Understanding the Claudine Gay Plagiarism Scandal

In December 2022, Harvard University announced that Claudine Gay would become the university’s next president. At the time, she was the dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and her appointment would make her the first Black president of the school and only the second woman to hold that title. 

She assumed the office in July 2023 and, until relatively recently, her tenure had been relatively uneventful. However, that changed on December 5, when she testified before the House Committee on Education in a hearing looking at antisemitism in schools. 

Gay’s testimony was seen as evasive and failed to placate her critics. This led many to call for her resignation. Another University president, Liz Magill from the University of Pennsylvania, actually did resign after testifying at the same hearing. 

However, in Gay’s case, the school has stood behind her, with the Harvard Corporation releasing a statement that she is “the right leader to help our community heal.”

Still, the hearing put Gay in the public limelight and, even as Harvard was dealing with the fallout from the hearing, another controversy came to light. 

This one involved allegations that, throughout her academic career, Gay had committed plagiarism, including taking sections of text without providing proper indication of quoting, poor paraphrasing and more.

However, on closer examination, the allegations are not as strong as Gay’s detractors would like them to be, with several issues preventing this from being a major scandal. On the other hand, they aren’t as easy to dismiss as Gay’s supporters would like either, still pointing to issues that need addressing.

Understanding the Allegations

The initial allegations were posted on X (formerly Twitter) by journalists Christopher Rufo and Chris Brunet, who compared Gay’s work to earlier academic works.

The examples, however, vary wildly in terms of length, severity and how compelling they are as evidence of plagiarism.

Some of the examples, such, as one involving a full paragraph of near-verbatim copying, definitely do point to significant issues. Others, however, involve either extremely short passages or longer ones that aren’t as close of a match to one another as presented. 

Still, Gay’s position as a lightning rod means that these allegations have been widely reported on, especially by her critics. This includes hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman, who shared the allegations to his sizeable audience on X. 

However, Harvard has made it clear that they have already viewed the allegations and conducted an independent review. They found that, while they found “instances of inadequate citation” that there was no evidence that Gay had violated the school’s standards for research misconduct.

Nonetheless, Gay has said she is requesting four corrections on two articles to “insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”

Through it all, the Harvard Corporation still has “unanimous support” for Gay and has promised to continue to support her through this “tumultuous time”.

In short, it seems as if Gay’s position is secure, at least for now. But the case does raise serious questions about both Gay’s work and the nature of the allegations themselves.

My Analysis of the Evidence

This story puts me in a very awkward position. I first learned about the allegations against Gay in early November, roughly a week after Harvard did. I learned about it through an investigative reporter for a major publication who was reaching out to me and other experts about the case.

I have a strict policy of, when working with reporters, of not scooping their coverage. However, the story seemed to stall out and progress on it largely stopped by the middle of November. Contact was resumed on December 9th, after the hearing, with the X posts going live on December 10. 

Though I can’t know what the other people the reporter contacted said, I have a feeling that their thoughts mirrored my own: That this case is nuanced and that, while the allegations do point to some areas of concern, other examples are either extreme stretches or too small to be significant evidence of any wrongdoing at all.

While certainly some of the examples had me concerned, in others it was clear that they were trying to make the copying look worse than it was, especially on close examination.

In my estimation, the allegations were serious enough that a full and independent investigation of Gay’s work was (and may still be) justified. Though Harvard claims that they have already done so, and certainly could have given the time, details about that investigation are not available, so there is no way to confirm.

Simply put, Harvard is not being transparent about their investigation and that frustrates me. 

But, on the other hand, the evidence available doesn’t sustain the allegations being thrown around by her detractors. The case doesn’t represent a clear history of overt plagiarism or academic dishonesty. In the end, we’re discussing a few paragraphs in a lengthy publication history. 

While the evidence so far supports making corrections and supports conducting an investigation, it doesn’t justify fully dismissing everything Gay had done up to this point. 

However, this is a common refrain when dealing with political and/or celebrity plagiarism scandals. The scandal quickly becomes less about the actual plagiarism, and more about judging the person who is accused of it.

If you dislike Claudine Gay, you likely feel that the plagiarism is another serious issue that should prompt her to resign or be fired. If you support her, you probably feel that it was an argument raised in bad faith and should be largely ignored.

Either way, it’s less about the actual plagiarism and more about the person at the center of the accusation. 

Bottom Line

When I’m asked about cases of plagiarism involving political figures or celebrities, I ask myself a simple question: What would happen to a regular person in this position?

If we replaced Claudine Gay with an associate professor or a researcher at Harvard or any other school, the allegations would definitely be serious enough to warrant an investigation. 

However, if this is all the evidence that could be found, the response would likely be to correct the articles and maybe instruct the researcher to take a remedial course on writing and citation. As long as the research itself isn’t compromised and errors can be explained by unintentionally missed attribution or short sections of sloppy writing, most journals would simply correct the articles rather than retract them and most schools wouldn’t respond too strongly.

Issues rise when the science is compromised, the plagiarism cannot be easily explained by error, or the sloppy writing is endemic in the work. While examples such as Gay’s are violations of written policies and standards, those policies are intended to have some leeway to allow for good faith mistakes.

To be clear, Gay’s transgressions may not be mistakes. They may not be the only issues with her work. That’s something for an investigation to determine. Harvard claims to have performed one, but their lack of transparency makes it impossible to determine how serious or thorough it was. 

However, the evidence available today doesn’t paint the picture of a reckless academic who deliberately and routinely takes the work of others. 

Should she have made those mistakes? No. Should her approach to writing have been better so that the mistakes were not possible? Yes. Do corrections need to be made? Yes. But does the evidence presented support the firing of an academic? No. Does this discredit the whole of her career? Absolutely not.

This is a nuanced case, but that nuance is going to get lost in the larger conversation. That’s because the conversation is about Gay herself, not the plagiarism allegations. 

In the end, it’s Gay herself, not research integrity, that is the target to either attack or defend. That means the important conversation about citation, research integrity and writing standards gets drowned out by a dueling chorus of angry voices.