Embattled Harvard President Claudine Gay accused of plagiarism, but defends her work amid calls for her resignation following anti-Semitism hearing

Embattled Harvard President Claudine Gay is defending accusations that she plagiarized numerous parts of her 1997 doctoral thesis in direct violation of Harvard’s academic integrity policies.

Documents obtained by journalists Christopher Rufo and Chris Brunet published in X juxtapose political scientist Gay’s article with previous works by various authors and academics, which in some passages are replicated almost word for word.

In one example, taken from page 12 of Gay’s dissertation, Rufo notes that the now Harvard president apparently “removes an entire paragraph” from a 1990 article by Lawrence Bobo and Franklin Gilliam.

In Bobo and Gilliam’s original article, published seven years before Gay wrote his thesis, the phrase “blacks in areas of high black empowerment – ​​as indicated by control of the mayor’s office – are more active than blacks” appears. who live in low-empowerment areas.” areas or their white counterparts of comparable socioeconomic status.”

Then, in Gay’s article, she writes: “African Americans in ‘high black empowerment’ areas – as indicated by the mayor’s office check – are more active than African Americans in low empowerment areas or their white counterparts in comparable socioeconomic status”.

Harvard President Claudine Gay has faced growing calls to resign following testimony at a congressional hearing last week in which she failed to unequivocally denounce calls for a “global intifada” on the Ivy campus. League. fake images

In a statement to the Boston Globe on Monday, Gay vehemently defended his academic rigor, saying: “I stand by the integrity of my scholarship. “Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure that my scholarship meets the highest academic standards.”

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Although Gay quotes Bobo and Gilliam by name in the preamble to his own strikingly similar passage, Rufo points out that his almost word-for-word replication of their words violates Harvard’s policies on paraphrasing.

“When you paraphrase, your task is to distill the source’s ideas into your own words. It is not enough to change a few words here and there and leave the rest; instead, you must completely restate the ideas in the passage in your own words,” Harvard’s policy reads in part.

“If your own language is too close to the original, then you are plagiarizing, even if you provide a citation.”

Gay now faces accusations of plagiarism of parts of his 1997 doctoral thesis, as allegedly illustrated by side-by-side posts in X by Christopher Rufo and Chris Brunet. @realchrisrufo / X Rufo and Brunet allege that Gay had removed passages and sometimes entire sentences from her dissertation. @realchrisrufo /X

Rufo provided several other examples in which Gay’s words bear a nearly identical resemblance to works by scholars such as Richard Shingles, Susan Howell, Deborah Fagan, and Carol Swain.

In a passage from a 1981 Richard Shingles article, Rufo notes that Gay reproduced the phrase “black consciousness contributes to political distrust and a sense of internal political efficacy that in turn fosters policy-related participation.”

Gay’s version of the phrase, which appears without quotation marks, reads: “Racial consciousness, Shingles (1981) had argued, contributed to political distrust and a sense of internal political efficacy that in turn fostered policy-related participation.” ”.

Other side-by-side comparisons indicate that Gay based Appendix B of his thesis almost entirely on Gary King’s book “A Solution to the Problem of Ecological Inference” without acknowledging the source material, even though King was the advisor for Gay’s thesis, Rufo points out.

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The bloggers also pointed to Harvard’s own policy on plagiarism, which they say Gay grossly violated by failing to properly paraphrase and provide citations. @realchrisrufo /X

Rufo’s X thread was also shared by billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, which garnered more than 2.3 million views in less than 24 hours.

In his post, Ackman said he had asked a “senior member” of the Harvard faculty to review the plagiarism allegations against Gay. He claims that school staff “found them credible.”

Additionally, the Washington Free Beacon further claimed that four articles written by Gay and published between 1993 and 2017 did not have proper attribution.

The outlet said academics it had consulted agreed that Gay had “violated a fundamental principle of academic integrity” and said they had found 10 cases in which Gay had lifted sentences or paragraphs and only changed a word or two.

The explosive allegations come amid growing calls for Gay to resign following a disastrous congressional hearing last week in which he stopped short of denouncing Harvard students calling for a “global intifada” on freedom of speech grounds. expression.

Stay on top of news on the war between Israel and Hamas and the global rise in anti-Semitism with The Post’s Israel War Update, delivered directly to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

“We accept a commitment to freedom of expression, including opinions that are objectionable, offensive [and] hateful,” he said. “It is when that speech turns into conduct that violates our anti-harassment and bullying policies. That speech did not cross that barrier.”

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In the storm that followed, trucks carrying signs calling for Gay’s impeachment surrounded the Ivy League school’s campus on Sunday, emblazoned with the words “GAY FIRE” and with images of his appearance before Congress.

The Harvard University campus has been the scene of numerous and disturbing anti-Semitic demonstrations since Israel began its retaliation attack against Hamas for its October 7 terrorist attack. REUTERS

Another truck parked at the school’s front gate blared Gay’s exchange with New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, in which the Harvard president said that calls for genocide only qualify as harassment or intimidation “depending on the context.” “.

The avalanche of criticism of Gay has escalated following the resignation of Liz Magill, president of the Ivy League University of Pennyslvania. She resigned on December 9 following her appearance before Congress alongside Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth.

The campuses of many major US universities (including Harvard) have become hotbeds of anti-Semitic rhetoric in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas, which began after October 7, when the terrorist group launched a surprise terrorist attack. against the country, killing 1,200 civilians and kidnapping more than 240.

A request for a response from Gay’s office was not immediately returned Monday.

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Source: vtt.edu.vn

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