In the aftermath of Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation over repeated instances of plagiarism, yet another Harvard employee has been accused of taking credit for someone else’s work — this time, her own husband was the victim.
Harvard University Chief Diversity Officer Sherri Ann Charleston has been caught up in a plagiarism scandal, according to a new complaint. She has been accused of plagiarizing several of her academic works, stealing large portions of other people’s work without quoting them, and even taking credit for her own husband’s work.
According to a shocking report from the Washington Free Beacon, there are a staggering 40 different instances of plagiarism that occurred throughout the chief diversity officer’s entire publication record.
A complaint filed with Harvard yesterday makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston's thin publication record. In her 2009 dissertation, Charleston quotes or paraphrases nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution. https://t.co/vHjhyXQTGI pic.twitter.com/XqSQwWR1JQ
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) January 30, 2024
One example is Charleston’s 2009 dissertation for the University of Michigan, where she allegedly stole content from nearly a dozen scholars by directly copying and pasting their writings or paraphrasing them without proper attribution.
The complaint against Charleston sent to Harvard University states: “Parts of Charleston’s dissertation were published previously, word for word, by her advisor, Rebecca Scott, and others… Charleston will lift whole sentences and paragraphs from other scholars’ work without quotation marks, then add a correct reference somewhere in the footnote ending the long paragraph.”
Another shocking example involves the chief diversity officer’s husband, LaVar Charleston, the deputy vice chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Charleston’s only peer-reviewed article from 2014 was co-authored with her husband and dean of the Michigan State University College of Education Jerlando Jackson — but it was eerily similar to another study written solely by LaVar Charleston in 2012, with the same methods, findings, and even interview subjects.
Monday's complaint, which was filed anonymously, comes as Harvard is facing questions about the integrity of its research affiliates and the ideology of its diversity bureaucrats, most of whom report to the sprawling office that Sherri Ann Charleston oversees. pic.twitter.com/qPJUqerXaP
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) January 30, 2024
“The 2014 paper appears to be entirely counterfeit,” Peter Wood, 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.”
This news comes after Harvard was found to have covered up a plagiarism investigation into its recently ousted president, Claudine Gay, but was ultimately forced to acknowledge the plagiarism after it was uncovered in a report from investigative journalists Christopher Rufo and Chris Brunet. The scandal erupted after Gay entered the spotlight for failing to address antisemitism on campus in congressional testimony following widespread pro-Palestine and pro-Hamas protests in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel. Although Harvard initially defended the plagiarism, Gay ultimately resigned from her position but remains a tenured faculty member at the university with a $900,000 annual salary.
