Plagiarism charges against Harvard’s president throws school into more investigations

Harvard University President Claudine Gay faces plagiarism accusations on old papers, throwing her and the college under a spotlight on the heels of her controversial answers in a congressional hearing on antisemitism.  

On Wednesday, officials from Harvard said Gay asked to add three updates to her dissertation from 1997 to include proper citations, according to The Washington Post. This adds to corrections made in the last two months to other work she has published.  

Harvard Corporation announced earlier this month it became aware of plagiarism concerns from the New York Post in October for three articles Gay previously published. 

An independent review was conducted of Gay’s work, and it was discovered she had improper citations in publications. This review did not include Gay’s 1997 dissertation.

The accusations mounted when conservative outlet the Washington Free Beacon found four papers from the 1990s with plagiarism concerns. 

“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,” Harvard Corporation said in a statement.

Harvard said it did not find “intentional deception or recklessness” in Gay’s work, so it did not reach the standard of research misconduct, according to The Post.

The school’s board has stuck by Gay despite these allegations, but House Republicans are not satisfied with the independent review conducted by the school. A congressional inquiry was initiated Wednesday, as well.

“The House Committee on Education and the Workforce (Committee) has begun a review of Harvard University’s (Harvard) handling of credible allegations of plagiarism by President Claudine Gay over a period of 24 years. An allegation of plagiarism by a top school official at any university would be reason for concern, but Harvard is not just any university. It styles itself as one of the top educational institutions in the country,” Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said.

The committee is requesting documents related to the plagiarism allegations and the review Harvard executed, disciplinary actions taken against other Harvard students or employees around plagiarism concerns and other communications about the guidelines that apply to this case.

“Our concern is that standards are not being applied consistently, resulting in different rules for different members of the academic community. 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. Students must be evaluated fairly, under known standards — and have a right to see that faculty are, too,” Foxx said.

This latest controversy adds to Harvard’s trouble after Gay said in a House hearing on campus antisemitism that it would depend on the context if a call to genocide Jewish people would be considered harassment on campus.

Foxx said Harvard would also be investigated for Gay’s testimony, as well as the learning environment on the campus and its disciplinary policies.