VCU community responds to Harvard president resignation, plagiarism allegations

Varsha Vasudevan, Contributing Writer

Jack Glagola, News Editor

Former Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned on Jan. 2 after a series of backlash and criticism regarding the university’s statement about the latest Israel-Hamas war and later plagiarism allegations in her academic career, according to the Harvard Crimson newspaper.

Gay was Harvard’s first Black president with a six-month tenure, the shortest in the university’s history, according to the article by the Harvard Crimson. 

Mikayla Lindsey, a third year communication arts student at VCU, said it was “shocking” to hear about the accusations against Gay.

“When I saw a Harvard president — like a president of a very prestigious school being accused of plagiarism, like, that’s crazy,” Lindsey said.

MK Rubio, a second year nursing student at VCU, said there is a wide “cancel culture” perpetuated by social media, and that bringing up older issues can cause problems.

“I just think it comes with a lot of weight and so we should make sure that we’re very thorough and clear when doing things like that — we should never do it lightly,” she said.

The accusations include allegedly plagiarized material dating from the 1990s to 2017, according to the Washington Post.

Gay received backlash from Harvard students and faculty over the university’s initial statement about the Israel-Hamas war, which did not directly condemn Hamas nor the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, which stated Israel was fully responsible for the violence beginning Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Harvard Crimson. 

Following controversies surrounding statements about the Israel-Hamas war, Gay faced allegations of plagiarism due to inadequate attribution in her academic work, according to the Harvard Crimson. 

While Gay acknowledged the failure to properly cite certain sources, she stated she never misrepresented or fabricated research findings nor claimed credit for work that was not her own in a New York Times opinion piece.

“I believe all scholars deserve full and appropriate credit for their work,” Gay wrote in her article. “When I learned of these errors, I promptly requested corrections from the journals in which the flagged articles were published, consistent with how I have seen similar faculty cases handled at Harvard.”

VCU African American Studies professor Clyde Ledbetter said plagiarism in academia is taken “very seriously,” however, in this situation, Gay had made an “editorial mistake.” 

Ledbetter said critics of Gay were “very calculated” in using the word “plagiarism” to describe Gay’s citation errors to add to the allegations that pressured her to resign. 

“This is just another example of what happens when you fail to appease a particular lobby in the U.S. for Israel. And this is what can be the result of that,” Ledbetter said. “It wasn’t about the plagiarism at all.”

Ledbetter said that while this event alone did not directly cause Black scholarship to be questioned or undermined, it acted as an example of how microaggressions and hostility towards Black individuals in academia could become overwhelming for them. 

Gay may have become overwhelmed by this and recognized how taxing giving her time and attention to “answering foolishness” was, Ledbetter said. 

“I think she got to the point where she realized it’s not worth the money and the so-called fame,” Ledbetter said.

Gay stepped down as Harvard University’s president due to a series of “sustained and unprecedented challenges” on Jan. 2, according to a statement by Harvard. 

University administration should address allegations of plagiarism with a “board of academics” by first clearly outlining the varying levels of seriousness within plagiarism, according to Ledbetter. 

“Whoever’s doing the official review should put it out to the public to let the public understand the levels of the offense,” Ledbetter said. “It should be handled in a way that it brings the scholar in to explain themselves.”

With advancements in technology and AI such as ChatGPT, students need to be reminded of the purpose of a university to deter plagiarism and inspire original and creative work, Ledbetter said. 

“We have to be more creative, but we have to push the idea of ‘you’re here to learn and learning is in itself beneficial for your development, whatever it is that you want to do,’” Ledbetter said. 

VCU director of student conduct and academic integrity Karen Belanger also emphasized the importance of the motivation to learn in an email interview.

“With regard to students, I hope that their desire to learn and develop expertise in their area of study will inspire them to pursue their academic endeavors, with honesty, truth and integrity,” Belanger stated.