Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman had now-former Harvard President Claudine Gay and Harvard itself in his sights well before Gay’s shocking Congressional testimony in December during which she claimed “context” would be important in determining whether or not someone calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s hate speech rules.
In October, just a few days after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, Ackman, who is Jewish and also a Harvard alum, called on CEOs to refuse to hire any Harvard student who signed on to the infamous letter that blamed Israel for the attacks.
In November, Ackman wrote a scathing letter directly to Gay, slamming her for her “free expression” response to the rise in anti-Semitism on campus, stating in part that “When antisemitism is widely prevalent on campus, and the DEI office – which ‘views diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging as the pathway to achieving inclusive excellence and fostering a campus culture where everyone can thrive’ – does not welcome Jewish students, we have a serious problem.”
When Gay was hit with the plagiarism allegations in December, Ackman—who experienced a wake-up call on DEI in the midst of evaluating Harvard’s response to Oct. 7th—was one of the more vocal critics of her work and her response to the claims against her and supported ousting her.
Now Ackman is on the receiving end of an alleged plagiarism scandal, one pertaining to his wife, Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor whom Business Insider alleges repeatedly engaged in plagiarism in her 2010 MIT doctoral dissertation:
The Business Insider report claimed Oxman “plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation” and found “at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation.” The article presented examples of her dissertation side by side with passages from authors she allegedly failed to cite accurately.Oxman apologized for several issues found in the report on X Thursday. She stressed, “I have always recognized the profound importance of the contributions of my peers and those who came before me.”The report noted “four paragraphs in my 330-page PhD dissertation: ‘Material-based Design Computation’” where “I omitted quotation marks for certain work that I used,” she wrote.[…]The examples posted by Business Insider showed Oxman’s explanation as true in three examples of the alleged plagiarism. However, it also showed an example in which she appeared to paraphrase an author without a parenthetical citation or quotes and another passage in which she allegedly inaccurately attributed a passage from the Royal Society of London paper to two different sources.
Oxman’s lengthy response can be read below:
Ackman’s reaction has been far more aggressive, with his first tweet on the issue claiming Business Insider gave them no time to respond to the allegations before they published the hit piece. He also said he believes this was done in retaliation against him for his public critiques of higher education in recent weeks and vowed to give the writings of MIT’s faculty, officers, and board members thorough reviews for any possible instances of plagiarism:
My wife, @NeriOxman, was just contacted by Business Insider claiming that they have identified other plagiarism in her work including 15 examples in her dissertation where she did not cite Wikipedia as a source.Business Insider told us that they are publishing their story this evening. As a result, we don’t have time to research their claims prior to publication.It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family.This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews.We will begin with a review of the work of all current @MIT faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism.We will be using MIT’s own plagiarism standards which can be found here:https://integrity.mit.edu/handbook/what-plagiarismWe will share our findings in the public domain as they are completed in the spirit of transparency.
For good measure, Ackman said he’d also review the work of Business Insider‘s staff for any possible plagiarism issues as well:
In another tweet, Ackman implied that MIT Chairman Mark Gorenberg, who was accused by Ackman of tax fraud in mid-December, may have been a source for Business Insider‘s report:
Author/investment banker Carol Roth quipped that Ackman should hold a plagiarism awards ceremony where the winners could “give the same acceptance speech”:
Leading CRT critic Chris Rufo, who was one of the writers who first revealed the alleged plagiarism issues with Claudine Gay’s work, had this to say on the topic of what he called the “plagiarism war”:
Not sure what will be revealed from all of this, but I’m stocking up on the popcorn all the same.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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