Harvard President Claudine Gay submitted corrections to two scholarly articles published in 2001 and 2017 following allegations of plagiarism, University spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain told CNN on Friday.
Harvard commissioned an independent review of Gay’s writings following the plagiarism accusations. Gay denied the allegations, saying in a statement last week that she stands by the integrity of her scholarship.
“Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards,” she said.
The Harvard Corporation, the university’s top governing body, on Tuesday announced that the review revealed inadequate citations in a few instances but “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.” It said then that Gay would request “four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”
Swain on Friday confirmed Gay made the corrections in an emailed statement. He said that the edits involved “quotations marks and citations,” correcting a reference to three articles, according to Harvard’s student newspaper the Crimson.
Bill Ackman a billionaire Harvard donor and vocal critic of Gay, has recently been calling on Gay to resign, in part because of allegations of plagiarism. But the Harvard Corporation said that the review was requested before Ackman first made his claims of plagiarism last Saturday.
“With regard to President Gay’s academic writings, the University became aware in late October of allegations regarding three articles,” the Harvard Corporation said in its Tuesday statement. “At President Gay’s request, the Fellows promptly initiated an independent review by distinguished political scientists and conducted a review of her published work. On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation.”
