Harvard President Resigns Amid Plagiarism Scandal

By Matis Glenn

Harvard’s President Claudine Gay issued her resignation Tuesday, amid mounting allegations of plagiarism throughout her academic career that resurfaced in the fallout over how she and other university heads were dealing with antisemitism on campus.

Gay’s resignation follows that of former University of Pennsylvania President Lizz Magill three weeks ago, after both leaders, together with the president of MIT, refused to state clearly in a congressional hearing that calls for genocide against Jews would not be tolerated on campus.

Prominent donors and businesses terminated their relationship with Harvard after the hearing, as antisemitic incidents involving pro-Palestinian students and faculty exploded across the nation following Hamas’ terror attacks on October 7 and the resultant war on the terror group. Chants such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” referring to the entire landmass of Israel, and “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” a term which harkens back to decades of terror attacks against Israeli civilians by Palestinians – both commonly heard at pro-Palestinian demonstrations, are seen by many as calls for genocide against Jews.

Amid the controversy, critics of Gay brought allegations of academic plagiarism to light, and discovered new instances of alleged plagiarism, with some using Artificial Intelligence programs to scan her works.

The university board publicly stood behind Gay throughout the condemnations stemming from both issues.

Accusers published side-by-side comparisons between sentences in dozens of Gay’s papers that were identical or nearly identical to that of other writers, but were not credited as such.

Gay, Harvard’s first black president, wrote in her resignation letter that she had received personal attacks that were racially motivated. She wrote that it was “distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”

She conceded that “it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge.”

Harvard’s board said in a statement shortly after the congressional hearing, that after reviewing Gay’s 1997 doctoral dissertation, “a few instances of inadequate citation” were discovered, but they did not admit that the evidence amounted to research misconduct.

Days later, the Harvard Corporation revealed that it found two additional examples of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution,” but continued to support her.

The Harvard Corporation said Tuesday the resignation came “with great sadness” and thanked Gay for her “deep and unwavering commitment to Harvard and to the pursuit of academic excellence.”

Alan M. Garber, provost and chief academic officer, will serve as interim president until Harvard finds a replacement, the board said in a statement.

“TWO DOWN,” Rep. Elise Stefanik, who grilled Gay and the other university heads at the congressional hearing posted on social media after Gay’s announcement.

“The resignation of Harvard’s antisemitic plagiarist president is long overdue,” Stefanik, herself a Harvard graduate, said in a press release. “Claudine Gay’s morally bankrupt answers to my questions made history as the most viewed Congressional testimony in the history of the U.S. Congress. Her answers were absolutely pathetic and devoid of the moral leadership and academic integrity required of the President of Harvard,” she continued.

“This is just the beginning of what will be the greatest scandal of any college or university in history.”

In one example of alleged plagiarism cited by the Daily Mail, Gay wrote in her 2001 paper entitled ‘The Effect of Minority Districts and Minority Representation on Political Participation in California. Public Policy Institute of California’: ‘The central parts of the measure are Section 2 and Section 5. Section 2 reiterates the guarantees of the 15th amendment, prohibiting any state or political subdivision from adopting voting practices that “deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” Section 5, imposed only on “covered” jurisdictions with a history of past discrimination, requires Justice Department preclearance of changes in any electoral process or mechanism.’

David Canon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, wrote in his book ‘Race, Redistricting, and Representation: The Unintended Consequence’: ‘The central parts of the VRA are Section 2 and Section 5. The former prohibits any state or political subdivision from imposing a voting practice that will “deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” The latter was imposed only on “covered” jurisdictions with a history of past discrimination, which must submit changes in any electoral process or mechanism to the federal government for approval.’

Another example of alleged plagiarism is from the works of academic Gary King.

King wrote: “The posterior distribution of each of the precinct parameters within the bounds indicated by its tomography line is derived by the slice it cuts out of the bivariate distribution of all lines.”

Gay, in 2001, wrote: “The posterior distribution of each of the precinct parameters for precinct i is derived by the slice it’s tomography line cuts out of this bivariate distribution.” 

Canon, however, told the Free Beacon that he was not concerned about the allegations.

“I am not at all concerned about the passages,” he said. “This isn’t even close to an example of academic plagiarism.”

The Free Beacon cites another example of alleged plagiarism in Gay’s 1997 work, where she “borrowed a full paragraph from a paper by the scholars Bradley Palmquist, then a political science professor at Harvard, and Stephen Voss, one of Gay’s classmates in her Ph.D. program at Harvard, while making only a couple alterations, including changing their “decrease” to “increase” because she was studying a different set of data.”

“This is definitely plagiarism,” Lee Jussim, a social psychologist at Rutgers University, told the Free Beacon. Jussim reviewed 10 side-by-side comparisons provided by the news outlet.

“The longer passages are the most egregious,” he added.

Earlier Tuesday, six additional accusations of plagiarism were filed against Gay, bringing the total number of complaints close to 50.

Gay’s departure, six months after assuming office, marks the shortest length of time spent as president in the university’s history.

Activist Christopher Rufo cited another example in an article he wrote accusing Gay of plagiarism.

In a work published by Professors Lawrence Bobo and Franklin D. Gilliam, those authors wrote:

“Using 1987 national sample survey data . . . the results show that blacks in high-black-empowerment areas—as indicated by control of the mayor’s office—are more active than either blacks living in low-empowerment areas or their white counterparts of comparable socioeconomic status. Furthermore, the results show that empowerment influences black participation by contributing to a more trusting and efficacious orientation to politics and by greatly increasing black attentiveness to political affairs.”

Gay wrote:

“Using 1987 survey data, Bobo and Gilliam found that African-Americans in “high black-empowerment” areas—as indicated by control of the mayor’s office—are more active than either African-Americans in low empowerment areas or their white counterparts of comparable socioeconomic status. Empowerment, they conclude, influences black participation by contributing to a more trusting and efficacious orientation towards politics and by greatly increasing black attentiveness to political affairs.”

Much of the research into Gay’s alleged plagiarism was powered by Artificial Intelligence programs that scanned documents for similarities.

“Beyond content creation, the advancing AI technology allows us to identify potential plagiarism even faster and more thoroughly than before,” Alon Yamin, co-founder and CEO of AI-based text analysis platform Copyleaks told Hamodia. “Plus, plagiarism committed in the past is now even more challenging to outrun because of advancing AI-based technology that can scan and detect plagiarism both online and in images of physical text.

“If anything, AI has evolved our expectations around plagiarism, whether academically or within journalism, and I expect it will continue to do so.”

Harvard, along with dozens of other leading universities, is currently under investigation by the federal Department of Education for possible violations of Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits the discrimination of people based on national origin or shared ancestry.

With reporting from wire services