Harvard faces Friday deadline to respond to House on plagiarism scandal

Harvard is due to respond by Friday to a demand from lawmakers for wide-ranging documents linked to the plagiarism controversy swirling around embattled President Claudine Gay.

Harvard is due to respond by Friday to a demand from lawmakers for wide-ranging documents linked to the plagiarism controversy swirling around embattled President Claudine Gay. The university’s expected response to the House Education and Workforce Committee could provide new details on the allegations and on how Harvard officials have responded. Rep. Virginia Foxx, the Republican chair of the committee, wrote a letter on December 20 to Penny Pritzker, the senior fellow of the powerful Harvard Corporation, the university’s top governing board, demanding information on Harvard’s response to “credible allegations of plagiarism” by Gay over a 24-year period. Foxx’s letter requested a “written response” by December 29 to produce a series of documents such as “all documents and communications concerning the initial allegations of plagiarism and the ‘independent review’” of Gay’s scholarship, including “all meeting minutes, transcripts, notes, coordinating communications, memoranda or other materials.” Harvard has also been asked to provide documents related to the university’s “public response to media inquiries” about the plagiarism allegations as well as “any and all communications” between Harvard and its regional accreditor regarding its performance on academic honesty. Some of Harvard’s critics have argued there is a double standard on plagiarism, where students are held to one set of rules and the university’s president to another.