding the current state of play. 

"She is a Labour member of parliament for as long as this parliament has left, which is a few hours, before it's dissolved [tomorrow]," he says. 

He then says there is still a process that needs to take place before she is allowed to stand for re-election in Hackney North and Stoke Newington.

"Firstly, you have to confirm to the party that you intend to be a candidate at the next election, and then you have to be approved by the National Executive Committee - and we all have to go through that process."

He says that decision is not up to him, but adds he "believes she has a future" in the party. 

'No decision has been taken'

"She has been that trailblazer for black and minority communities," he says.

"She's apologised for the hurt she caused by some careless comments that she made, [but] she is now a member of the parliamentary Labour Party again, but does have to go through the same process that every other Labour MP seeking re-election has to go through."

"Keir Starmer has made it very clear today no decision has been taken in respect of Diane Abbott," he concludes. 

Next, Sir Mark Spencer is asked about former prime minister Liz Truss - who will be appearing on the right-wing podcast "Lotus Eaters".

This is run by former UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin, who has previously said that he "wouldn't even rape" Labour MP Jess Phillips.

Asked about this, Sir Mark said these seem like "pretty abhorrent comments".

He said he would be surprised if Liz Truss "didn't think those comments were abhorrent as well".

"Liz Truss is of very solid moral fibre and would not support any abhorrent comment like that," he adds.

So should she appear on the platform?

Sir Mark doesn't say, only stressing that MPs appear on "all sorts of platforms".

Sir Mark Spencer , the food, farming and fisheries minister, now discusses his thoughts on apprenticeships. 

This comes after we reported that the Conservatives will promise to replace "rip-off degrees" with 100,000 apprenticeships each year by the end of the next parliament if they win the general election.

Rishi Sunak said the Conservatives will replace "under-performing" university courses with "high quality apprenticeships", which he said would leave them financially better off and provide better opportunities.

"This is about actually giving young people opportunity, both in their education, to make sure they go on to great careers," Sir Mark says. 

"I think the apprenticeship route actually is the best route for many of those young people. 

He explains that some will of course want to go to university - giving examples of wannabe lawyers and doctors - but other career paths may be better served by apprenticeship schemes. 

First up with Sophy Ridge tonight is Sir Mark Spencer , the food, farming, and fisheries minister.

Joining the Politics Hub in Grimsby, the minister is asked about the government's new pledge to scrap "rip-off degrees" in England - in favour of apprenticeships.

He says: "Universities should be a vehicle to enable young people to be able to go on and get a great career."

Sir Mark adds that going to university has become "an ambition to get to", rather than someone building a career and becoming more financially viable.

Asked which courses fall under the "rip-off" category, he says there are all sorts of "mad things" - such as degrees about "working in the circus".

The minister says jobs like this can be achieved without student debt.

Is this not just snobbery, Sophy asks.

"The apprenticeship route is actually better for lots of young people," he says.

The ongoing row over Diane Abbott's future as a Labour candidate "may only dent what could be a huge advantage" for the party heading into the upcoming general election, our deputy political editor Sam Coates says. 

He points to the latest Sky News YouGov poll - which shows a massive 47% share for the Labour Party, and just 20% for the Tories.

Reform UK take 12%, while the Lib Dems hold just 9%. 

Sam shows that 19% of 2019 Conservative voters will turn to Reform UK. 

Even with some help from Labour with this latest misstep, Sam asks: "Can Rishi Sunak really turn that massive Labour lead?"

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National Spelling Bee reflects the economic success and cultural impact of immigrants from India

FILE - Harini Logan, 14, from San Antonio, Texas, gets a kiss from her mom Rampriya Logan on stage as she celebrates winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Thursday, June 2, 2022, in Oxon Hill, Md. Since 1999, 28 of the last 34 Scripps National Spelling bee champions have been Indian American. The experiences of first-generation Indian Americans and their spelling bee champion children illustrate the economic success and cultural impact of the nation’s second-largest immigrant group. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - Ishika Varipilli, 11, from Spring, Texas, waits on stage during the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Wednesday, June 1, 2022, in Oxon Hill, Md. Since 1999, 28 of the last 34 Scripps National Spelling bee champions have been Indian American. The experiences of first-generation Indian Americans and their spelling bee champion children illustrate the economic success and cultural impact of the nation’s second-largest immigrant group. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

