Harvard University is facing a serious situation with its President, Claudine Gay, as more cases of “duplicative language” in her research have been discovered.
The Harvard Crimson reported that the university’s top board, the Harvard Corporation, announced Gay is seeking to correct three issues in her 1997 doctoral thesis. This follows an earlier statement where Harvard said Gay would correct four errors in two of her articles from 2001 and 2017, where she left out citations and quotation marks.
These recent findings about her thesis have made things worse for Harvard, as they come after over 40 claims of plagiarism were made against Gay’s academic work. These claims, which include missing quotation marks and entire paragraphs copied from other sources, were reported to Stacey Springs, Harvard’s officer for research integrity.
In response to these issues, Virginia Foxx, a Republican Chairwoman from North Carolina for the House Education and the Workforce Committee, wrote a demanding letter to Penny Pritzker, a senior official at Harvard.
Foxx is asking for more information about how Harvard dealt with the plagiarism claims against Gay and the real possibility of “the unequal application of Harvard’s Honor Code.”
Foxx’s letter states the 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.”
“Our concern is that standards are not being applied consistently, resulting in different rules for different members of the academic community,” Foxx wrote.
“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 continued.
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Foxx’s letter reminds Harvard of its own Honor Code, which states “Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to producing academic work of integrity – that is, work that adheres to the scholarly and intellectual standards of accurate attribution of sources, appropriate collection and use of data, and transparent acknowledgement of the contribution of others to their ideas, discoveries, interpretations, and conclusions.”
“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,” the code states.
Foxx demanded of Pritzker. “Does Harvard hold its faculty and academic leadership to the same standards?”
Foxx ended her letter by asking Harvard to provide all documents and communications related to the plagiarism claims against Gay and the university’s public response, as well as any disciplinary actions taken for academic dishonesty since the start of 2019.
This controversy has damaged the reputation of both Gay and Harvard. It escalated after Gay appeared before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to discuss the rise of antisemitism on American campuses.
During this session, Rep. Elise Stefanik from New York pressed Gay on whether certain antisemitic statements would be against university policy. Gay fumbled and never answered the question definitively. Gay ultimately issued an apology.
Despite many people calling for her resignation after her unclear responses, the Harvard Corporation continues to support Gay while also dealing with the plagiarism allegations first brought up in October.
This incident at Harvard raises important questions about how academic leaders are held accountable and the impact on their institutions. As more information comes out, everyone is watching to see how Harvard will handle these accusations and whether it will stand by its stated commitment to academic integrity and fairness.
