As Harvard tries to restore calm, university shares new details on response to plagiarism allegations against Claudine Gay

Harvard University in Cambridge earlier this month.

Harvard University leaders were working to turn the page from crisis to calm, announcing new efforts on Friday to combat bigotry and issuing guidance on what forms of protest are permissible on its campus as students return for the spring semester.

But the turmoil of the last three months has a tail: school officials also shared new details with Congress about Harvard’s review of the plagiarism allegations that contributed to the downfall of former president Claudine Gay.

In response to a congressional inquiry by a Republican-led committee, Harvard provided the most detailed summary yet of how the school’s top oversight board, known as the Corporation, handled the drumbeat of plagiarism allegations against Gay that emerged during the fall semester. It disclosed the names of the board members who reviewed much of Gay’s published work and said that a panel of outside experts had found instances of “paraphrased or reproduced” language “without sufficient and clear crediting of sources.”

In addition to the response documents submitted to the congressional committee, interim Harvard president Alan Garber announced steps aimed at bringing peace to a campus that has been roiled for months by protests and disputes over bigotry and the Israel-Hamas war. Garber assumed Harvard’s presidency when Gay resigned on Jan. 2.

In an email to the campus community Friday morning, Garber said Harvard has created two task forces to combat rising antisemitism and Islamophobia. Later Friday, Garber and other top administrators sent a joint message that reaffirmed Harvard’s commitment to free expression and the right to protest, but also emphasized that demonstrations that disrupt classes and university business are prohibited. The message also said that protesters may not shout down or disrupt speakers.

“It’s a necessary step, assuming the university has the guts to enforce it,” Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor of psychology and a co-leader of a Harvard faculty group that has argued the school must do more to foster the free exchange of ideas, said of the guidelines.

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, which killed approximately 1,200 people, Harvard students have fervently protested against Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza — which has killed more than 24,000 people, according to Palestinian officials. Often the protests have taken place in common spaces, such as the library steps or open quads. But some protesters have barged into lecture halls and occupied university buildings, which the guidelines issued Friday stressed is prohibited.

A Harvard spokesperson said last month that 23 students were facing disciplinary action for behavior related to campus tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.

Meanwhile, Jewish students at Harvard have said anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bias are on the rise. Pro-Palestinian students said they, too, have faced harassment and discrimination due to their advocacy and that the university has failed to protect them.

Several Harvard graduate and law students filed a federal lawsuit against the university earlier this month, accusing the administration of failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment on campus, which the suit describes as “severe and pervasive.”

“Antisemitism at Harvard did not suddenly appear October 7. It was always there,” Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard graduate student and the only named plaintiff in the suit said in a recent interview. “I think the noticeable change post-October 7 was that it just became much more of a constant. It became almost impossible for Jewish students and really, for any student, to ignore.”

Earlier this month, dozens of Harvard faculty members and staff formed a pro-Palestinian advocacy group and accused the university of unfairly disciplining student activists and censoring “speech that is critical of the state of Israel.”

“I’ve experienced racism from every corner of Harvard’s administration,” said Tala Alfoqaha, a Palestinian American student at Harvard Law School.

The new summary of Harvard’s handling of the plagiarism claims — sent to Congress Friday afternoon and obtained by the Globe — said the school learned of plagiarism allegations against Gay when it was contacted by a New York Post reporter on Oct. 24.

The Corporation appointed three outside experts in political science, Gay’s field of scholarship, to review the allegations. On Nov. 16, the experts submitted a two-page memorandum that said Gay had “paraphrased or reproduced the language of others without quotation marks and without sufficient and clear crediting of sources.”

The experts also concluded there was “virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings that are not President Gay’s,” according to the summary.

The summary did not name the three outside experts but said two are former presidents of the American Political Science Association and all three are “tenured faculty members at prominent research institutions.”

After receiving the memorandum, four members of the Corporation undertook a broader review of Gay’s published works, according to the summary. They are former Amherst College president Biddy Martin, former Princeton University president Shirley Tilghman, former California Supreme Court justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, and trial lawyer Theodore Wells, according to the summary.

The plagiarism allegations emerged publicly in a drip-drip of revelations that began on Dec. 10 and continued through Jan. 1.

By the time the last allegations were published, Gay had already told Penny Pritzker, the board’s top member, that she would resign, the Globe has reported.

“In light of then-President Gay’s resignation, any further allegations will be assessed and addressed as appropriate without the Corporation’s involvement,” the summary said. Gay has returned to her role as a tenured professor of government and of African and African-American Studies.

The summary offers the fullest picture yet of the Corporation’s review of the allegations, which numerous Harvard professors criticized as inadequate and opaque. Harvard sent the summary and other related documents to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has two ongoing inquiries of the university.

One focuses on campus antisemitism, and was launched after Gay and the presidents of UPenn and MIT were denounced for aspects of their testimony before the committee on Dec. 5.

At the hearing, Gay was asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate Harvard’s rules. She said it “depends on the context.” She later apologized.

The committee opened an additional inquiry into how Harvard handled the plagiarism claims, demanding the school turn over internal documents about its review of the claims.

In his Friday message about the task forces, Garber said that “[a]mong the repercussions of conflict in the Middle East have been the loss of family and friends among many members of our community, as well as feelings of uncertainty, abandonment, mistrust, and fear.”

“Reports of antisemitic and Islamophobic acts on our campus have grown, and the sense of belonging among these groups has been undermined. We need to understand why and how that is happening — and what more we might do to prevent it,” he wrote.

In October, former Harvard president Claudine Gay acknowledged that the university “has done too little to confront” antisemitism, and convened a group of advisors to help the university combat the hate. The antisemitism task force will replace the advisory group.

“I’m glad to see that President Garber is creating a task force with actual authority, unlike the old neutered advisory group,” Jacob Miller, a former student president of Harvard Hillel, a Jewish campus organization, said.

Some faculty members earlier this month said that they hoped to see university leaders taking a more substantial role in leading conversations across campus about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and free speech.

“We have to be very, very generous about free speech,” Derek Penslar, a professor of Jewish history who is co-chairing the antisemitism task force. “We do have to think about the time, place and manner, which really should be dictated by respect for our fellow students and faculty members, rather than threats of punitive action.”