FILE - Dr. Balu Natarajan, right, from Hinsdale, Ill., poses for a photograph with his son Atman Balakrishnan, 12, at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Tuesday, May 29, 2018, in Oxon Hill, Md. Since 1999, 28 of the last 34 Scripps National Spelling bee champions have been Indian American. And most of those winners are the offspring of parents who arrived in the United States on student or work visas. The experiences of first-generation Indian Americans and their spelling bee champion children illustrate the economic success and cultural impact of the nation’s second-largest immigrant group. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - Balu Natarajan, an 8th grade student at Jefferson Junior High School in Woodbridge, Ill., holds his trophy with the aid of William R. Burleigh, vice president of Scripps Howard Newspapers, sponsor of the National Spelling Bee, after he won the competition in Washington, on June 6, 1985. Since 1999, 28 of the last 34 Scripps National Spelling bee champions have been Indian American. And most of those winners are the offspring of parents who arrived in the United States on student or work visas. The experiences of first-generation Indian Americans and their spelling bee champion children illustrate the economic success and cultural impact of the nation’s second-largest immigrant group. (AP Photo/Bob Daugherty, File)

FILE - Dev Shah, 14, from Largo, Fla., competes during the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Thursday, June 1, 2023, in Oxon Hill, Md. Since 1999, 28 of the last 34 Scripps National Spelling bee champions have been Indian American. The experiences of first-generation Indian Americans and their spelling bee champion children illustrate the economic success and cultural impact of the nation’s second-largest immigrant group. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard, File)

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When Balu Natarajan became the first Indian American champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 1985, a headline on an Associated Press article read, “Immigrants’ son wins National Spelling Bee,” with the first paragraph noting the champion “speaks his parents’ native Indian language at home.”

Those details would hardly be newsworthy today after a quarter-century of Indian American spelling champs, most of them the offspring of parents who arrived in the United States on student or work visas.

This year’s bee is scheduled to begin Tuesday at a convention center outside Washington and, as usual, many of the expected contenders are Indian American, including Shradha Rachamreddy, Aryan Khedkar, Bruhat Soma and Ishika Varipilli.

Nearly 70% of Indian-born U.S. residents arrived after 2000, according to census data, and that dovetails with the surge in Indian American spelling bee champions. There were two Indian American Scripps winners before 1999. Of the 34 since, 28 have been Indian American, including three straight years of Indian American co-champions and one year (2019) when eight champions were declared , seven of Indian ancestry.

The experiences of first-generation Indian Americans and their spelling bee champion children illustrate the economic success and cultural impact of the nation’s second-largest immigrant group.

As of 2022, there were 3.1 million Indian-born people living in the U.S., and Indian American households had a median income of $147,000, more than twice the median income of all U.S. households, according to census data. Indian Americans also were more than twice as likely to have college degrees.

Indians received 74% of the H-1B visas for specialized occupations approved in fiscal 2021, and a record total of nearly 269,000 students from India were enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities in 2022-23, according to the Institute of International Education.

Those numbers paint a picture of a high-achieving demographic that is well-suited for success in academic competitions.

Ganesh Dasari, whose daughter and son each made multiple appearances at the Scripps bee, holds a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Cambridge and was recruited to the U.S. to work for ExxonMobil on an H-1B visa. He quickly obtained a green card.

“Me and my wife, we came from a similar background. We both benefited from having the education ... so we put a lot of emphasis on educating our kids,” Dasari said. “We basically introduced them to anything academic, and a couple of sports, but clearly there was a bias in our thinking that education is a higher priority than sports.”

In his 2016 address to Congress, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned “spelling bee champions” among his country’s contributions to the U.S. while that year’s co-champs, Nihar Janga and Jairam Hathwar, watched from the gallery.

Even among Indian American spellers, a particular subgroup is overrepresented: families from the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where Telugu is the primary language. Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana, is India’s information-technology hub and the region supplies many H-1B visa recipients.

“Whenever we go to the spelling bee events, everybody speaks that language,” Dasari said. “We realized there are so many people from the same state.”

Deval Shah, the father of last year’s champion, Dev Shah , grew up in the northwestern state of Gujarat and proudly noted Dev was the first spelling bee champion of Gujarati descent. The parents of the 2022 winner, Harini Logan , are from Chennai in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Shah is an engineer, his wife is a physician, and both of Harini’s parents were trained as software engineers.

