Embattled Harvard president Claudine Gay has been hit with 40 fresh allegations of plagiarism, with claims that she lifted ‘entire paragraphs’ in her academic writing.
The new allegations were first published in a shocking report from the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday and span seven publications authored by Gay.
The accusations range from missing quotation marks around a few phrases or sentences to entire paragraphs lifted verbatim.
Gay, 53, has seen the investigation into anti-Semitism on campus expand into an investigation into alleged plagiarism.
During her infamous appearance in front of a Republican-led hearing, the under-fire president failed to say that calling for a genocide of Jews breaks Harvard’s rules.
Harvard President Claudine Gay is still in power despite backlash about her testimony last week and new allegations of plagiarism
Gay was accused of copying two paragraphs from work by then-Harvard scholars D. Stephen Voss and Bradley Palmquist. One paragraph is nearly identical except for a few words
However, Gay did not use any quotation marks or in-text citations – Voss and Palmquist are not cited anywhere in her dissertation
Last week, Gay submitted two corrections to articles where she was accused of plagiarism, adding ‘quotation marks and citations,’ a university spokesman said.
On Wednesday, it was revealed that Gay is correcting two more instances of inadequate citation following the letter. The school told the Boston Globe they found ‘examples of duplicative language without appropriate attribution’ in her 1997 PhD dissertation.
‘President Gay will update her dissertation correcting these instances of inadequate citation.’
In a Substack post, investigative journalist Christopher Rufo reported that Gay had plagiarized portions of four works over 24 years, including her 1997 Ph.D dissertation and a series of articles.
The university investigated the plagiarism allegations, and, on Friday, said corrections had been made.
The corrections were made to a 2017 article titled ‘A Room for One’s Own? The Partisan Allocation of Affordable Housing,’ in the Urban Affairs Review.
A 2001 article titled ‘The Effect of Black Congressional Representation on Political Participation’ in the American Political Science Review was also amended.
While the board says they found no violation of the school’s policies in Gay’s work, The Harvard Crimson, which reviewed the examples of alleged plagiarism, landed at a different conclusion.
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The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced in a letter that it’s widening the scope of it’s probe into Gay, according to a letter written by Rep. Virginia Foxx
Harvard President Claudine Gay now faces a Congressional investigation into dozens of allegations of plagiarism that have surfaced since her derided testimony at the Capitol on campus anti-Semitism
The school’s paper wrote that some of Gay’s writings ‘appear to violate Harvard’s current policies around plagiarism and academic integrity.’
It comes after the Washington Free Beacon and right-wing bloggers Rufo and Christopher Brunet claimed Gay plagiarized parts of four academic works, including her 1994 Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard, titled ‘Taking Charge: Black Electoral Success and the Redefinition of American Politics.’
Billionaire Bill Ackman amplified the allegations as part of his campaign to oust Gay from his alma mater’s top job.
Gay defended her work telling The Boston Globe: ‘I stand by the integrity of my scholarship. Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards.’
While the bloggers focused their claims on Gay’s dissertation, The Free Beacon also looked at three other works by the scholar: a 1993 essay in the publication Origins and two papers from 2012 and 2017, when Gay was already a Harvard professor.
While some of the claims by the Free Beacon include minor citation issues, the Crimson said others are ‘are more substantial, including some paragraphs and sentences nearly identical to other work and lacking citations.’
The student publication notes Harvard’s rule on what constitutes plagiarism says when copying language ‘word for word,’ scholars ‘must give credit to the author of the source material, either by placing the source material in quotation marks and providing a clear citation, or by paraphrasing the source material and providing a clear citation.’
Gay was accused of copying two paragraphs from work by then-Harvard scholars D. Stephen Voss and Bradley Palmquist. One paragraph is nearly identical except for a few words.
However, Gay did not use any quotation marks or in-text citations – Voss and Palmquist are not cited anywhere in her dissertation.
It’s unclear whether the same rules applied when Gay turned in her dissertation 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 at all look sneaky… It looks like maybe she just didn’t have a sense of what we normally tell students they’re supposed to do and not do.’
Harvard professor Lawrence Lobo, one of those allegedly plagiarized by Gay, similarly told the Boston Globe: ‘I find myself unconcerned about these claims as our work was explicitly acknowledged.’
