Harvard Defends Its Plagiarism Investigation of Its Former President

In a report back to a congressional committee, launched on Friday, Harvard gave its most detailed account but of its dealing with of the plagiarism accusations towards Claudine Homosexual, who resigned this month because the college’s president.

The essential outlines of the saga had been recognized, however Harvard had not disclosed many particulars, which had led to questions concerning the impartiality and rigor of its investigation.

In its account, Harvard defended the thoroughness of its plagiarism evaluate. It mentioned an out of doors panel had discovered Dr. Homosexual’s papers to be “sophisticated and original,” with “virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings” that weren’t hers, even because it discovered a sample of duplicative language in three papers.

However its account additionally exhibits a college governing board that was sluggish to do a full accounting of her work. As a substitute, over a number of weeks, Harvard scrambled to analyze a gentle drip of plagiarism accusations, unable to provide a direct, authoritative response to questions on Dr. Homosexual’s scholarship.

The report is a part of a broader submission of paperwork by Harvard, made in response to a Dec. 20 letter from the Home Committee on Training and the Workforce, which is investigating plagiarism and antisemitism accusations towards universities. That committee held the now infamous listening to on campus antisemitism at which Dr. Homosexual and two different school presidents had been criticized for his or her legalistic solutions to questions on antisemitism.

The committee mentioned it was at the moment reviewing Harvard’s submission. To date, solely the plagiarism report has been publicly launched.

Harvard’s account begins on Oct. 24, when it says a New York Submit reporter approached the college concerning the plagiarism accusations.

The Submit introduced Harvard with a listing of 25 excerpts that Dr. Homosexual, a political scientist, was accused of getting plagiarized, from three articles that she had written. One article was dated 1993, when she was a graduate pupil, and the others 2012 and 2017, when she was on the college, the report says.

Harvard, in line with the report, reached out to a number of of the authors she was accused of plagiarizing — “none of whom objected to then-President Gay’s language.”

The college fashioned a subcommittee to direct the evaluate, with the assistance of attorneys. The members of the subcommittee had been Biddy Martin, a former president of Amherst School; Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, a former justice of the Supreme Court docket of California; Shirley Tilghman, a former president of Princeton College; and Theodore V. Wells Jr., accomplice on the regulation agency Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison.

The subcommittee then appointed a three-member exterior panel. The abstract describes the panel members as tenured college members at outstanding analysis establishments and two are former presidents of the American Political Science Affiliation.

They’ve requested for his or her identities to be saved confidential, Harvard mentioned. However the Home committee, which has the ability to subpoena witnesses, might nonetheless demand their names.

The impartial panel didn’t do a full evaluate of Dr. Homosexual’s work. It thought of solely the accusations shared by The Submit and in contrast Dr. Homosexual’s three articles to 11 papers by different students, the report says.

The panel discovered that there was “virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings that are not President Gay’s,” the report says.

Nevertheless it expressed concern a few sample of repeated language. And Dr. Homosexual, who stood by her scholarship, needed to submit some corrections in citation and quotation.

The evaluate appeared, briefly, to have disposed of the accusations, and the college’s governing board, the Harvard Company, endorsed her continued presidency.

However by then, new accusations had surfaced on social media, this time regarding Dr. Homosexual’s dissertation. Harvard’s account says the subcommittee “promptly” reviewed her dissertation, and Dr. Homosexual needed to submit some corrections to that, too.

On Dec. 19, an extra grievance was filed with Harvard’s analysis integrity workplace, however no extra corrections had been wanted, the account says.

Two weeks later, she was out.

Harvard’s account acknowledges that the college didn’t deal with the evaluate completely, suggesting that the college was in disaster because it confronted an uproar over its dealing with of antisemitism on campus.

“These allegations arose in a time of unprecedented events and tension on campus and globally,” the report mentioned. “We understand and acknowledge that many viewed our efforts as insufficiently transparent, raising questions regarding our process and standard of review.”

On Friday, Harvard additionally introduced new guidelines to rein in pupil protests.

In a message simply earlier than the beginning of faculty courses on Monday, Harvard mentioned that demonstrations wouldn’t be permitted in lecture rooms, libraries, dormitories or eating halls with out permission. As a substitute, protests are restricted to “courtyards, quadrangles and other such spaces” and can’t block college students from strolling to class.

The clarification didn’t instantly tackle the query raised on the congressional listening to that contributed to Dr. Homosexual’s resignation: whether or not protesters chanting slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — which many supporters of Israel interpret as a name for wiping out Israel — could be towards Harvard’s code of conduct.

Annie Karni contributed reporting.