Indian-born parents of kids with an affinity for spelling have a network of similar families to provide guidance and support, as well as access to organizations like the North South Foundation, which offers academic competitions aimed at the Indian diaspora.

“The reason Indian American immigrants really dominate, the main reason is the North South Foundation,” Shah said.

When Harini won her first NSF spelling competition, Ganesh Dasari was one of the judges, and “he was literally chasing us down” to tell them “Harini has tremendous potential to be on the national stage,” said Rampriya Logan, Harini’s mother.

Ishika, a 13-year-old from Spring, Texas, who will be competing at Scripps this year for the third time, woke her parents at 6 a.m. the day after she lost a third-grade classroom spelling bee, saying she wanted to participate in more bees. Her mother, an IT manager who immigrated to the U.S. in 2006, then reached out to ask advice from other families from the Houston area whose children were high-level spellers.

The relative wealth and stability of Indian American households could lead observers to conclude their children are benefiting primarily from a privileged upbringing. The truth is more nuanced, said Devesh Kapur, a professor of South Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a co-author of “The Other One Percent: Indians in America.”

“It is important to note that the children participating in the spelling bee competition come from striving middle-class immigrant families, often in occupations like IT, and not from wealthier Indian American households in finance or tech start-ups or consulting,” Kapur said.

Natarajan, a Chicago-based physician and health care executive, now serves as the volunteer president of the NSF, and he experienced the spelling bee as a parent when his son, Atman Balakrishnan, competed . He said he sometimes feels out of place because he was born in the U.S. and he admires the grit of Indian-born parents and their children.

“It’s hard to describe, but it’s a very specific mindset that just drives effort and in many ways drives outcomes and sustainable success,” Natarajan said.

Ben Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow him at https://x.com/APBenNuckols

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The Battle Over College Speech Will Outlive the Encampments

For the first time since the Vietnam War, university demonstrations have led to a rethinking of who sets the terms for language in academia.

A pro-Palestinian protest on Columbia University’s campus this spring. Credit... Mark Peterson/Redux

Supported by

By Emily Bazelon and Charles Homans

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer for the magazine who also teaches at Yale Law School. Charles Homans covers politics for The Times. He visited the Columbia campus repeatedly during the demonstrations, counter-demonstrations and police actions in April.

• May 29, 2024 Updated 3:09 p.m. ET

Early on the afternoon of Nov. 10, Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, was on his way into a meeting in Low Library, the domed neoclassical building at the center of campus, when an administrator pulled him aside. The school, the administrator said, was about to announce the suspensions of the campus chapters of the organizations Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, an allied anti-Zionist organization — a move that alarmed Jaffer given the fraught politics of the moment.

Listen to this article, read by Gabra Zackman

The day after Hamas’s brazen Oct. 7 attack on military and civilian targets in Israel, the S.J.P. and J.V.P. chapters co-signed an open letter declaring “full solidarity with Palestinian resistance.” The letter described the attacks as “an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza” and a “counteroffensive against their settler-colonial oppressor.” It would be tantamount to “asking for quiet submission to systemic violence” for anyone to call for peace now, after years of Israeli violence and military campaigns against Palestinians. The groups issued a list of demands to the university — divestment from companies doing business with the Israeli government, the end of Columbia’s affiliation with Tel Aviv University and a recognition of Palestinian “existence and humanity” — and announced a demonstration on Oct. 12 on the steps of Low Library. They signed off: “See you Thursday.”

The Oct. 12 demonstration appeared to be in violation of campus rules, which required student groups to give 10 days’ notice for gatherings in public spaces, but Columbia had not been enforcing such requirements amid the emotional responses to the Hamas attacks and Israel’s retaliatory bombing in the Gaza Strip. “We got some pushback from the university,” recalled Cameron Jones, an organizer of the J.V.P. chapter, “but not insane pushback.”

As the sit-ins, teach-ins and die-ins continued, however, that began to change. Pro-Israel groups held counterdemonstrations, and tensions built on Columbia’s small, enclosed central campus. “In the past, demonstrations were basically students protesting against the establishment, and that was, you know, unidirectional and fairly straightforward,” the president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, said in late May, in her first interview since December. “In this crisis,” she went on, “students are opposed to other students, faculty opposed to other faculty. And those internal dynamics and tensions have made this much more difficult than past episodes.” Outside Columbia’s library, several Israeli students were physically attacked after they confronted another student tearing down posters of Israelis held hostage by Hamas. Students wearing hijabs and kaffiyehs reported being called “Jew killers” and terrorists.

