Harvard students blast embattled President Claudine Gay over plagiarism allegations, call for her to step down

Harvard students blasted President Claudine Gay over allegations that she plagiarized other academics’ work, with some calling for her to step down — and seething that they are being held to a higher academic standard than the embattled Ivy League leader.

Irati Egorho Diez told The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, she believed Gay should resign after realizing the “breadth and depth” of the plagiarism allegations. 

“I do think that the role of the president should be an embodiment of the values of Harvard College,” Egorho Diez said. “And this, to me, seems to be the opposite of that.”

Ian Moore, an editorial editor at The Crimson, was shocked the university’s leaders were effectively holding students to higher academic standards than the school’s president. 

“It’s hypocritical for the university to apply one standard to students and another standard to faculty — and perhaps even a third standard to Claudine Gay,” Moore told the outlet.

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Yet some students parroted the college’s stance, claiming the allegations are “overblown.”   

“While I think that properly citing your sources is important, I’m now at a point where I think it’s definitely been overblown and overstated,” university student Julia García Galindo told The Crimson, the school’s student newspaper.

Gay, who just finished her first semester as Harvard’s president, came under fire earlier this month over bombshell allegations that she plagiarized other academics’ research in her 1997 doctoral dissertation, in addition to writing four papers between 1993 and 2017 without properly citing her sources. 

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The school also announced last week Gay would also be issuing corrections to her dissertation to address “inadequate citation.”

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman questioned on X whether some students at his alma mater were holding back on calling for the president’s resignation over fears of retaliation. 

“Consider the risk to the student who publicly calls for her resignation,” wrote Ackman, who has repeatedly pushed for Gay’s removal following her disastrous Dec. 5 congressional testimony, where she evasive toward questions over whether students should be punished for antisemitic chants on campus.

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Not all Harvard students are waving off the allegations, with some seething at the university’s leaders for seeming to holding its students to a higher standard than the school’s president.

Harvard undergrad Irati Egorho Diez said she believed Gay should resign after realizing the “breadth and depth” of the plagiarism allegations. 

“I do think that the role of the president should be an embodiment of the values of Harvard College,” Egorho Diez told the Crimson. “And this, to me, seems to be the opposite of that.”

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who earlier this month revealed allegations that Gay’s dissertation had plagiarized others’ work, warned the heat on Harvard’s president would persist in 2024.

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“The Claudine Gay plagiarism scandal is not going away. After the New Year, expect another shoe to drop,” he wrote.

The House Education and Workforce Committee, which earlier this month began investigating Harvard over the plagiarism allegations against Gay, announced on Friday it was extending its deadline for Harvard to handover documents related to the probe.

“Given the holidays and office closures, we are working with Harvard on a prompt production of documents that takes that into account,” a committee spokesperson told CNN.