Image by Maura Healey, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, via Flickr
CV NEWS FEED // House Republicans are ramping up their investigation into Harvard University regarding the widespread plagiarism allegations against University President Claudine Gay.
Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-NC, penned a letter to Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker Tuesday raising various questions regarding the leadership of America’s oldest university.
In the letter, Foxx indicated that her committee “has begun a review of [Harvard’s] handling of credible allegations of plagiarism by [Gay] over a period of 24 years.”
“An allegation of plagiarism by a top school official at any university would be reason for concern, but Harvard is not just any university,” Foxx continued. “It styles itself as one of the top educational institutions in the country.”
Foxx cited the institution’s Honor Code, which states: “Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to producing academic work of integrity.”
“Does Harvard hold its faculty and academic leadership to the same standards?” she asked.
“Harvard does hold its students to these high academic and ethical standards,” Foxx wrote:
In the 2021-22 school year, the Harvard College Honor Council investigated 42 incidents of plagiarism, 35 allegations of exam cheating, and 19 other Honor Code violations. 70 of these 100 cases resulted in a finding of responsibility, and 46 resulted in academic probation or mandatory withdrawal.
Again, does Harvard hold its faculty – and its own president – to the same standards?
“Our concern is that standards are not being applied consistently, resulting in different rules for different members of the academic community,” noted Foxx.
“If a university is willing to look the other way and not hold faculty accountable for engaging in academically dishonest behavior, it cheapens its mission and the value of its education,” she added.
At the end of her letter, Foxx requested “documents and communications” related to Gay’s alleged plagiarism and the Harvard Fellows’ purported “independent review” of the matter.
Foxx also asked for a
list of any disciplinary actions taken against Harvard faculty or students on the basis of academic integrity violations, research misconduct, inadequate citation, or other forms of plagiarism, from January 1, 2019, to present.
The letter’s recipient, Pritzker, was the lead signatory of the Harvard Fellows’ controversial statement last week declaring that the board “unanimously stands in support of” Gay.
As CatholicVote reported at the time:
Pritzker currently serves as the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine’s Economic Recovery in the Biden administration and was previously the Secretary of Commerce in the Obama administration. She is the sister of Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
The Daily Wire reported that Foxx “just weeks ago announced a probe into Harvard and other prestigious universities over concerns about ‘rampant anti-Semitism displayed on their campuses.’”
>> BOMBSHELL REPORT ALLEGES THAT GAY PLAGARIZED HER PHD <<
The plagiarism allegations against Gay came shortly after she was heavily criticized for her controversial remarks related to anti-Semitic incidents on campus.
A week and a half ago, anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) activist Christopher Rufo wrote that he and The American Conservative’s Christopher Brunet had “obtained documentation demonstrating that [Gay] plagiarized multiple sections of her Ph.D. thesis, violating Harvard’s policies on academic integrity.”
“Gay lifts an entire paragraph nearly verbatim from a paper by Lawrence Bobo and Franklin Gilliam’s, while passing it off as her own paraphrase and language,” Rufo explained.
“I stand by the integrity of my scholarship,” the Harvard president said last week. “Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards.”
Then on Tuesday, Rufo brought to light another alleged example of Gay’s plagarism.
“This is incredible,” he wrote on X. “[I]n her dissertation, Claudine Gay plagiarized the language of her acknowledgment from the acknowledgment of another scholar, without citing the source.”
“She couldn’t even say ‘thank you’ without plagiarizing the language,” he emphasized.
“For this alone, Claudine Gay should resign,” the Harvard graduate stressed. “It’s a humiliation to the entire Harvard enterprise.”
