In a report to a congressional committee released Friday, Harvard provided the most detailed account yet of its handling of plagiarism allegations against Claudine Gay, who resigned this month as the university’s president.
The basic outlines of the saga were known, but Harvard had not released many details, which had led to questions about the impartiality and rigor of its investigation.
In its account, Harvard defended the thoroughness of the plagiarism review. He said an outside panel had found that Dr. Gay was “sophisticated and original,” with “almost no indication of a deliberate claim of findings” that were not her own, even as she found a double-tongue pattern in three documents.
But his account also shows a university board that was slow to do a full accounting of its work. Instead, for several weeks, Harvard tried to investigate a steady stream of accusations of plagiarism, unable to provide a direct, authoritative answer to questions about Dr. Gay.
The report is part of a broader filing by Harvard in response to a Dec. 20 letter from the House Education and Workforce Committee, which is investigating allegations of plagiarism and anti-Semitism against the universities. This committee held the most infamous hearing on campus anti-Semitism, in which Dr. Gay and two other college presidents have been criticized for their legalistic responses to questions about anti-Semitism.
The committee said it is currently reviewing Harvard’s submission. So far, only the plagiarism report has been made public.
Harvard’s account begins on October 24, when it says a New York Post reporter approached the university about the plagiarism allegations.
The Post presented Harvard with a list of 25 quotes that Dr. Gay, a political scientist, was accused of plagiarizing from three articles she had written. One article was dated 1993, when she was a graduate student, and the others were dated 2012 and 2017, when she was on the faculty, the report said.
Harvard, according to the report, contacted several of the authors accused of plagiarism — “none of whom objected to then-President Gay’s language.”
The university formed a subcommittee to lead the review, with the help of lawyers. Subcommittee members included Biddy Martin, former president of Amherst College; Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, former California Supreme Court Justice; Shirley Tilghman, former president of Princeton University. and Theodore V. Wells Jr., a partner at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison.
The subcommittee then appointed a three-member external committee. The abstract describes the committee members as tenured faculty members at prominent research institutions, and two are past presidents of the American Political Science Association.
They asked that their identities be kept confidential, Harvard said. But the House committee, which has the power to subpoena witnesses, could ask for their names.
The independent panel did not fully review Dr. Gay. He examined only the accusations shared by The Post and compared the three articles by Dr. Gay with 11 papers by other scholars, the report says.
The committee found that there was “virtually no evidence of an intentional claim of non-President Gay findings,” the report states.
But he expressed concern about a pattern of repetitive language. And Dr. Gay, standing by her scholarship, had to make some corrections to quotations and references.
The review appeared, briefly, to dismiss the charges, and the university’s governing board, the Harvard Corporation, approved the continuation of her presidency.
But by then, new accusations had surfaced on social media, this time about Dr. Gay’s thesis. Harvard’s account says the subcommittee “immediately” reviewed her thesis, and Dr. Gay had to submit some corrections to that as well.
On Dec. 19, an additional complaint was filed with Harvard’s office of research integrity, but no additional corrections were required, the account says.
Two weeks later, he was out.
Harvard’s account acknowledges that the university did not handle the review perfectly, suggesting the university was in crisis as it faced upheaval over its handling of anti-Semitism on campus.
“These allegations arose at a time of unprecedented events and tension on campus and globally,” the report said. “We understand and acknowledge that many viewed our efforts as insufficiently transparent, raising questions about the process and standard of our review.”
On Friday, Harvard also announced new rules to curb student protests.
In a message shortly before the start of classes at the college on Monday, Harvard said no demonstrations would be allowed in classrooms, libraries, dormitories or dining halls without a permit. Instead, protests are limited to “courtyards, squares and other such spaces” and cannot prevent students from walking to class.
The clarification did not directly address the question raised in the congressional hearing that contributed to Dr. eliminating Israel — would be against Harvard’s code of ethics.
Annie Karni contributed to the report.
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