Writing academic papers, etc. for students for a fee. Ethical and legal investigation.
Shalom Rabbi Michael Avraham
My question may seem a bit exotic, but I would be very grateful for your intellectual and educational response.
I write paid academic papers for students.
After discussions with my best friends, the righteous Dosim, the need was raised for me and them to consult the opinion of an academic and Torah intellectual who does not hesitate to express his most esoteric opinion in public.
So, as can be concluded, I am a positive advocate on the question of the morality of my livelihood and that of my fellow categories.
I will offer my best arguments in the affirmative. If you have additional or stronger arguments in the affirmative, I would be happy to hear them. If you have arguments in the negative, I would also be happy to hear them. I would also be happy if you refute me. I am a person of values, and if I am convinced that I am not moral or religious, I will change my ways.
As you might guess, I am a capitalist and sometimes my friends call me an anarchist. After a number of capitalist assumptions, I came to the conclusion that many laws enacted by the state have no legal-halakhic or moral validity. An example of this is the obligation to stop at a red light, or the obligation to report on products and small businesses.
I think that today’s complex reality, in which there are laws and actions of the state that support me, such as the army, the security system, and the health system, and on the other hand, laws that harm me, such as taxes, restrictions on employment, etc., leads me, as a private citizen, to weigh for myself what is best for me and where I can be helped and contribute in return.
So I sometimes tell my friends that if you are right-wing, then you should avoid paying taxes because part of it goes to the Ministry of Culture, Education and Sports, and invest your money in settlement, security and healthcare. When they tell me, on the other hand, that the leftist will do the same, then I say, “On the contrary, excellent.”
Similarly, I think that a number of laws that various universities also enact do not have a halachic-legal seal and as such they lose their validity. As an example, the online tests that were conducted during the Corona period. Some lecturers demanded that students not look at the material. In general, a law that cannot be monitored does not have legal validity in my opinion, in a similar way to the evidence that you cannot concoct in Chazal or Popper regarding scientific theories.
On the other hand, rape, for example, is not forbidden in my opinion because it is in the university’s procedures, but because it is immoral and as such it is appropriate for legislators to enact a legal or Torah law on the matter.
So there are many complaints against me, most of which are based on astonishment at the rebellion against social conventions. The most common is that I steal or lie, I don’t understand who stole from and who lied to, and so on.
I do business with a person and we usually both meet our commitments.
And now about writing papers. After the long post, I will now write briefly.
1. The university cannot enforce plagiarism, work scripts, etc., and as such, its law has no validity, and a student studying in its institutions is allowed to do as he pleases (therefore, his status also declines and he is disgraced). On the other hand, lying is only prohibited when the lie creates a distorted reality, such as lying in a university or in a court of law. Since there is really no validity for a degree in the social sciences and humanities, in my opinion, lying in this field has no meaning (I am not knowledgeable about exact sciences). So I saw that you claimed that in things like this, “it is more of a lie than plagiarism.”
2. As a capitalist, one of our basic claims is that socialists, once they have power, tend to corrupt, and the conclusion is that academia, in my opinion, is corrupt, and if not all the lecturers or those responsible, then it has no academic validity as far as I am concerned, and as one that strives for the truth.
3. Students turn to writers anyway. I compete with colleagues in this gray market.
4. It is important for me to emphasize that I do not run away to claims of refuge. One of my respected lecturers claimed that the Averroes believed that it was moral to sit on a mountain and contemplate philosophy and movies and from time to time go down to a nearby village and loot it. I do not do it ‘for the sake of it’. I do it for a living. The price is high and both parties benefit, as in any business in the end. And maybe it is for the sake of it because I have more time to read books.
I will mention at the end of my remarks that sometimes moral people harm themselves, for the benefit of others or for the benefit of values, and this is very immoral in my opinion.
Regards
I
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- There is an obligation to obey the law, even if it is unjust. Unless it is an extreme injustice. I don’t know if you are religious (committed to Halacha), but from a Halacha perspective this is a complete law of the kingdom. And if you believe otherwise, there is democracy through which you can influence the law and try to change it.
- Beyond disobeying the law, this is a moral injustice and a lie. Both towards the university that certifies a person without checking his skills, and thus you give the university a bad name when you see its weak products. And also towards the free market (speaking of capitalism) into which a person without skills and with a certificate goes. This is a fraud on his potential employer. And of course there is also a lie here. The fact that you think there is no real value to a degree in the social sciences (I didn’t write this. I said it was without science and that there is a lot of nonsense there. That’s a different argument), so don’t study it. You can’t rely on that to lie and make a fortune unjustly.
- Indeed, there are others. It is said about this, “Robbers like you have stolen it.” Just because there are others who are willing to steal for you does not mean that I am allowed to do it for you.
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Okay
1. I intentionally did not go into the ’Dina Demalchuta’. This is the authority of Gentile law in my opinion + if it contributes to justice to a greater extent than injustice, as interpreted by the R”an and the Rambam”. And to really influence through democracy, see the column you wrote about going and voting.
2. A. Are you serious about what you are writing here? What potential employer are you talking about. You remind me of an argument I once read in a game theory book that discussed the prisoner's dilemma. The question was why would students with difficult degrees simply band together, not study for exams and the bar would remain the same, why invest in such a thing. Another example: the US college basketball teams decided that instead of all players spending a lot of time in training that would take away from their studies, each institution would allocate a limited amount of time for training. The teams' struggle remains the same.
What validity does a degree in psychology have? You yourself claim that it is worthless? The very fact that I cannot open a clinic and present myself as a clinical therapist is the injustice.
B. The reality today is that many institutions require you to have just a bachelor's degree and don't even look at the paper, from bank tellers, to lawyers, to civil servants.
C. If anything, the reality is the opposite, that lecturers at respected universities fail courses and students so that the degree will be ‘prestigious’. I actually expected you to give examples of the shortcomings of academia after I saw you wrote about it.
In addition, students from all subjects take courses that are clearly irrelevant to their subject (Judaism, Statistics, Introduction to, etc., etc.) and to what they will do (courses that sometimes do not make the average and only require a passing grade). So where is the fraud here in your opinion?
3. Only if you are right about 1, 2.
4. It is the one that gives, so even a common Beinish is not allowed to go out on dates, right? And if he withdraws from Torah or does not invest all of himself in Lomdes, then he is violating Dina Demalchuta? Is it really forbidden to pass in red in your opinion? And reading Spinoza in Rabbi Zakal is fine of course.
There are breakdowns everywhere, and yet these anarchist claims (despite my fondness for anarchism) are unfounded and childish in my opinion.
The fact that sometimes there are irrelevant courses or problematic degrees (and I have written quite a bit about this) means that it is possible to copy works without discrimination? Or are you only strict about irrelevant courses? What kind of childish argument is this?! Are you supposed to decide instead of the employer what he requires from his employee? I really fail to see a shred of argument here. These are empty words. And I say this as someone who often criticizes the factors you mentioned here.
But I wrote what I had to write.
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