Conservative activist and Critical Race Theory (CRT) expert Christopher Rufo, in collaboration with journalist Christopher Brunet, has raised concerns about potential plagiarism related to Harvard President Claudine Gay’s Ph.D. dissertation.

While serving as dean and later president, Gay has faced accusations of bullying colleagues, suppressing free speech, overseeing a racist admissions program, and, more recently, failing to address antisemitism on campus following the October 7 Hamas terror attack against Israel.

The latest issue of plagiarism has been brought to light by author and New College of Florida board member Christopher Rufo. He has obtained documents that reveal sections of Gay’s dissertation, suggesting a possible violation of Harvard’s own policies on academic integrity.

Gay’s dissertation, “Taking Charge: Black Electoral Success and the Redefinition of American Policies,” which deals with white-black political representation and racial attitudes, was published in 1997, and was part of Gay’s doctorate in political science from Harvard.

But “as evaluated under the university’s plagiarism policy, the paper contains at least three problematic patterns of usage and citation,” Rufo claims.

The New College of Florida board member says Gay “lifts an entire paragraph nearly verbatim from Lawrence Bobo and Franklin Gilliam’s paper, ‘Race, Sociopolitical Participation, and Black Empowerment,’ while passing it off as her own paraphrase and language.”

Here is the language from Bobo and Gilliam’s work:

Using 1987 national sample survey data . . . the results show that blacks in high-black-empowerment areas—as indicated by control of the mayor’s office—are more active than either blacks living in low-empowerment areas or their white counterparts of comparable socioeconomic status. Furthermore, the results show that empowerment influences black participation by contributing to a more trusting and efficacious orientation to politics and by greatly increasing black attentiveness to political affairs.

Here is the language from Gay’s dissertation:

Using 1987 survey data, Bobo and Gilliam found that African-Americans in “high black-empowerment” areas—as indicated by control of the mayor’s office—are more active than either African-Americans in low empowerment areas or their white counterparts of comparable socioeconomic status. Empowerment, they conclude, influences black participation by contributing to a more trusting and efficacious orientation towards politics and by greatly increasing black attentiveness to political affairs.

Harvard’s policy reads as follows:

When you paraphrase, your task is to distill the source’s ideas in your own words. It’s not enough to change a few words here and there and leave the rest; instead, you must completely restate the ideas in the passage in your own words. If your own language is too close to the original, then you are plagiarizing, even if you do provide a citation.

Harvard President Claudine Gay has faced recent criticism for not condemning the genocide against Jews amid escalating antisemitism on Harvard’s campus following a Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that resulted in over 1,400 Israeli deaths.

During a congressional hearing last week, Gay, along with the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, declined to state whether advocating for the genocide of Jews is permissible on campus. This led to increased calls for their resignations. Subsequently, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned from her position on Sunday.