Harvard President Gay touts 'integrity' of her work amid plagiarism accusations

Harvard President Claudine Gay has defended her scholarly work amid allegations of plagiarism, which have followed her much-maligned testimony before Congress on the rise of antisemitism on college campuses.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo over the weekend published the allegations, including screenshots of Gay's published works situated alongside strikingly similar writings. He further highlighted instances in which Gay did indeed cite her sourcing, but appeared to violate Harvard's own plagiarism standards, which require that any paraphrasing effectively restate ideas in entirely new language, rather than merely changing up some words.

Gay, for her part, told the Boston Globe on Monday that "I stand by the integrity of my scholarship. Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards."

The Harvard president testified alongside MIT President Sally Kornbluth and now-ex-Penn President Liz Magill last month in a hearing that saw the trio refrain from decisively condemning calls for genocide. Magill has since resigned her post.

Manhattan Institute Director of Constitutional Studies Ilya Shapiro noted Monday that Magill had already faced unrelated pressures and that Gay's status as the first black president of the school would make it less likely that she follows suit.

"With Claudine Gay, it's a little different. It's also that she's the first black president of Harvard. And so you have all these identitarian interests," he said on the "John Solomon Reports" podcast. "The plagiarism, if she ends up going down it could be the plagiarism that takes her down ... She was known more for being a DEI administrator, frankly, and putting in new programs to promote diversity academically, and otherwise."

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.