By Oct. 25, when S.J.P. and J.V.P. staged a walkout of college classes, “our relationship with the administration was really crumbling,” Jones recalled. Two days later, Israel’s invasion of Gaza began. On the night of Nov. 8, with another demonstration planned for the next day on the steps outside Low, a faculty adviser told the organizers that they were out of compliance with school rules and asked them to postpone the event. They did not , and the university suspended them.

When Jaffer heard the news, “I said, ‘Suspending the groups seems like a very draconian penalty for that offense,’” he recalled. When the administration in a public statement also cited the groups’ “threatening rhetoric and intimidation,” Jaffer grew more concerned: What speech crossed that line? In an open letter, he asked Columbia for an explanation.

The university didn’t publicly provide one, and the organizations received mixed messages from the administration. In a meeting with the student groups at the end of November, one administrator said that while the groups had not violated speech rules, Israeli students could hear accusations that Israel was committing genocide or was an apartheid state as an incitement to violence. “I left that meeting extremely confused,” said Maryam Alwan, an organizer of the S.J.P. chapter.

Shafik said this month that the suspensions of S.J.P. and J.V.P. were “content neutral” — they were about breaking the rules regarding demonstrations, not political views. Regardless, the university’s decision lit a fuse. In the months that followed, as the invasion of Gaza continued and civilian casualties mounted, dozens of student groups rallied in solidarity with S.J.P. and J.V.P. On April 18, Shafik asked the New York City Police to clear a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the Columbia lawn. That move, which included dozens of arrests, in turn sparked a wave of demonstrations at universities across the country. Columbia protesters rebuilt their encampment and, on the night of April 29, some of them stormed the school’s Hamilton Hall, occupying the building and locking and barricading the doors. At Shafik’s request, a large deployment of police returned to campus the following night, raiding the building and arresting its occupiers .

When private universities set rules for what speech they allow, including when, where and how students can protest, they can impose more restrictions than the First Amendment allows in public spaces. But for decades, they have claimed free speech as a central value, and that promise has a particular history at Columbia. In 1968, the administration called in the police to evict student demonstrators from Hamilton Hall, which they had occupied in protest of the university’s involvement in military research and a new neighborhood-dividing gymnasium project in Morningside Park.

The occupation and its violent end, the images of bloodied students dragged away in handcuffs, was a seminal moment for the Vietnam-era left; the following year, several Columbia demonstrators helped found the Weather Underground, the radical organization that bombed government buildings in the 1970s. The clash also occasioned an on-campus reckoning with long-lasting institutional consequences. The university senate, which includes faculty and students, was given a hand in disciplinary matters to check administrative power — a system the administration bypassed in suspending the pro-Palestinian groups.

For more than half a century now, campus activism and universities’ responses to it have mostly occurred within the paradigm shaped by 1968. Activists have used fights over investments, curriculums and development projects as platforms for radical politics and for a kind of revolutionary experimentation in the form of building occupations and other direct actions. Administrations have more often than not responded tolerantly or at least cautiously, out of a mix of principle and pragmatism. The building occupiers and tent-camp residents may be breaking laws or at least campus policies, but they’re also the university’s consumers.

But the upheavals on campuses across the country this spring were different. The campus war over the real war in Gaza did something no issue since Vietnam had done. It seemed to have prompted an abrupt rethinking of free-speech principles that many in academia assumed to be foundational.

In reality, though, this shift was not so abrupt. It reflected broader changes in the institutional structures and power balances within American universities and disagreements over free speech that have gradually redrawn the battle lines inside and outside academia. That the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would prove the catalyst, too, was not surprising. Few conflicts had so directly centered on the power of language and who sets its terms.

In 2019, Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia’s president before Shafik, wrote an essay for The Atlantic called “Free Speech on Campus Is Doing Just Fine, Thank You.” The occasion was an executive order President Trump issued that March, proclaiming that colleges and universities that received federal funding were required to “promote free inquiry” — a mostly symbolic measure that reflected several years of alarm on the right over what Fox News and others had declared a “free-speech crisis” on American campuses.

