House Republicans are investigating Harvard’s handling of “credible allegations of plagiarism” against its president, Claudine Gay, as well as the university’s efforts to suppress inquiries from The Post about her scholarship.
House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) wrote a letter on Wednesday to Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker demanding internal documents and communications about the scandal.
Foxx’s letter questions whether the university’s governing body is holding Gay to “the same standards” as students after her work was flagged for dozens of instances of copying other academics — including portions of her 1997 Ph.D. thesis.
The Post first contacted Harvard about the seemingly improper citations nearly two months ago — and was subsequently threatened with a defamation suit if it published a story based on the allegations.
As part of the probe, Foxx has requested any records about the university’s “public response to media inquiries.”
House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY), another member of the committee and a Harvard alumna, has also vowed to exercise “every tool at our disposal including subpoena power” to hold Gay accountable.
“Harvard University’s pathetic record of stifling free speech has expanded beyond campus, threatening the New York Post following their investigation and coverage of Claudine Gay’s history of serial plagiarism,” Stefanik told The Post Thursday.
“This attempt at bullying and subsequent censorship is entirely unacceptable; the Congressional investigation will use every tool at our disposal including subpoena power to expose the rot of antisemitism plaguing higher education and the hypocrisy of the poisoned ivy towers of Harvard. This is a reckoning.”
The committee letter also notes that Harvard’s federal funding is conditioned on its compliance with standards of academic integrity overseen by the New England Commission of Higher Education and asks the university to “provide assurance” those standards are being upheld by handing over records.
“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,” Foxx wrote. “Students must be evaluated fairly, under known standards — and have a right to see that faculty are, too.”
The investigation comes after Gay was hauled before Congress Dec. 5 to testify about antisemitism on Harvard’s campus, during which she was pressed by Stefanik about whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated the university’s codes of conduct related to bullying and harassment.
Gay said allowance for the speech would depend on “context,” refusing to give a yes-or-no answer and adding that the words only could warrant action if it rose to the level of bullying, harassment and intimidation.
“Without sufficient action from the Harvard Corporation, the ‘depends on the context president’ will also be forever marred as the ‘plagiarism president,’ and a great stain will mark Harvard’s legacy,” Foxx said in a statement.
“While the antisemitism and plagiarism investigations being conducted by the Committee are separate and distinct, they both raise questions of hypocrisy in academia. In this case, how could a serial plagiarizer like Claudine Gay hold a student accountable for plagiarism ever again?”
On Oct. 24, The Post contacted Harvard about 27 instances of Gay’s plagiarism in two academic papers published in peer-reviewed journals between 2011 and 2017, as well as an academic magazine article from 1993.
The university’s senior executive director of media relations and communications, Jonathan Swain, a former Hillary Clinton aide and member of the Biden-Harris transition team, responded he would “get back in touch over the next couple of days.”
The next communication The Post received, on Oct. 27, was from Thomas Clare, a Virginia-based defamation lawyer with the firm Clare-Locke who shared a 15-page letter with comments from the academics cited by Gay denying she plagiarized their work.
Clare further threatened The Post with a lawsuit if a story about any plagiarism allegations went to press.
However, the Clare letter was sent two days before the Harvard Corporation had even begun an internal review of Gay’s potential plagiarism, according to the university’s student newspaper.
Harvard’s governing body asked a four-person subcommittee and three-person independent panel of experts to separately investigate the allegations.
On Wednesday, Harvard announced the joint review found “examples of duplicative language without appropriate attribution” in Gay’s 1997 doctoral dissertation, but concluded it did not rise to the level of plagiarism, the Boston Globe reported.
“President Gay will update her dissertation correcting these instances of inadequate citation,” a summary of the review stated.
That same day, however, Harvard received more than 40 new allegations of plagiarism against Gay in a 37-page document, which was obtained and first reported on by the Washington Free Beacon.
The firestorm has only added to calls from members of the House Education and Workforce Committee to conduct a thorough investigation of Harvard, its president and its policies.
“Harvard has been terrified of losing donations and taxpayer funding since they were exposed for harboring antisemitism,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who sits on the committee, told The Post.
“Claudine Gay claimed to support free speech and truthful inquiry in her congressional testimony, but now the university is threatening journalists and lying to protect its reputation and over $50 billion endowment. It’s shameful.”