Accusations of plagiarism seem to have become a new weapon in the war for leadership and the direction of prestigious universities. Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager, has publicly campaigned against Claudine Gay, who resigned as Harvard’s president amid claims of plagiarism in her work and her perceived lack of action against antisemitism on campus. However, Business Insider accused Mr. Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, an architect and designer with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of plagiarism, claiming that she “stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars and technical documents in her academic writing.”
After the publication reported errors in her dissertation, Dr. Oxman apologized and admitted to making mistakes on a few paragraphs of her 330-page thesis. In response, Mr. Ackman took to social media to announce that he would be conducting a review of plagiarism for all current MIT faculty members, subsequently extending the review to reporters at Business Insider. Mr. Ackman also criticized the decision to let Dr. Gay remain at Harvard faculty following her resignation as president. The weaponization of plagiarism worryingly takes place in both sides, according to copyright and plagiarism consultant Jonathan Bailey.
In light of these events, accusations of plagiarism in high-profile academic circles may have been weaponized to settle ulterior conflicts, adding a sharp note to the already intense academic landscape. For the individuals and universities involved it’s a major issue specifically when the information could be used as a political tool. Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, voiced concerns over how these accusations can be easily manipulated. The weaponization of plagiarism is a troubling development in the simultaneity of accustions of antisemitism from all camps and the troubling situations that are taking place in many universities of today.
