Embattled Harvard president makes admission about past work after plagiarism probe launched

Ms Gay submitted updates to her 1997 PhD thesis after a US House committee expanded a probe to investiate claims of plagiarism

Harvard University President Claudine Gay has made further admissions in the allegations of plagiarism leveled against her as a US House Committee widens a probe to investigate the claims.

After the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce expanded a probe to investigate claims of plagiarism against her, Ms Gay issued new updates to her 1997 PhD thesis to correct instances of “inadequate citation” following a university review, a Harvard spokesperson told CNN on 21 December. The spokesperson told CNN they were not punishable offences — the outlet noted the spokesperson did not use the term “plagiarism” in their response.

Chris Rufo, a right-wing activist who led a campaign against critical race theory in elementary schools, first claimed Ms Gay plagiarised parts of her 1997 doctoral dissertation on the success of Black politicians.

On 20 December, CNN published a report claiming Ms Gay plagiarised verbatim language in her 1997 dissertation. Last week, Ms Gay also issued corrections on two academic articles published in the 2000s, The Harvard Crimson reports.

The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, led by Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, expanded an existing probe to include allegations against Ms Gay of academic plagiarism, according to a 20 December letter from Ms Foxx addressed to Penny Pritzker, Senior Fellow for the Harvard Corporation. The letter gives Harvard until 29 December to respond.

The existing probe initially investigated alleged rises in antisemitism on college campuses, Harvard among them. Ms Gay, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill testified to the committee earlier this month about their colleges’ responses to alleged incidents of antisemitism on their campuses since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war on 7 October.

All three faced significant backlash when they did not explicitly state that calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate their schools’ policies. Ms Gay and Ms Magill have since apologized for their statements.

Harvard University’s media office did not respond to The Independent’s request for comment.