House committee to investigate allegations of plagiarism against Harvard president

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said Wednesday that the House Education Committee will expand its investigation into Harvard President Claudine Gay to include allegations that she committed plagiarism in academic work.

The Education Committee previously held a hearing on campus antisemitism featuring Gay and the leaders of the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At that hearing, the trio controversially said it would depend on context if calls for the genocide of Jewish people would be considered harassment. 

In a letter Wednesday acquired by Bloomberg, Foxx said the committee will expand its look into Gay, focusing on whether Harvard holds its faculty to the same academic standards as students.

“Our concern is that standards are not being applied consistently, resulting in different rules for different members of the academic community,” she wrote. “If a university is willing to look the other way and not hold faculty accountable for engaging in academically dishonest behavior, it cheapens its mission and the value of its education.”

Gay was accused of plagiarism in multiple academic works amid the scandal of her committee hearing response over antisemitism. The Harvard fellows, the university’s governing body, said the plagiarism claims were not significant.

The fellows initiated an independent investigation into the plagiarism allegations in October, the group said, consisting of “a few instances of inadequate citation.”

“While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications,” the group said in a statement.

In the same statement, the fellows said the group stands by Gay and supports her leadership of the university, fighting against calls from conservatives and some members of Congress to have her removed from the job.

MIT has also resisted calls for its president to resign.

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill did resign from her job over the same pressures, with the university’s board of trustees chair also resigning in protest the next day.