Harvard diversity chief accused of plagiarism
Historian ‘failed to properly cite her own husband’s study’ as new row engulfs university
‘The 2014 paper appears to be entirely counterfeit. This is research fraud pure and simple’
HARVARD’S chief diversity and inclusion officer has become the latest member of staff to be accused of plagiarism, including a failure to properly cite her own husband’s study.
An anonymous complaint has listed at least 40 examples of alleged plagiarism by Sherri Ann Charleston dating from 2009, a decade before she joined Harvard University, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The allegations, which include failing to properly cite other academics’ work and lifting portions of text without quotation marks, come just weeks after Claudine Gay, Harvard University’s former president, resigned in the wake of a plagiarism scandal.
According to the Beacon, Dr Charleston, who is a historian, submitted a 2009 dissertation to the University of Michigan, which included quotes or paraphrases from nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution.
The complaint also alleges that Dr Charleston ultimately took credit for a study that her husband, Lavar Charleston, wrote in 2012.
He is now deputy vice-chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-madison. That alleged act of plagiarism involved Dr Charleston recycling large portions of her husband’s earlier paper in a peer-reviewed article that she co-wrote in 2014, according to the complaint.
The article, published in The Journal of Negro Education, reportedly had the same findings, method and survey subject descriptions from her husband’s original work.
“The 2014 paper appears to be entirely counterfeit,” Peter Wood, the head of the National Association of Scholars and a former associate provost at Boston University, told the Washington Free Beacon. “This is research fraud pure and simple.”
Steve Mcguire, a former political theory professor at Villanova University, reviewed both the 2012 and 2014 papers.
“Sherri Charleston appears to have used somebody else’s research without proper attribution,” he told the Beacon.
The full complaint has been reportedly filed with Harvard, the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-madison.
Neither Dr Charleston nor her husband have commented on the allegations. Dr Charleston was the chief affirmative action officer at the University of Wisconsin-madison before switching to Harvard in August 2020, becoming its first chief diversity officer.
According to The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, she was involved in the university’s presidential search process that resulted in the selection of Dr Gay in Dec 2022.
Dr Gay resigned on Jan 2 after facing allegations of plagiarism as well as criticism for her comments about anti-semitism on campus.
Harvard’s board investigated the plagiarism complaints against the president in December and found “a few instances of inadequate citation” but “no violation of Harvard’s standard for research misconduct”.