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A report claims that Gay had plagiarized portions of her doctoral thesis. However, the prestigious university said it had looked into the matter and determined that she had not violated any of the school's research standards. Officials said two of her articles will receive corrections for "inadequate citation."
The Harvard Corporation, which supervises the university, announced in a statement on Tuesday, Dec. 12, that it would keep Gay as president despite facing heavy criticism after her testimony before a House Committee on Education and the Workforce about antisemitism on college campuses.
Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist and Manhattan Institute fellow, posted a long thread on Sunday, Dec. 10, claiming that Gay may have plagiarized parts of her doctoral thesis in 1997.
The Washington Free Beacon then published a report, digging deeper into Gay’s previous academic works and alleged that four papers published between 1993 and 2017 didn’t include proper attribution.
Prof. Gary King, Gay’s thesis adviser, shut those allegations down, however, calling the accusations “absurd” in an interview with the Daily Beast.
“There’s not a conceivable case that this is plagiarism,” said King, adding that Gay’s work was reviewed extensively. “Her dissertation and every draft I read of it met the highest academic standards.”
In a statement to the Boston Globe on Monday, Dec. 11, Gay said she stands “by the integrity of my scholarship.”
“Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards,” she told the newspaper.
The Harvard Corporation explained that it knew about the allegations since October, but insisted Gay didn’t violate the university’s academic research standards.
“On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation,” the corporation wrote. “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.”
D. Stephen Voss, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky who said he showed some methods to Gay while he was affiliated with Harvard, told the Harvard Crimson that the work was “technically plagiarism” but described it as “minor-to-inconsequential.”
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