Claudine Gay, Harvard’s president, has been protected by the university’s board even after allegations of plagiarism following her controversial antisemitism testimony to Congress.
In a statement earlier this month, the board dismissed the accusations of plagiarism against Gay as “a few instances of inadequate citation” presenting “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.” The board quietly cleared her of wrongdoing on Dec. 9.
However, Gay has seen her scandal grow since then. According to a new complaint, Gay made more than “a few” tinyu mistakes.
Critics have found a stunning 39 alleged examples of plagiarism.
A complaint was filed Tuesday with 39 new allegations, ranging from missing quotation marks to entire sentences lifted word-for-word.
The complaint, while public, was filed anonymously due to fear of retaliation. The anonymous complainant took issue with Harvard’s defamation attorneys and their potential to intimidate critics.
According to the complaint, Gay wrote in one article, “The movement became an expression of frustration among upwardly mobile Afro-Brazilians denied admission to the middle-class status to which their education and qualifications entitled them.”
Years earlier, the scholar George Reid Andrews had written, “This new movement of the 1970s and 1980s was to a large degree the expression of frustration among upwardly mobile Afro-Brazilians denied admission to the middle-class status to which their education and qualifications entitled them.”
Gay reportedly failed to use quotation marks around the other scholar’s verbatim language. She didn’t even include him in a bibliography, according to the complaint; she mentioned him only in a section called “Suggestions for Further Reading.”
Gay has yet to respond publicly to Tuesday’s complaint, but earlier this month she requested four corrections across two articles. “I stand by the integrity of my scholarship,” Gay said at the time in a statement obtained by Inside Higher Ed.
The new complaint isn’t the only thing challenging the board’s verdict.
Another scholar, Carol Swain, came forward Sunday to accuse Gay of plagiarism… and detailed the impact of this plagiarism on her career.
“I write as one of the scholars whose work Ms. Gay plagiarized,” Swain wrote in a viral op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.
“She failed to credit me for sections from my 1993 book, ‘Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress’ and an article I published in 1997, ‘Women and Blacks in Congress: 1870-1996.'”
Swain accused Gay of outright theft.
“The damage to me extends beyond the two instances of plagiarism,” Swain wrote. “Academic stature is determined by how often other researchers cite your work… Tenure at a top-tier institution normally demands ground-breaking originality; her work displays none.”
Swain said that she’d expected more than just “a single citation or two” from Gay.
If the new complaint is any indication, Swain should count herself lucky for receiving even one citation from Gay.
Dec. 14 flashback! Harvard president plagiarism scandal just got bigger
The Horn editorial team