Harvard Submits Documents to House Committee, Shares New Details on Gay Plagiarism Review

Harvard provided a slew of documents on Friday to a congressional committee investigating the University’s handling of plagiarism allegations against former President Claudine Gay, including an eight-page report that offers the most comprehensive summary to date of Harvard’s own review of the allegations.

The eight-page report, made available to The Crimson, is the only document the University made public out of its submission to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Friday. The submission comes after the committee widened its investigation into Harvard’s handling of antisemitism on its campus to also include the University’s response to plagiarism allegations against Gay.

While most of the information in the eight-page document was previously made public in an earlier summary of the University’s review of the plagiarism allegations against Gay, there were several notable details to emerge from the report.

In particular, the report named the four members of the Harvard Corporation subcommittee that reviewed Gay’s scholarly work and revealed in a footnote that the Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — retained the law firm WilmerHale in response to the plagiarism allegations. The University, however, opted to keep the names of the three academics who served on the independent panel private.

The documents shared with the committee were submitted in accordance with a deadline to provide relevant information by Friday at 5 p.m. Per a Harvard spokesperson, other documents were also submitted that were “responsive to the Committee’s request.”

The University was made aware of plagiarism allegations against Gay in October by a comment request from the New York Post containing 25 allegations across three of Gay’s published works. At the time, the University responded through defamation law firm Clare Locke, which called the allegations “demonstrably false” and threatened to sue the Post for defamation if it published an article about the claims.

In response to the initial allegations, the Corporation formed a subcommittee to investigate the claims consisting of Mariano-Florentino “Tino” Cuéllar, Biddy Martin, Shirley M. Tilghman, and Theodore V. Wells, Jr. Three of them — Cuéllar, Martin, and Tilghman — are academics, while Wells is an attorney. Both Martin and Tilghman previously served as university presidents.

The subcommittee appointed an independent panel on Nov. 3 to investigate the allegations included in the New York Post’s inquiry. On Nov. 16, the panel provided a two-page memo of its assessment to the subcommittee, per the report. The panel and the subcommittee met on Nov. 20 to discuss the panel’s findings — after which the panel’s involvement ended.

Consistent with the panel’s recommendations, the subcommittee subsequently conducted a review of all Gay’s published work. After new allegations emerged against Gay’s Ph.D. dissertation, the subcommittee also reviewed the dissertation.

While Friday’s document did not name the three members of the independent panel, it stated that two of them are former presidents of the American Political Science Association and that they are all tenured professors and fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

“At their request, consistent with the norms of a confidential peer review process, Harvard agreed to keep the identity of the panelists confidential,” the document said, adding that the panelists “continue to request” anonymity.

Since then, additional allegations of plagiarism have been made against Gay through reporting by the New York Post and the Washington Free Beacon, as well as a Substack post by right-wing activist Christopher Rufo and journalist Christopher Brunet.

In response, Gay submitted seven corrections to insert citations or quotation marks across two of her published articles and her Ph.D. dissertation. Though Gay requested corrections, the Corporation subcommittee found that the instances of “duplicative language” fell short of research misconduct per Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy.

According to Friday’s document, the subcommittee “direct[ed] the review with the assistance of counsel.” A footnote said Harvard retained two law firms — WilmerHale and Clare Locke — “in connection with these allegations.” The document did not provide further details about either firm’s involvement.

The document also revealed that on Oct. 29 — in a meeting that did not include then-President Gay or other University leaders — the Corporation voted unanimously to launch a review of the allegations “conducted by individuals who did not ultimately report to then-President Gay.” The same day, Gay requested an independent review.

Previously, in their Dec. 12 statement, the Harvard Corporation said that they had initiated the review “at President Gay’s request.”

A University spokesperson did not offer an explanation for the apparent discrepancy between Friday’s submission and the Corporation’s Dec. 12 statement.

The document additionally stated that the Corporation “required then-President Gay to issue corrections,” which it called “a significant repercussion for a scholar in academia.” In previous statements, Harvard said only that Gay submitted corrections — not that she was required to do so by the Corporation.

The independent panel, according to the document, found most of the allegations raised by the Post to be inconsequential but determined that nine of the 25 were “of principal concern.” They found instances that “paraphrased or reproduced the language of others without quotation marks and without sufficient and clear crediting of sources.”

“It noted further that, with respect to one allegation, ‘fragments of duplicative language and paraphrasing … could be read as Gay claiming findings that are actually those of Schwartz,’ although ‘[t]here is no evidence that was her intention,’” the document said.

Friday’s document also noted that the FAS’s research misconduct policy is only applicable to allegations received within six years of the publication date of the contested research. Because the most recent article facing plagiarism allegations was published in January 2017 — more than six years before the Corporation received the first allegations in October 2023 — the allegations against Gay would not fall under the FAS policy’s scope.

The Corporation’s subcommittee, however, decided to proceed with their inquiry because the allegations concerned Harvard’s president, according to the report.

While the FAS Research Integrity Office would normally handle allegations of plagiarism and research misconduct against faculty members, the Corporation investigated the allegations against Gay in order to avoid a conflict of interest due to her role as the University’s president.

But Gay’s resignation on Jan. 2 means that any future complaints against Gay will be handled in accordance with the University’s usual processes.

“In light of then-President Gay’s resignation, any further allegations will be assessed and addressed as appropriate without the Corporation’s involvement,” the document stated.

—Staff writer Tilly R. Robinson can be reached at tilly.robinson@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Neil H. Shah can be reached at neil.shah@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @neilhshah15.