The House Committee on Education and Workforce has decided to include allegations of plagiarism against President Claudine Gay in its investigation into Harvard.
The investigation started due to the school’s horrible reaction to the antisemitism on its campus.
Gay now faces around 40 allegations of plagiarism in her works, including her dissertation.
“Does Harvard hold its faculty and academic leadership to the same standards?” Chairman Virginia Foxx asked Penny Pritzker, head of Harvard’s governing board.
The Washington Free Beacon received new allegations of plagiarism against Harvard President Claudine Gay from Stacey Springs, the school’s research integrity officer.
The new allegations include those already reported by the Washington Free Beacon and Christopher Rufo.
In October, someone gave the New York Post information about Harvard investigating claims of allegations of plagiarism in Gay’s work. The publication said the school used power attorneys to protect Gay.
The cases allege “Gay quoted or paraphrased authors without proper attribution,” including “missing quotation marks around a few phrases or sentences to entire paragraphs lifted verbatim.
“As you know, federal funding to Harvard is conditioned upon the school’s adherence to the standards of a recognized accreditor,” continued Foxx. “Harvard’s accrediting body, the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), maintains Standards for Accreditation (Standards) that emphasize the paramount importance of academic and institutional integrity.”
Foxx added: “Compliance with these standards is a requirement to maintain accreditation. Specifically, an accredited institution must demonstrate that it ‘works to prevent cheating and plagiarism as well as to deal forthrightly with any instances in which they occur.'”
Foxx pointed out that Harvard has held its students to high standards regarding plagiarism:
Harvard does hold its students to these high academic and ethical standards: 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.12 70 of these 100 cases resulted in a finding of responsibility, and 46resulted 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. 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. Students must be evaluated fairly, under known standards – and have a right to see that faculty are, too.
The committee wants Pritzker to hand over all documents and communications from the first “independent review” of the plagiarism allegations, punishment of students who plagiarized, any guidelines or policies not available to the public, and anything with the New England Commission of Higher Education.
It looks like Gay even plagiarized the acknowledgments in her dissertation.
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