Harvard President To Correct Dissertation After Plagiarism Accusations

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Harvard President Claudine Gay is requesting three corrections to her 1997 Ph.D dissertation due to concerns of plagiarism —just days after she fell under fire for apparently failing to properly cite multiple academic articles.

The latest in the alleged plagiarism saga was announced Wednesday evening by the Harvard Corporation, according to The Harvard Crimson.

Last week, the Harvard Corporation addressed allegations that surfaced in October of plagiarism concerning three of Gay's academic articles.

"At President Gay’s request, the Fellows promptly initiated an independent review by distinguished political scientists and conducted a review of her published work," a published letter said. "On Dec. 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation. While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications."

According to this review, Harvard was notified about the allegations through a media inquiry from the New York Post on Oct. 24, the Crimson reported.

Five days later, Gay asked the Harvard Corporation to investigate the allegations independently, according to the outlet. The Corporation crated a three-person panel of political scientists with "no ties to Harvard" to analyze the specific allegations raised by the Post, while the Corporation's subcommittee conducted "a more comprehensive review of all of President Gay’s other published works from 1993 to 2019," the Crimson reported.

This review — which did not include of Gay's Ph.D dissertation — only sought to identify research misconduct, which requires evidence that the action was taken "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly," according to the Crimson. According to the review, Gay's alleged actions did not fit this description.

An assessment of Gay's Ph.D with regard to plagiarism has not yet been released.

Gay's first term as Harvard's president has been shrouded in controversy. Also this month, she faced a wave of backlash following her testimony on antisemitism before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce earlier this month.

During the Dec. 5 testimony, Gay and her counterparts at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shied away from answering whether students calling for the genocide of Jews were breaking the code of conduct at Harvard, instead saying that the university 'embraces a commitment to free expression' unless it 'crosses into conduct that violates policies against bullying, harassment, intimidation.'

In a letter shared earlier this month, members of the Harvard Corporation said that while "calls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values," they decided to reaffirm Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University.