Did Claudine Gay plagiarize or not? Harvard should be clear.

The rest of American higher education looks to Harvard for guidance on academic norms. With that leadership role in mind, the university should clear away the uncertainty over how it has applied its plagiarism policies to president Claudine Gay’s past academic work and state clearly whether several of her papers ran afoul of the rules it expects students and professors to follow — or not.

Gay’s scholarly publications have come under a microscope in recent months, and media outlets have flagged numerous examples of what appear to be nearly verbatim copying from other sources. Last week the university’s governing board released a confusing statement that appeared to confirm a few instances of plagiarism — without using that word. It said a review by scholars had confirmed “instances of inadequate citation” in Gay’s work, but also that she did not violate “standards for research misconduct.” The statement also said she would be seeking corrections to add citations and quotation marks in two papers.

The statement seems contradictory. If Gay didn’t violate any standards of research, why would she need to correct anything? Nor does the statement reflect what many Harvard affiliates thought the rules were. A webpage on Harvard’s own website titled “What Constitutes Plagiarism?” says “it is considered plagiarism to draw any idea or any language from someone else without adequately crediting that source in your paper.” Doesn’t that mean that, almost by definition, “inadequate citation” constitutes plagiarism?

That site lists a definition of plagiarism at Harvard that is unforgiving of honest mistakes, and applies to everyone: “Taking credit for anyone else’s work is stealing, and it is unacceptable in all academic situations, whether you do it intentionally or by accident.”

Adding to the confusion, though, is a different part of Harvard’s website that seems to suggest a slightly looser standard, one that allows for innocent lapses. The faculty of arts and science’s “Interim Policy and Procedures for Responding to Allegations of Research Misconduct” says that a finding of research misconduct require it to have been committed “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly.”

So which is it? This is not a gotcha exercise. As far as this editorial board is concerned, Gay should remain president either way, as long as she has the board and the school community’s confidence. But other people in the academic community have raised concern that, in its effort to defend Gay, the university is muddying what should be a clear-cut line and creating ambiguity about academic standards. For the professors who have to enforce plagiarism rules in the trenches, it matters what message Harvard sends about its guidelines.

Stephen Voss, an associate professor of political science at the University of Kentucky and coauthor of one of the papers that Gay seems to have copied almost word for word in part of her doctoral dissertation, told a Globe reporter he wasn’t offended by Gay’s actions, but added this:

“What Claudine did is technically plagiarism and it bugs me that people now, in their rush to defend her, are trying to suggest that academic standards permit that sort of copying without quotation marks,” Voss said. It’s “just not what we teach students. I don’t treat it as acceptable with my undergrads, let alone my grad students.”

It’s not lost on anyone that Gay’s academic record is under such scrutiny in part for political reasons. But that shouldn’t bear on the question. If a Harvard student were to turn in a paper with the same missing citations and quotation marks, what would the university call it, and how would it respond? Right now, Harvard’s statements create the impression that the university thinks what Gay did was not a violation of standards — and unless that’s really the message Harvard meant to send to everyone else on its campus and in academia, it should clarify.

Other people in the academic community have raised concern that, in its effort to defend Gay, the university is muddying what should be a clear-cut line and creating ambiguity about academic standards.