U-Turn on Cheating: Harvard Finds ‘Problems’ with Claudine Gay’s Work amid Plagiarism Probe

Harvard University has acknowledged that it has found some problems with former president Claudine Gay’s academic work via its plagiarism probe.

“Harvard now admitting that its whole defense of Claudine Gay was bogus. Whoops!” conservative activist and CRT expert Christopher Rufo, who was one of the first to call Gay’s Ph.D. dissertation into question over potential plagiarism, wrote in a Monday X/Twitter post.

In his post, Rufo shared a report by Associated Press, revealing that Harvard has recently shed some light on its ongoing investigation into plagiarism allegations against Gay, noting that the Ivy League university admitted in a Friday letter to a congressional committee that it had learned of potential plagiarism on October 24 from a New York Post reporter.

By acknowledging that the school had known about plagiarism allegations against Gay since October, Harvard has effectively admitted that its entire defense of Gay in recent months was a sham.

Claudine Gay holding a giant book

Gay’s academic career fell under scrutiny in the wake of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, after which point Harvard leadership was slammed nationwide for failing to properly address antisemitism taking place on campus.

After that, Gay, along with then-University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and MIT President Sally Kornbluth, delivered a disastrous congressional testimony, in which the three presidents declined to say whether advocating for the genocide of Jews is permissible on campus. Magill resigned days later.

Meanwhile, a Task Force on Combating Antisemitism was created to identify “the root causes” of antisemitism at Harvard.

Amid the multiple antisemitism scandals, Gay’s own work ended up being called into question over allegations of plagiarism, which Harvard responded to in December by defending its president, saying, “we unanimously stand in support of President Gay.”

Gay resigned earlier this month. Her six month tenure marks the shortest tenure in Harvard’s history.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X/Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.