BREAKING: US Congress launches plagiarism probe!
This just broke a few minutes ago:
Bloomberg is the only outlet to cover this breaking news so far, and their article is paywalled, I am too much of a boomer to figure out how to bypass their paywall, so this is all we can see:
A US House of Representatives committee has opened an inquiry into Harvard University’s handling of allegations of plagiarism against President Claudine Gay, who sat before the panel this month to address antisemitism on campus.
Republican Virginia Foxx, chair of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, sent a four-page letter Wednesday to Penny Pritzker, head of the school’s governing board, asking for a response by Dec. 29 to questions including whether Harvard holds faculty and students to the same standards.
I am sure there will be more articles on this tomorrow.
Wow!
Gonna tell my grandkids that a random Canadian dude wrecked Harvard. Name and shame the Harvard corporation next.
FULL ARTICLE TEXT BELOW:
Sharing in the name of knowledge!
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A US House of Representatives committee has opened an inquiry into Harvard University’s handling of allegations of plagiarism against President Claudine Gay, who sat before the panel this month to address antisemitism on campus.
Republican Virginia Foxx, chair of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, sent a four-page letter Wednesday to Penny Pritzker, head of the school’s governing board, asking for a response by Dec. 29 to questions including whether Harvard holds faculty and students to the same standards.
The inquiry comes after Harvard’s board last week agreed to keep Gay as president and found that in her published articles she didn’t violate the university’s standards of conduct for research. “Our concern is that standards are not being applied consistently, resulting in different rules for different members of the academic community,” wrote Foxx of North Carolina. “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.”
The inquiry expands the committee’s probe of Harvard beyond antisemitism and harassment at a time when the school and Gay have come under intense criticism from alumni, donors and students. The US Education Department has also opened an investigation into Harvard and other schools over complaints of incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza.
Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, was one of three university leaders who testified before the House panel on Dec. 5. The trio were excoriated for their failure to clearly condemn calls for genocide of Jews as a violation of school policy. The testimony was punctuated by an exchange with Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican and Harvard alumna.
While the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill resigned, Gay, who took office July 1, and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology retained their jobs and have been supported by their boards. A week after her testimony, the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing board, called Gay “the right leader.”
The Harvard board said it had become aware in October of allegations of plagiarism regarding three articles written by Gay. After a review of her published work, it found “a few instances of inadequate citation” but no violation of Harvard’s standards on research misconduct.
Harvard has been trying to quell a revolt by alumni and wealthy donors including investor Bill Ackman, who have slammed her handling of rising antisemitism on campus amid the Israel-Hamas war. The criticism increasingly fed into a broader ideological battle over alleged left-wing bias at elite universities, with Republicans and some donors seeing the debate as an opportunity to reshape US higher education. Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the US and European Union.
While Harvard is a private university, it receives money from the US government. Federally sponsored research comprised 11% of its operating revenue in fiscal 2023. Donors also receive federal tax deductions. Harvard’s $51 billion endowment has been taxed since Republicans changed the tax code in 2017.