Following public backlash over its statement on President Claudine Gay’s plagiarism allegations, Harvard retracted its statement. The school admitted to instances of “duplicative language” in Gay’s academic work as the House probes into Ivy League schools.
The House asked whether they held students and the university’s leader to the same standards on plagiarism. Consequently, the Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing body, released a review summary.
According to the Harvard Crimson, Gay will request three corrections from Harvard’s Provost Office regarding her 1997 Ph.D. dissertation. Also, through additional review, Harvard found two other instances of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.”
This development comes a week after the Harvard Corporation said that “an independent review by distinguished political scientists” of Gay’s work found “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.”
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However, the university president would “proactively request four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that she omitted from the original publications.” Consequently, Gay submitted corrections to the two articles published in 2001 and 2017.
However, the additional findings regarding her 1997 dissertation deliver an embarrassing blow to the prestigious university. Before the other findings, Harvard’s research integrity officer, Stacey Springs, received a complaint detailing more than 40 allegations of plagiarism.
According to reports, the complaints came in regarding Gay’s academic work. The plagiarism allegations range from missing quotation marks around a few phrases or sentences to paragraphs lifted verbatim.
Consequently, House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) sent a letter to Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker. Foxx demanded more information about the university’s handling of plagiarism allegations against Gay.
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In addition, she asked about “the unequal application of Harvard’s Honor Code. Foxx said the committee is reviewing Harvard’s handling of credible plagiarism allegations by Gay spanning 24 years.
“An allegation of plagiarism by a top school official at any university would be reason for concern,” Foxx added. “But Harvard is not just any university. It styles itself as one of the top educational institutions in the country.”
The letter sent by the committee cites the Harvard College Honor Code. “Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to producing academic work of integrity,” the code states.
“Cheating on exams or problem sets, plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs.”
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“Does Harvard hold its faculty and academic leadership to the same standards?” Foxx demanded of Pritzker. The letter concluded by requesting Harvard hand over all documents and communications concerning the initial allegations of plagiarism.
In addition, it asked for the “independent review” of Gay’s scholarship described in a Dec. 12, 2023, email to Harvard alumni and students. Also, the letter requested for the university’s public response to media inquiries about those plagiarism allegations.
Furthermore, it asked for a list of any disciplinary actions taken against Harvard faculty or students from 2019 till the present. In addition, Foxx asks for non-public guidelines or policies governing the university’s process for reviewing and adjudicating allegations of plagiarism.
She also requested all communications between Harvard and its regional accreditor regarding its academic dishonesty standard. The fellows of the Harvard Corporation released a Dec. 12 statement backing Gay despite widespread calls for her resignation.
The calls came after her testimony on antisemitism during a congressional hearing, which sparked public outrage.
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