Probe Shows Former Harvard President Plagiarized, University Tells Congress

Dr. Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University, testifies before the House Education and Workforce Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC on Dec. 5, 2023. The Committee held a hearing to investigate antisemitism on college campuses. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

An independent review of former Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s work substantiated that plagiarism occurred, according to a new summary of the review from the university.

In nine instances, Ms. Gay “paraphrased or reproduced the language of others without quotation marks and without sufficient and clear crediting of sources,” the reviewers stated, according to the university summary.

In one case, Ms. Gay included “duplicative language” that “could be read as Gay claiming findings that are actually those of” another scholar, the reviewers said.

The reviewers focused on the definition of plagiarism in a Harvard University guide titled “Avoiding Plagiarism.“ The document says that ”when you fail to cite your sources, or when you cite them inadequately, you are plagiarizing.”

It also states: “Plagiarism is defined as the act of either intentionally OR unintentionally submitting work that was written by someone else. If you turn in a paper that was written by someone else, or if you turn in a paper in which you have included material from any source without citing that source, you have plagiarized.”

Harvard provided the summary of the investigation to the U.S. House of Representatives Education Committee, which has been probing Ms. Gay’s work and Harvard’s handling of plagiarism allegations.

Panel Convenes

A New York Post reporter sent allegations concerning Ms. Gay’s work to Harvard on Oct. 24, 2023.

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Harvard reviewed the allegations and responded to the outlet on Oct. 27, before voting two days later to initiate an outside review that featured experts who did not report to Ms. Gay. The Harvard Corporation also appointed a subcommittee of members of the corporation, including former California Supreme Court Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar. The subcommittee appointed three outside political scientists to independently assess the allegations.

The names of the political scientists are being kept confidential, Harvard said, at the request of the reviewers.

The reviewers primarily focused on two articles, “Moving to Opportunity: The Political Effects of a Housing Mobility Experiment,“ which was published in 2012, and “A Room for One’s Own? The Partisan Allocation of Affordable Housing,” which was published in 2017.

They found that nine of the 25 allegations provided by the New York Post amounted to plagiarism.

The reviewers also said a piece Ms. Gay published in 1993, “Between Black and White: The Complexity of Brazilian Race Relations,” used “identical language to that previously published by others, a pattern that recurs, in reduced form, in the 2012 and 2017 articles,” according to Harvard.

The panel recommended the subcommittee undertake a wider review of Ms. Gay’s work, based on its findings.

Subcommittee’s Findings

The subcommittee then launched a review, which looked at the nine instances singled out by the panel and all of Ms. Gay’s work, according to Harvard. The subcommittee used an unidentified software program to conduct the investigation.

The subcommittee identified portions of Ms. Gay’s work “that did not adhere” to the Harvard guide on avoiding plagiarism, the new letter states.

The subcommittee said two of Ms. Gay’s articles required corrections. Those corrections have been requested, the school said previously.

At the same time, Ms. Gay’s conduct was determined not to be reckless or intentional, so it did not meet the bar of research misconduct as laid out in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences research misconduct policy. The policy was changed in 2019 to exclude cases of misconduct if the actions were found to have been done accidentally, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The change was approved by Ms. Gay, who was the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the time.

The subcommittee later reviewed Ms. Gay’s dissertation and found one missing citation or quotation mark and “other examples of duplicative language without appropriate attribution,” Harvard said.

The dissertation has since been corrected.

Other Updates

Ms. Gay wrote in a recent op-ed for The New York Times that there were instances in her work “where some material duplicated other scholars’ language, without proper attribution,” but insisted “I have never misrepresented my research findings, nor have I ever claimed credit for the research of others.”

Ms. Gay resigned as Harvard’s president on Jan. 2. She remains employed by the school.

“In light of then-President Gay’s resignation, any further allegations will be assessed and addressed as appropriate without the Corporation’s involvement,” Harvard said in the new letter.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chairwoman of the House Education Committee, had asked for details of the handling of the plagiarism allegations in a December letter to the Harvard Corporation.

“Our concern is that standards are not being applied consistently, resulting in different rules for different members of the academic community. 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,” Ms. Foxx wrote at the time.

Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who uncovered some of the plagiarism, wrote on X that the letter amounted to Harvard “admitting that its whole defense of Claudine Gay was bogus.”