Claudine Gay's plagiarism crisis

After Liz Magill resigned as UPenn's president in disgrace after her antisemitic testimony at a House committee hearing, the prevailing thought was that the presidents of Harvard and M.I.T. would be gone by the end of the weekend. That prevailing opinion didn't prevail, though not because Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, hasn't been trapped in scandal after scandal.

President Gay is fighting her way through multiple plagiarism scandals. If Harvard isn't careful handling this situation, they could find themselves in legal hot water. Further, it's getting more difficult to continue supporting President Gay considering "she plagiarized other academics throughout her career. The newest charges have amplified questions about her research integrity and position at the helm of the prestigious Ivy League institution."

Considering the fact that President Gay "plagiarized other academics throughout her career", it might be more appropriate to call Harvard the formerly prestigious Ivy League institution. Why aren't Harvard's supporters turning on Harvard? Harvard's reputation certainly has been sullied mightily. It isn't something that can't be fixed. It just can't be fixed if Harvard keeps pretending President Gay's reputation is still intact.

Gay will update her Ph.D. dissertation to add attributions for material in three spots, the school said Wednesday night, but again she was cleared of research misconduct by a board subcommittee.

The school also said that it received an anonymous complaint earlier in the week providing dozens of additional instances of alleged plagiarism, but that most had already been reviewed, and the four that were new were deemed to be "without merit."

This is what got President Gay in trouble initially:

After that, over 700 Harvard professors signed a letter supporting President Gay. It isn't a stretch to think that President Gay is an affirmative action hire. It isn't outrageous to think that Harvard has significantly lowered its academic standards.

The cover-up starts

The initial review determined Gay’s published papers hadn’t violated Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, though there were "a few instances of inadequate citation," the board said last week.

On Wednesday evening, the school added that there were instances that didn’t adhere to the Harvard Guide to Using Sources. Gay subsequently requested four corrections in two academic articles, to add quotation marks and citations for specific material.

Finally, there's this letter:

On Wednesday, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce opened a review of how Harvard has handled the allegations of plagiarism.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the chair of the committee, sent a letter to Penny Pritzker, who leads the school’s governing board. The letter quotes from the school’s honor code that says "plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community."

"Does Harvard hold its faculty—and its own president—to the same standards?" Foxx asked in the letter.

The committee is requesting that Harvard hand over all documentation and communications concerning the initial allegations of plagiarism, the school’s responses to the media, as well as a list of disciplinary actions taken against Harvard faculty or students for academic integrity violations since 2019.

If Harvard doesn't terminate President Gay's employment with the University, Harvard's reputation will suffer for years.