Throughout Trump’s presidency, college activists tried to block various appearances by speakers whose views they found repellent. At Middlebury College, they derailed a talk by the conservative social scientist Charles Murray and at William & Mary shouted down a speaker from the state A.C.L.U. chapter. Schools like the University of California, Berkeley , and Grand Canyon University , a Christian institution in Arizona, disinvited right-wing media figures for fear of demonstrations.

If Columbia managed to steer through this period with a minimum of turbulence, it was in large part thanks to Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar who defended the right of people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus. “I am of the view that one such disinvitation is one too many,” he wrote in The Atlantic essay, while noting that, in fact, disinvitations had been far rarer than the pundits and politicians suggested. But Bollinger cast the debate over the limits of campus speech as itself a part of the tradition of campus speech, and he concluded that “universities are, today, more hospitable venues for open debate than the nation as a whole.”

Five years later, this picture lay in tatters. Bollinger’s own university — he left office last June — was once again synonymous with building occupations and police crackdowns, and Columbia was facing legal action from both Jewish and Muslim students alleging harassing speech, among other complaints. In an interview in late April, Bollinger, who has not otherwise spoken publicly about the Columbia clashes, said that his own optimism was dimming. “There was a fair consensus that private universities,” he said, like public ones, “should embrace free-speech principles and set an example for the country in how free speech applies to a public forum. And now I think that’s breaking down.”

Other schools were also stumbling. In December, testifying before a House committee hearing on antisemitism on college campuses , three elite-university presidents equivocated when Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman from New York, asked them whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the rules on their campuses. One of them, the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, was out of her job within days ; a second, Claudine Gay of Harvard, resigned amid accusations of plagiarism that surfaced amid post-testimony scrutiny .

Shafik, testifying before a similar panel in April, fared better in the hearing room but worse back on campus. Under repeated questioning, she said that she found pro-Palestinian chants like “From the river to the sea” and “Long live intifada” antisemitic but added that “some people don’t.” Columbia also turned over documents to the committee about faculty members accused of antisemitic speech whom Shafik named in her testimony — disclosures the administration says that it was obligated to make but that infuriated professors, hundreds of whom signed open letters declaring it a breach of academic freedom. “She threw some of us under the bus,” said Katherine Franke, a Columbia Law School professor, who was among those criticized in the hearing. “But to me, that’s less important than her inability to make a defense of the university.”

To free-speech advocates, it was ominous that these presidents weren’t arguing for the university as a forum for fostering free speech, however controversial. “That commitment is really at the center of universities’ missions,” Jaffer said. “It is disappointing that so many university leaders failed to make that case.”

In the post-Oct. 7 demonstrations, however, universities confronted a dilemma far more complex than any Bollinger faced during his tenure. The invasion of Gaza has drawn students with a range of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the protests, but S.J.P. and other groups at the vanguard have been clear on their own lines : They reject the idea of a two-state solution and consider the existence of a Zionist state in Israel to be illegitimate and immoral. This is a change from the early 1990s when Edward Said, the Jerusalem-born literary theorist and pro-Palestinian activist who made Columbia a leading bastion of Palestinian scholarship, championed a two-state outcome (though he rejected the idea in the last years of his life). The movement’s politics have hardened, and so have the facts on the ground. Hopes for a two-state solution have receded amid the increasingly extreme politics of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and attacks on Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah .

Historically, when “Zionist” becomes a pejorative, persecution of Jews has followed, and many American Jews see the rise in reported incidents of antisemitism as evidence of this once again. Some protesters crossed the line from rejecting Israel to using antisemitic imagery on posters and making threats. For example, Khymani James , a student leader of the protests at Columbia, said “Zionists don’t deserve to live” in a video of a school disciplinary hearing that he posted on social media. (James later apologized.) Chants like “We don’t want no Zionists here,” which continued at Columbia and elsewhere, made many Jewish students, including critics of Israel’s occupation, feel there was no longer a space for supporting a Jewish homeland in any sense.

But pro-Palestinian activists now often view the rejection of Zionism as an irreducible part of the cause — and are aware of how accusations of antisemitism have been wielded in the past to the detriment of that cause. When Columbia deans called for acknowledging the “genuine hurt” of both sides of the conflict in December, noting some of the language of the protests, Rashid Khalidi, a historian of Palestine at Columbia, accused them of having decided that “the oppressed should take permission from the oppressor as to the means to relieve their oppression.”

