Columbia University DEI Head Accused of Plagiarism

A complaint filed anonymously with Columbia University accuses the school’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) office, Alade McKen of plagiarizing significant portions of his 2021 dissertation, which was submitted to Iowa State University’s School of Education as part of earning his Ph.D. 

The allegations were first reported by Aaron Sibarium at the Washington Free Beacon. The 55-page complaint identifies some 58 alleged plagiarized passages, amounting to roughly one fifth of the dissertation. 

The allegations accuse McKen of plagiarizing a variety of other academics in the space, most notably University of Rwanda’s Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu, but also copying up to two pages from Wikipedia with only minor alterations. 

Though some of the sources were cited in the paper’s bibliography, none of the verbatim or near-verbatim text was indicated to be quotes and many of the sources, including Wikipedia, were not cited at all. 

McKen is the third Ivy League DEI administrator to face allegations of plagiarism in the past month. The first was Sherri Ann Charleston, the DEI head at Harvard, who was followed days later by Shirley Greene, a DEI administrator at Harvard’s Extension School.  

Those allegations came just a month after Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard, faced similar allegations of plagiarism in her work and eventually resigned as president of the school.  

Though the complaint is anonymous, it is in a very similar format and style to the complaints filed against both Charleston and Greene, indicating they are likely from the same source. 

However, this raises a simple question: How serious are the allegations against McKen? The answer, unfortunately for McKen, is that they are very serious.  

Analysis of the Allegations 

To be clear, I have not analyzed the dissertation directly or performed an original analysis on it. However, similar allegations have proved accurate in terms of the content, even if, in the prior cases, many of the examples didn’t point to actual plagiarism or attempted to make the plagiarism seem more serious than it was. 

However, that does not appear to be an issue with the complaint against McKen. Of the 58 passages highlighted, nearly all are indications of significant verbatim or near-verbatim copying. Ultimately, roughly 20% of the dissertation appears to be plagiarized to one degree or another. 

At various points, sentences, paragraphs and multiple paragraphs are copied verbatim or near verbatim. The result is a clear picture of a great deal of copying and pasting with very little editing or rewriting.  

This goes well beyond the allegations against Claudine Gay. In her case, most of the individual passages highlighted were either too short to be evidence copying, not an indication of plagiarism or simply trying to make something out of nothing. 

Even when looking at the allegations against Claudine Gay, Neri Oxman (Claudine Gay critic Bill Ackman’s wife), Sherri Charleston and Shirley Greene, there’s a lot of room to believe that the plagiarism was an error, at least in large part.  

However, that’s not the impression that I get with the allegations against McKen. Where a few short passages or even a paragraph or two may be attributable to poor writing/paraphrasing techniques and inadequate research practices, especially when sources are cited but the text is not quoted, that is not what is happening with McKen.

The allegations against McKen’s dissertation are significantly greater and involve much lengthier passages, many of which aren’t cited at all. This shows a much clearer intent to use the work of others as a shortcut rather than just making mistakes as a writer and researcher. 

That, unfortunately, doesn’t bode well for McKen. As politically motivated as this complaint is, it is impossible to deny that the issues it has found are legitimate and need to be addressed by both Columbia University and Iowa State University. 

Unanswered Questions 

To my mind, there are two major questions at this point.  The first is: How was this level of plagiarism not detected earlier? 

With some of the previous stories, it’s easy to see how the alleged plagiarism may have slipped through the cracks. Though a thorough check should have caught the issues, we all know that checks aren’t always as thorough as they should be and both humans and technology can fail. 

Here, the plagiarism should have been incredibly obvious even with a cursory check. This is the kind of plagiarism that traditional plagiarism detection software is ideally suited to spot.  

Though Columbia University may not check the dissertations of candidates as standard practice, I’m surprised Iowa State University didn’t detect it, especially since the dissertation is only three years old. 

This is a level of copying that should have been easily detected before now. The fact that this significant of an issue went undetected this long should worry those in academia. 

The second question is where are the allegations coming from? 

In all the cases above, other than Neri Oxman, the allegations were filed via anonymous complaints. Though most of them use similar formatting and all have a similar style of allegation, there’s no way to verify that they came from the same source, as likely as that is true. 

What is clear is that these allegations are politically motivated and are examples of plagiarism being weaponized against individuals and institutions. These accusers have no interest in improving academic or research integrity, their investigations are targeted specifically to harm people or institutions that they see as political or ideological opponents. 

As we talked about earlier this month, targeted plagiarism investigations are relatively easy to perform. They don’t take a great deal of time or money. However, scaling that up to create systems that detect issues across hundreds or thousands of people is much more difficult, leaving gaps that can be revealed by more targeted checks down the road. 

But, while these latest checks may be performed for questionable reasons, that doesn’t mean we can ignore the findings. That is very much the case here. With McKen, it’s virtually guaranteed that those looking into his work weren’t interested in academic integrity, but in hurting his career and harming the reputation of DEI more broadly. 

Still, in this case, the findings do seem to speak for themselves and, while I haven’t performed my own analysis of the dissertation, the allegations point to a very serious issue with this dissertation. 

Bottom Line 

This case is a reminder that universities, for better or worse, have become the topic of public controversy and debate. With that comes greater scrutiny, both fair and unfair.  

Much of that scrutiny, right now, is taking the form of plagiarism checks on the work of high-level administrators, especially those who are politically divisive or in politically controversial positions. 

Schools need to work to get ahead of this issue. It should be clear that such investigations are likely to happen, regardless of whether the school is in the spotlight currently. The time to perform the checks yourself is now, before anything comes up. 

If we assume that someone is going to perform that investigation, wouldn’t it be better to do that check now and know what they will likely find? It also gives you a proactive opportunity to correct any issues that are found, showing that you’re taking the issues seriously before they become problems. 

While this is a big ask for schools that are often struggling with budget cuts and other pressing issues, it’s still a small distraction to head off a potentially much bigger one. As Harvard and now Columbia University have learned, it’s better to deal with these issues before they become headlines.  

Afterward is simply too late.