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Harvard launched an investigation into allegations that President Claudine Gay plagiarized some of her academic work in October, months before the allegations came to light publicly, the Ivy League revealed.
The university’s board issued a statement Tuesday announcing that Gay will remain in his position despite calls for his resignation following his disastrous testimony before Congress about anti-Semitism on campus and accusations of plagiarism.
The board of directors said: ‘The University became aware at the end of October of allegations relating to three articles. At President Gay’s request, the fellows quickly initiated an independent review by distinguished political scientists and conducted a review of their published work.
‘On December 9, fellows reviewed the results, which revealed some cases of inappropriate citation. While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards on research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections to two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.
While the board says they found no violation of school policies in Gay’s work, The Harvard Crimson, which reviewed the examples of alleged plagiarism, came to a different conclusion.
Harvard launched an investigation into allegations that President Claudine Gay plagiarized some of her academic work in October, months before the allegations came to light publicly.
Harvard President Claudine Gay at Congressional Hearing on Anti-Semitism on Campus
The school newspaper wrote that some of Gay’s writing “appears to violate Harvard’s current policies on plagiarism and academic integrity.”
It comes after the Washington Free Beacon and right-wing bloggers Christopher Rufo and Christopher Brunet claimed that Gay plagiarized parts of four academic works, including his 1994 PhD dissertation at Harvard, titled ‘Taking Control: The Electoral Success of the blacks and the redefinition of American politics’.
Billionaire Bill Ackman amplified the allegations as part of his campaign to oust Gay from the top job at his alma mater.
Gay defended his work on Tuesday, telling the Boston Globe: ‘I stand by the integrity of my scholarship. Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure that my scholarship meets the highest academic standards.’
While bloggers focused their claims on Gay’s dissertation, The Free Beacon also analyzed three other works by the academic: a 1993 essay in the journal Origins and two articles from 2012 and 2017, when Gay was already a Harvard professor.
While some of Free Beacon’s claims include minor citation issues, Crimson said others are “more substantial, including some paragraphs and sentences nearly identical to other works and lacking citations.”
The student publication notes that Harvard’s rule on what constitutes plagiarism says that when copying language ‘word for word,’ scholars ‘must credit the author of the source material, either by placing the source material in quotation marks and by providing a citation clearly, or by paraphrasing the source material and providing a clear citation.’
Bloggers claimed that Gay had plagiarized the work of Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., now chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Harvard professor Lawrence Lobo, one of the scholars allegedly plagiarized by Gay, told the Boston Globe: “I don’t feel concerned because our work was explicitly acknowledged.”
Gay has also been accused of lifting work from academic Carol Swain, who has accused Harvard of ignoring its president’s plagiarism.
Gay was accused of copying two paragraphs from the work of then-Harvard academics D. Stephen Voss and Bradley Palmquist. A paragraph is almost identical except for a few words.
However, Gay did not use quotation marks or citations in the text; Voss and Palmquist are not cited anywhere in his dissertation.
It is unclear whether the same rules applied when Gay submitted his thesis in 1997.
But Voss, who now teaches at the University of Kentucky, told The Crimson that while Gay “technically plagiarized,” it is “minor to inconsequential.”
He said: “This doesn’t seem misleading at all… It seems like maybe I just had no idea what we normally tell students to do and not do.”
Harvard professor Lawrence Lobo, one of those allegedly plagiarized by Gay, similarly told the Boston Globe: “I do not feel concerned by these claims since our work was explicitly acknowledged.”
Gay has also been accused of altering the work of scholar Carol Swain, who has accused Harvard of ignoring its president’s plagiarism.
Swain wrote: ‘The Harvard Corporation did not have the balls to acknowledge and remedy its mistakes regarding Dr. Gay. Despite evidence of plagiarism throughout his career, he will continue to lead the University. At Harvard there is no responsibility.
DailyMail.com has contacted Harvard for comment on this story.
The Harvard Corporation, formally president and members of Harvard College, has 12 members, including Gay, former president of Amherst College, Biddy Martin, and Kenneth I. Chenault, former longtime president and CEO of the American Express Company.
Gay, the school’s first black president, was appointed to the position in July 2023. She sparked fury during a congressional hearing last week after saying it depended on context whether calls for the genocide of Jews at Harvard constituted harassment and They violated the rules.
The Harvard Corporation: Harvard Fellows Paul J. Finnegan and Tracy Pun Palandjian
The Harvard Corporation: Harvard Fellows Tino Cuellar and Shirley M. Tilghman
Harvard Corporation Fellows Kenneth I. Chenault and Biddy Martin
Harvard Fellows Timothy R. Barakett and Penny Prtizker
Diana Nelson and Karen Gordon Mills, Harvard Scholarships
She was later forced to apologize after the hearing that cost the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill her job for a similar response.
Despite the backlash, Gay maintained institutional support at Harvard.
On Monday, the Executive Committee of the Harvard University Alumni Association announced its full support for the academic and called on the school’s boards of directors to publicly endorse her, according to The Harvard Crimson.
The group wrote: ‘President Gay is the right leader to guide the University through this difficult time…She is thoughtful. She’s kind. She is fiercely dedicated to the growth and well-being of our diverse community. We recognize that there was disappointment in her testimony last week. President Gay has noted this and apologized for any pain her testimony has caused: a powerful demonstration of her integrity, determination and bravery.’
Bill Ackman responded to the alumni group’s letter by saying, “How did the Association support President Gay without first surveying its members?”
Additionally, more than 700 Harvard professors signed a letter in support of Gay, urging the school to resist calls to fire her, describing attacks against her as “politically motivated.”
Harvard jurist Lawrence Tribe, who previously criticized Gay’s testimony as “deeply troubling,” told CNN that he signed the petition because “once outside pressures, whether from ultra-wealthy donors or politicians pursuing their ideological agendas , they override the internal decision-making processes of universities, We are on the road to tyranny.’
A truck with billboards at Harvard University demands the impeachment of President Claudine Gay on Sunday
The groups’ support for Gay followed an open letter from Ackman to Harvard, his alma mater, accusing Gay of “doing more damage to Harvard’s reputation than anyone in the university’s history.”
Ackman stated that “OEDIB’s actions have led to preferences and favoritism toward certain racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ groups at the expense of other groups, and have made some members of the Harvard community feel included at the expense of others who are excluded”.
The billionaire was accused of racism when he suggested that Gay had only been hired because she matched the DEO profile.
In his latest open letter, he said: “Recently several bloggers and other commentators accused me of being racist when I said that the board, in the search process that led to the hiring of President Gay, would not consider a candidate for president who did not meet the the DEI criteria.
“I have now confirmed from multiple sources that the search committee that led to President Gay’s appointment excluded eligible non-DEI candidates from the process.”
DailyMail.com has not independently verified Ackman’s claim.