Harvard president Claudine Gay is facing renewed pressure to relinquish her post atop the nation's most prestigious university as allegations of plagiarism mount.
On Tuesday, Harvard received a 37-page complaint detailing more than 40 possible instances of plagiarism committed by the university's embattled president, who has only been on the job since July but has faced growing calls to resign or be removed. The Washington Free Beacon first reported news of the complaint.
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The new complaint builds on previous allegations of plagiarism, which were first reported by prominent conservative activist and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo. Those allegations came as Gay was facing immense pressure to step down after she refused during a hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee to say whether Harvard considered calling for the genocide of Jews a violation of its conduct policies.
The week after the hearing, shortly after the first plagiarism allegations surfaced, the Harvard Corporation said it stood by Gay and revealed it had conducted an independent review of Gay's scholarship over the previous month. That review "revealed a few instances of inadequate citation,” the Harvard Corporation said.
Immediately after the corporation announced it was standing by Gay, questions were raised about what kind of scrutiny a student in a similar situation would have faced.
"Students who, for whatever reason, submit work either not their own or without clear attribution to its sources will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including requirement to withdraw from the College," the university's plagiarism policy reads. "Students who have been found responsible for any violation of these standards will not be permitted to submit course evaluation of the course in which the infraction occurred."
But new allegations, which include claims that Gay plagiarized the acknowledgments in her 1997 dissertation, are placing the Harvard Corporation and Gay in an even more precarious position.
On Monday, the Boston Globe editorial board called on the university to be "clear" on whether Gay committed plagiarism.
"The rest of American higher education looks to Harvard for guidance on academic norms," the editorial board said. "With that leadership role in mind, the university should clear away the uncertainty over how it has applied its plagiarism policies to president Claudine Gay’s past academic work and state clearly whether several of her papers ran afoul of the rules it expects students and professors to follow — or not."
The editorial board said the corporation's statement on Gay's academic work was "contradictory" and noted that Harvard's own website "lists a definition of plagiarism at Harvard that is unforgiving of honest mistakes, and applies to everyone." But it stopped short of calling for Gay's ouster.
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"As far as this editorial board is concerned, Gay should remain president either way, as long as she has the board and the school community’s confidence," the Boston Globe board said. "But other people in the academic community have raised concern that, in its effort to defend Gay, the university is muddying what should be a clear-cut line and creating ambiguity about academic standards. For the professors who have to enforce plagiarism rules in the trenches, it matters what message Harvard sends about its guidelines."
The Washington Examiner has reached out to Harvard for comment.