The clash over politics and language has created a rare point of real political vulnerability for universities. Several face the threat of House Republican investigations of their federal funding, which at Columbia amounts to $1.2 billion in annual grants and contracts, accounting for 20 percent of its budget. And Republicans, who have long criticized universities as fortresses of liberalism and leftism, now have allies among the many congressional Democrats who remain supportive of Israel, as well as many of the universities’ own donors, administrators and trustees. (Columbia’s board includes only one academic and no Muslims or Arabs other than Shafik.) In May, a bipartisan majority in the House passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would require schools to potentially risk their federal funding if they don’t restrict speech that, for example, denies “the Jewish people their right to self-determination” — a suppression of views that would run headlong into the First Amendment.

Back on campus, the conflict about antisemitism versus anti-Zionism has landed in the middle of a decades-long, unresolved argument over speech itself. Today’s students have grown up with the idea that speech can be restricted if it causes harm — but also believe that restricting their speech can be its own kind of harm. “I can’t think of another case,” says David Pozen, a Columbia law professor, “where a group not only refuses to stop using language it’s told is harassing and intimidating and demeaning but also flips it around to say, ‘Your very demand is a tool of oppression.’”

Debates over free speech on college campuses have invariably been debates about power. This became clear in 1964, when students at the University of California, Berkeley, handed out leaflets organizing demonstrations against the Republican National Convention, held in San Francisco that year. The dean of students barred them from using a campus-owned plaza. Months of protests and hundreds of arrests followed, until the university finally capitulated.

The Berkeley movement proved a useful foil for conservative politicians fighting the early skirmishes of the culture wars — Ronald Reagan successfully ran against it in his 1966 campaign for governor. But the Supreme Court upheld campus speech protections in 1967 and onward. And when a more enduring critique of campus speech emerged years later, it came not from the right, but from the left.

In an influential 1989 law-review article, Mari Matsuda, a law professor at the University of Hawaii and an early critical-race theorist, argued that the significance of speech and its acceptability on a university campus turned on who was speaking and who was being spoken to. Racist speech, in particular, could be more than offensive. When it reflected historic imbalances of power — when a white student hurled a racial slur at a Black student, for instance — it reinforced and perpetuated those imbalances in ways that shut down discussion, debilitating students’ academic lives. That meant that schools should treat it not as a matter of expression but as a real-world harm and sanction it. “Racist speech is particularly harmful because it is a mechanism of subordination,” she wrote.

By the early 1990s, more than 350 colleges and universities had adopted hate-speech codes imposing sanctions on students who demeaned someone’s race, sex or religion. But the codes collided with the First Amendment. Every court that considered a university speech code between 1989 and 1995 reached the same conclusion: The rules were vague, overbroad or discriminated against speakers because of their points of view and were thus unconstitutional.

Many First Amendment scholars agreed. They recognized that hate speech causes real harm but thought that banning it caused its own problems. Geoffrey Stone, a law professor and frequent collaborator of Bollinger’s, led a committee at the University of Chicago that issued a landmark 2015 report on free speech. It proposed “the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn” while allowing for limits on the time, place and manner of protests and on genuine threats and harassment.

The Chicago principles, as they are called, have since been adopted by more than 100 other schools. But this view of free speech never achieved a consensus. Within many humanities departments, Matsuda’s theories have retained currency. Ideas about identity and power have suffused progressive politics more broadly in recent decades. And in the Trump era, incursions of white nationalists and right-wing extremists into the political mainstream caused many liberals to rethink tolerating hate speech. Such speech no longer seemed confined to the far edge of American politics, and the death of a counterdemonstrator at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 reinforced the argument that hate speech was inherently violent and should be stopped at all costs.

But as progressive students extended this justification to even conventional conservatives and some civil liberties advocates, a more generalized intolerance took hold. In a 2022 survey of college students, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil liberties organization, found that liberal students were far more likely to say that preventing speech through protest was acceptable. Fifty-three percent of students who identified as “very liberal” said it was always or sometimes acceptable to shout down a speaker to block their appearance on campus. Only 13 percent of “very conservative” students did.

Three and a half decades ago, when Matsuda first laid out her case for sanctioning hate speech, based on the identity of the speaker, one of the most challenging tests of her framework was Zionism. Were Zionists persecutors, as pro-Palestinian activists contended? Or, given the history of Jewish persecution and the Holocaust, were they victims? Matsuda’s answer, in effect, was: It depends. She rejected the charge that Zionism was, by definition, racism. Zionists would receive a “victim’s privilege,” she said, if they spoke in “reaction to historical persecution” but not if they allied themselves with a dominant group.

