Debate over plagiarism allegations increases pressure on Harvard
After weeks of tumult at Harvard over the university’s response to the Israeli-Hamas war and the leadership of its president, Claudine Gay, there was no shortage of interest this week in a faculty forum with Dr. Gay.
In a town hall held via Zoom on Tuesday with several hundred members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Gay focused on bridging the deep gaps that had arisen on campus as a result of the war, according to two attendees. and requested confidentiality due to the sensitivity of the situation.
The faculty members who expressed their opinions during the meeting were largely positive, and there were no questions raised about Dr.’s academic performance. Gay after public accusations of plagiarism. The issue wasn’t even raised, one professor said.
But on Thursday, new questions surrounding Dr.’s scholarship arose. Gay came to the fore after the university said late Wednesday that it had identified two more examples of what it called “duplicative language without appropriate attribution” from her 1997 dissertation.
The examples were part of a wave of plagiarism accusations leveled against Dr. Gay had emerged, egged on by conservative activists and news media, just as she was under fire for failing to take a tougher stance on anti-Semitism during a tense Congress. hearing called by Republicans in the House of Representatives this month.
The latest round of allegations has left critics of Dr. Gay empowered and pressured her supporters, while leaving some students and faculty stunned just as the campus empties for winter break.
“As a Harvard student, the whole scandal was quite embarrassing from start to finish,” Daniel Vega, a Harvard senior, said Thursday. “I just think it’s a bit of a rough look for us.”
Mr. Vega, a classical and philosophy major while writing his dissertation, said he and his classmates ignored plagiarism allegations against Dr. Gay and the approach to anti-Semitism. Still, he said, it was not lost on him that the accusations were being made by right-wing agitators.
The latest developments also raise questions about the Harvard Corporation, the island government that Dr. Gay — a professor of government and African and African American studies, former dean and the university’s first black president — hired after a relatively quick search last year. . The board had Dr. Gay was acquitted of ‘research misconduct’ just a few days ago.
The Harvard administration first addressed the allegations against Dr. on December 12. Gay treated. At the time, the board said an investigation by independent scientists, launched in response to anonymous allegations received in late October, had found “a few instances of inadequate citation” in her published work. These cases, the board said, did not rise to the level of “investigative misconduct.” Dr. Gay would request four corrections in two articles, the board said.
Then on Wednesday, the university said the panel also looked at her 1997 dissertation, which was not part of the original review, and found two additional instances of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.” These cases also did not amount to “research misconduct,” the university said, but would be corrected in an update to Dr. Gay.
Asked Thursday whether the Harvard Corporation still stood behind Dr. Gay, a university spokesperson referred the declaration of unanimous support of December 12. Dr. Gay declined to be interviewed.
The accusations of plagiarism against Dr. Gay, which relate to her dissertation and about half of the eleven journal articles listed on her resume, range from short snippets of technical definitions to lightly paraphrased summaries of other scientists’ work, without quotation marks or direct quotations. In one example that was ridiculed, Dr. Gay borrowed exact phrases from the acknowledgments section of another author’s book to thank her mentor and family in the acknowledgments section of her own dissertation.
She has not been accused of more egregious violations, such as falsifying data or stealing another scientist’s original research or ideas.
Still, the steady stream of accusations has privately worried some faculty members, who see a pattern of sloppiness unbecoming of a Harvard leader. And some have begun to speak out more forcefully, questioning whether Dr. Gay can effectively fulfill his presidential duties, including raising money from the largest possible group of donors.
“You have to be practical, not ideological,” said Avi Loeb, a science professor who was critical of Dr. Gay in Congress, Thursday. “If she cannot achieve the goals she is expected to pursue as university president, then it is clear what needs to be done.”
Some major donors remain restless. Ukrainian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, whose name appears on an institute at Harvard Medical School, decided in recent weeks to suspend donations because of his dissatisfaction with the school’s response to anti-Semitic incidents on campus, a spokeswoman said . The family of Mr. Blavatnik, who has donated more than $200 million, will not start donating again “until anti-Semitism at Harvard is addressed with real action,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.
Mr Blavatnik’s decision was previously reported from Bloomberg.
In a note to colleagues that he shared with The New York Times, Eugene I. Shakhnovich, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, wrote that Dr. Gay as president was ‘untenable for Harvard’.
“Claudine Gay is a huge liability for Harvard and therefore for US higher education,” he wrote. “Her presidency is a great Christmas present” on the right.
Still, debate continued on campus about whether the allegations against Dr. Gay were serious enough to warrant further action.
Randall Kennedy, a Harvard law professor, said Thursday that his support for Dr. Gay was ‘unmoved’.
The allegations against her, he said, had been brought to light by “professional detractors.” He urged the university to “clarify the idea of plagiarism and distinguish between different levels of culpability.”
He also suggested that Harvard’s leadership could refuse to cooperate further with a congressional investigation into the university, distinguishing between “bona fide investigations” and “bad faith efforts to harass, embarrass and intimidate ‘.
To meet Harvard’s standard of “research misconduct,” which can lead to severe sanctions, the violations must be committed “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly,” according to Faculty of Arts and Sciences regulations.
Daniel Swinton, former assistant dean for academic integrity at Vanderbilt University and now a college consultant and expert witness, emphasized that intention mattered. “I didn’t read anything that said she stole someone’s idea and presented it entirely as her own,” he said.
The claim that Dr. Gay copied sentences in her dissertation acknowledgments from another author’s acknowledgments, struck him as “cringey.” But acknowledgments, he said, are “the signature card of academia,” and boilerplate is the norm.
While a university president may be held to a higher standard than a student, “the answer to whether we should expect perfection from him is no,” Mr. Swinton said.
Harvard’s campus, the scene of intense protests for weeks, was cold and quiet Thursday as final exams concluded and winter break began. Only a handful of tourists wandered the quiet grounds.
Rémy Furrer, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School, said he thought Dr. Gay “took some responsibility in requesting some changes to her published research.” But, he said, “it is important that academic standards are applied equally to faculty, presidents and students alike.”
Harvard senior Spencer Glassman said he couldn’t say whether Dr. Gay had crossed a line. But he understood the need to scrutinize the plagiarism allegations.
“It sets a benchmark for the seriousness of the university,” he said. “The president should be more or less untouchable.”
Rob Copeland, Kitty Bennett, Anna BettsMatthew Eadie and Cici Yongshi Yu contributed reporting.