Harvard President Claudine Gay is alleged to have plagiarized portions of four academic works over 24 years, including her 1997 PhD dissertation at Harvard.
The allegations of plagiarism against Gay, the 30th president of Harvard University, came to the fore following a report in the Washington Free Beacon on Monday and a Sunday post on Substack.
The allegations of plagiarism range from omitting quotation marks but still citing her sources to apparently copying an entire paragraph of data description almost verbatim from another work without any citation. Gay defended her work in a statement Monday morning following the Substack post.
The allegations come at a uniquely perilous time for Gay, who has been called on to resign by alumni, donors, and members of Congress following her controversial remarks at a congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses last Tuesday.
Gay, an American political scientist, assumed office in 2023, becoming the university's first Black president 368 years after its founding.
