Harvard University has announced that it has discovered additional incidents of insufficient citations by school president Claudine Gay. The Ivy League school stated that President Gay’s 1997 doctoral thesis contained numerous examples of duplicative language without the appropriate attribution, according to a summary of the report obtained by the Boston Globe. President Gay has committed to updating her dissertation to correct the inadequate citations. Additionally, the Harvard Crimson reports that this involves three other corrections to those already made in her work.
Furthermore, a congressional committee has recently announced it will investigate accusations of plagiarism against Gay following these findings. Harvard’s recent review uncovered this issue, confirming that the university knew as early as October 24 that allegations of plagiarism against President Gay were being investigated by The New York Post. However, the independent three-person panel remained unsuccessful in finding the plagiarized material since it had focused on all of President Gay’s other published works and not her dissertation.
The news has come as a surprise to many, as President Gay holds an esteemed position in the academic world. Despite that, these issues reveal the extent to which plagiarism cases can emerge despite academic standing. Harvard’s recent review casts a light on the inadequacies of scholarly work in higher education institutions.
File reports that the user executed a web scraping tool but found no result. The result may suggest that Harvard had locked down the research material, which did not permit public access to easily extract any data useful for research by the public.
This investigation highlights that plagiarism, even at the highest level of academia, is still an issue that needs to be addressed. While President Gay has taken steps to correct her work, it raises questions about the protocols and processes that Harvard should have in place to ensure academic honesty. The investigation will determine if the allegations of plagiarism were merited and what action, if any, should be taken. Plagiarism is a problem that can’t be ignored, even by those in the highest echelons of education.