An further lawsuit filed on January 1 lists six more charges of plagiarism against Claudine Gay, the now-former president of Harvard University. With this, the academic administrator is now facing 50 charges in total, which include over half of her scientific works from the previous 25 years.
The original December 2023 complaint and a revised January 2024 file made to Harvard’s Research Integrity Office by an unidentified professor from another university were received by The Washington Free Beacon, who verified their veracity. The accusations draw attention to plagiarism in several pieces she has written during her professional life.
Gay was found to have plagiarized full lines and paragraphs from other works without giving due credit in several instances in the initial complaint, which was submitted in December. Expanding on these charges, the revised January complaint charges her with stealing nearly a whole page, word for word, from University of Wisconsin professor David Canon in a 2001 work without giving credit.
Additionally, it is alleged that she stole phrases and citations from her dissertation mentor.
July 2023 marked Claudine Gay’s first year as Harvard’s president. After she appeared at a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism on December 5, controversy over her eligibility for the position erupted. Gay refused to say for sure at the time if inciting acts of genocide against Jews would be under Harvard’s code of conduct.
Gay came under fire from many quarters for her unwillingness to denounce such intolerance. Many began to worry about her ability to shield Jewish kids from violence at a time when anti-Semitic sentiment was increasing as a result of Israel’s protracted battle with Hamas. A few days later, the initial accusations of copying surfaced.
On January 2, Gay formally submitted his resignation as president of Harvard. She came to the conclusion that leaving would benefit Harvard and enable the school to give institutional issues more priority.
Shortly later, Elise Stefanik, the chair of the House Republican Conference, replied on Twitter to Gay’s departure. She declared the former president to be morally bankrupt and vowed to continue “exposing the rot,” applauding it as a triumph.
I will always deliver results. The resignation of Harvard’s antisemitic plagiarist president is long overdue. 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…
— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) January 2, 2024
In a way, Stefanik can be held somewhat accountable for Gay’s departure. It was her in her capacity as conference chair that set off Gay’s contentious remarks on anti-Semitism on December 5 during the congressional hearing. Many people saw her line of inquiry as the spark.