Her response captured the duality of modern Jewish identity — vulnerable on a global scale, as only 0.2 percent of the world population and the subject of centuries of prejudice but wielding significant power in some contexts, most obviously the Israeli state. It also showed the difficulty of putting Matsuda’s analytical framework into practice. Doing so depended on a shared understanding of where power lay and who possessed it.

The lack of such a shared understanding is on display in dueling legal complaints Columbia now faces over the campus clashes , from Jewish and Israeli students and their supporters in one case and Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students and their allies in another. Each document incidents of face-to-face harassment, and each claim to be on the wrong side of power or social clout. The Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students say in their legal filing that they were “treated differently by high-ranking administrators,” citing the S.J.P. suspension. Jewish and Israeli students, by contrast, report being excluded from student organizations (an L.G.B.T.Q. group, a dance club, a group representing public-school students at suspension hearings) that either condemned Israel or said Zionists were unwelcome, forcing them to forfeit a core part of their identity to stay in the group.

Both complaints claim Columbia is violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires universities to respond when discriminatory harassment is “so severe or pervasive” that it limits or prevents students from participating in their education. The federal Department of Education has in recent years interpreted the law to apply to religious minorities like Jews and Muslims with “shared ancestry,” and to say that speech is a form of conduct that can violate the law.

The tension with free-speech principles is evident. In mid-December, the dean of U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Erwin Chemerinsky, and the chancellor of U.C. Irvine, Howard Gillman, expressed concern about briefings for universities in which the Department of Education suggested that slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” likely created a hostile environment for Jewish students. “We know that some Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students similarly feel threatened by protesters who chant, ‘We stand with Israel,’” Chemerinksy and Gillman wrote in an essay in The Sacramento Bee. “Do they also require investigations and mitigation efforts?”

The day before Shafik called the police to Columbia for a second time, she issued a public statement suggesting that Title VI was forcing her hand. Calling the encampment a “noisy distraction,” she said it “has created an unwelcoming environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty.”

David Schizer, a former dean of Columbia’s law school and a chairman of the antisemitism task force the university convened in the wake of Oct. 7, said in an email that “after the occupation of Hamilton Hall, the police were preventing trespassing and vandalism, protecting the ability of all students to do their work, sleep and prepare for finals, and were also preventing discriminatory harassment against Jewish and Israeli students.” But Jaffer, the Knight Institute director, took issue with invoking Title VI as a rationale for the police action.

“Of course we want universities to protect students from discrimination,” he said. “But whatever federal anti-discrimination law means, it doesn’t mean universities are obligated to call in hundreds of riot-clad police to suppress mostly peaceful protests.”

In 2021, Shafik wrote a book called “What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society.” Before Oct. 7, she said, she hoped that her presidency might be dedicated to a similar theme, of strengthening the frayed social contract between universities and the country and within their own on-campus communities. That was still the challenge ahead, she believed. “I think we’re all thinking very hard,” she said, “about, you know, what we’ve learned.”

While the school’s board remains behind Shafik, on May 16 members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which among the school’s professors had been the most vocal in their criticism of her, passed a resolution of no confidence in the president by a margin of 65 percent to 29 percent. In an email to her colleagues, Virginia Page Fortna, a political-science professor, pointedly noted the title of Shafik’s book. “If we are to heal,” she wrote, “then Shafik owes Columbia: an apology, a strong and credible commitment to completely change course in how decisions are made, and an independent investigation of what has gone wrong.”

At the same time, few schools could credibly claim to have gotten things right in April. Institutions across the country, from large state schools to small liberal-arts colleges, struggled as the protests escalated, crossing into the terrain of encampments and building occupations, which aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Some schools that permitted encampments for a time also wound up in crisis. At the University of California, Los Angeles, on April 30, pro-Israel counterprotesters violently attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment while the campus police force mostly stood by. Even at the University of Chicago, the administration’s decision to tolerate an encampment ended when negotiations with the demonstrators broke down and the president called in police in riot gear . The several schools that did persuade students to end their encampments mostly did so by promising to consider divestment in Israel at a later date, punting on rather than resolving the underlying issue.

