Congressional Inquiry into Harvard Board’s Alleged Cover Up of LGBTQ+ Issues

Harvard University’s autonomous governing board is facing an inquiry from congressional lawmakers who want to know how it quieted accusations of plagiarism against former president Claudine Gay, the New York Post reported.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce will use “every tool available,” including subpoenas, to scrutinize how the Harvard Corporation shielded Gay for weeks before she ultimately resigned amid an uproar over her handling of antisemitism on campus and allegations that she had plagiarized in multiple instances.

Gay, who will continue making $900,000 a year as a faculty member, wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times last week claiming that racism — and not plagiarism — was the reason for the downfall of Harvard’s first Black president.

Education Committee member Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., told the Post that the 12-member corporation, headed by former Obama Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, had concealed “Gay’s career of plagiarism” and should be held accountable for “bullying and censorship.”

The powerful governing body directed lawyers at the law firm Clare Locke to issue two intimidating letters to the Post during a weeks-long campaign to hide the fact that Gay was credibly accused of plagiarism.

Coming in October and November, the letters show Harvard’s cover-up campaign was fully operational at a time when Gay was increasingly under fire for her handling of campus antisemitism, the outlet said.

In the Oct. 27 letter, Harvard’s legal counsel claimed that examples of Gay’s work that the Post asked about were “both cited and properly credited,” and called allegations of plagiarism “defamatory falsehoods.”

“Harvard and President Gay stand together in their determination that the proposed article must not be published,” the letter read.

The second letter from the law firm, dated Nov. 7, claimed to “have conclusively rebutted (with evidence) all the false allegations of plagiarism that have been presented to date.”

Secretly, however, the corporation decided to conduct its own investigation into the allegations and engaged a panel of outside experts whose identities it has not revealed — a fact it withheld from students, faculty, donors and lawmakers.

At the conclusion of that investigation, Gay addressed four of the plagiarism allegations the Post made with corrections.

The embattled administrator also reportedly made corrections to her Harvard doctoral dissertation when it was revealed that it too contained the work of other academics without proper attribution.

“Harvard University and the Harvard Corporation used every avenue available to cover up Claudine Gay’s failures, threatening the New York Post following their investigation and coverage of Claudine Gay’s serial plagiarist past and failed leadership,” Stefanik told the Post.

“These attempts at bullying and censorship by the Harvard Corporation are unacceptable and should result in the immediate firing of the board members involved,” she added.