Harvard President Claudine Gay faces renewed scrutiny as she proactively sought further revisions to her previous academic contributions, while a congressional committee expanded its ongoing inquiry into Harvard to investigate allegations of plagiarism against her.
A Harvard spokesperson, in a statement to CNN on Thursday morning, conveyed that the university conducted a thorough review of more of President Gay’s academic output.
As a result, she intends to make corrections to her 1997 PhD dissertation, addressing additional instances of “inadequate citation.”
Although the term “plagiarism” was not explicitly used in the university’s assessment of Gay’s work, Harvard clarified that her previous errors did not meet the criteria for a punishable offense under its research misconduct regulations.
In addition to the corrections acknowledged last week in response to two scholarly articles from the 2000s, Harvard President Claudine Gay is now making additional revisions, as reported by The Harvard Crimson.
However, a CNN review published on Wednesday identified that the earlier corrections made by Gay did not adequately address more evident instances of plagiarism present in her previous academic work, notably her dissertation.
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Harvard’s Independent Review: President Gay’s Published Works Examined
The Harvard Corporation, the primary governing board of the university, revealed last week that, upon the request of President Claudine Gay, it initiated an independent review of her published work in late October.
However, it was confirmed on Thursday that the dissertation was not part of this independent review initially, as the allegations at the time specifically pertained to her published works.
In response to the recent plagiarism accusations, Harvard stated that its subcommittee has now examined the dissertation and identified “one instance of replicated content from a missing citation or quotation mark, which had already been noted in a published paper and subsequently corrected, along with two additional instances of duplicated language lacking proper attribution.”
Harvard specified that the examination of President Claudine Gay’s work adhered to its Interim Policy and Procedures for Responding to Allegations of Research Misconduct, delineating the criteria for defining misconduct.
According to Harvard’s policy, for an act to qualify as “research misconduct,” it must involve a “significant departure from accepted practices,” be committed “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly,” and the allegation must be substantiated by a “preponderance of the evidence.”
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