In the logic of protest politics, police crackdowns and the attention they generate are their own kind of victory. The campus clashes forced the war in Gaza into the center of American public life in a way that seven months of headlines about Israeli bombing campaigns, aid-shipment blockades and thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths did not. They drew attention to American dissent over the war and the United States government’s role in supporting it. Khalidi, the Columbia historian, speaks of the campus clashes as a turning point for younger Americans. “The protests have highlighted the fact that majorities of Americans oppose Israel’s war on Gaza and the Biden administration’s support of it, a fact that elites, politicians and the mainstream media systematically ignore,” he wrote in an email.

Universities now face the challenge of rebuilding their communities even as the debate over speech limits that divided them, to say nothing of the war in Gaza itself, remains unsettled — and the incentives of some interested parties, like congressional Republicans and pro-Palestinian organizers, seem to run in the opposite direction. The most realistic aspiration, perhaps, is that many students will tire of division and police deployments and make a path toward recovering a sense of empathy for one another — taking a step back and seeing their own political positions, however irreconcilable, as others might see them.

Matsuda, who did as much as anyone to shape the interpretation of language through the prism of power, had been thinking, too. “I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable on campus,” she said. “But stopping a protest movement, I don’t think it’s the way to make Zionist students feel comfortable.” At the same time, “it’s also really important for universities to help students move beyond slogans and see what might be hurtful or impactful about them,” she said.

At the height of the spring conflict, there were signs this was possible. At some schools, pro-Palestinian protesters modulated their own speech in deference to the requests of other students, even avoiding the common chant, “From the river to the sea,” which others have defended as peaceful. The protesters who made these choices didn’t do so because of a law or rule. They were sensitive to the nudge of peer relationships and social norms.

Bringing students together to hash out community standards about language is “the only way I can think of for there to be a set of norms about what speech goes too far that students on all sides would accept as legitimate,” David Pozen, the Columbia law professor, said. He felt the tumult of this spring, which at Columbia resulted in early student departures and scrambled graduation plans, aggravated and exhausted many students who did not themselves participate in the demonstrations and counterdemonstrations. “Students are feeling anguished and alienated, and maybe that’s an opening,” Pozen said.

Clémence Boulouque, a religion professor who serves on the university’s antisemitism task force, hoped Columbia could recover a sense of itself as a “place where people can coexist” and where mediation and discussion might forestall endless grievance and grief. If the divisions opened up by the protests were litigated in an endless back-and-forth of Title VI complaints, fought in the zero-sum realm of the law, then the school would fail at one of the oldest concepts in education: the moral development of its students. “Denying the pain of others, it’s not a great way of conflict resolution,” she said. “It’s also self-inflicted moral injury.”

On one level, this focus on de-escalation avoided the deep unresolved disagreements over where the political ended and the personal began. On another, it was its own kind of blunt realism. “We have to heal together and live together,” Boulouque said. “It’s just like Israel-Palestine. Nobody’s going anywhere.”

Read by Gabra Zackman

Narration produced by Anna Diamond

Engineered by Quinton Kamara

An earlier version of this article misstated the date Columbia University president Minouche Shafik asked the New York City Police to clear a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the university lawn. It was April 18, not April 17. The article also misstated the position of the literary theorist and activist Edward Said on a two-state solution in the early 2000s. He supported the proposal in the early 1990s, but changed his public stance to support a one-state solution later in that decade.

How we handle corrections

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. More about Emily Bazelon

Charles Homans is a reporter for The Times and The Times Magazine, covering national politics. More about Charles Homans

The Campus Protests Over the Gaza War

News and Analysis

​University demonstrations over the war in Gaza have reignited the debate over campus speech, and has led to a rethinking of who sets the terms for language in academia.

​Weeks after counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, the university police have made the first arrest related to the attack .

​​A union for academic workers in the University of California system announced that an ongoing strike challenging the system’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations would extend to two more campuses , U.C.L.A. and U.C. Davis.

Making Sense of the Protests:  In the weeks leading up to graduation, our reporter spoke with more than a dozen students at Columbia University and Barnard College about how the campus protests had shaped them .

A Complex Summer:  Many university leaders and officials may be confronting federal investigations, disputes over student discipline  — and the prospect that the protests start all over again in the fall.

Graduation’s Pomp Goes On:  Commencement is the rare American ritual that still has rules. T hat’s why it’s ripe for disruption .

A New Litmus Test:  Some Jewish students say their views on Zionism — which are sometimes assumed — have affected their social life on campus .

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