Is the plagiarism story circling around Harvard president Claudine Gay over? It seemed like it was after Harvard issued a statement last week saying it had looked into the allegations and decided they didn’t amount to misconduct.

The Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — finally broke its silence one week after Gay’s controversial congressional testimony, giving Gay some immediate job security while raising new questions about the integrity of her scholarly work and bringing into doubt whether her tenure will be safe in the long term.

While the Corporation said it did not believe that the allegations amount to misconduct, it announced that Gay agreed to amend two publications.

“On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation,” the Fellows wrote. “While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”

But yesterday the Washington Free Beacon reported that additional allegations have become part of an official academic complaint against Gay.

Harvard University on Tuesday received a complaint outlining over 40 allegations of plagiarism against its embattled president, Claudine Gay. The document paints a picture of a pattern of misconduct more extensive than has been previously reported and puts the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body—which said it initiated an “independent review” of Gay’s scholarship and issued a statement of support for her leadership—back in the spotlight.

The new allegations, which were submitted to Harvard’s research integrity officer, Stacey Springs, include the examples reported by the Washington Free Beacon and other outlets, as well as dozens of additional cases in which Gay quoted or paraphrased authors without proper attribution, according to a copy of the complaint reviewed by the Free Beacon. They range from missing quotation marks around a few phrases or sentences to entire paragraphs lifted verbatim…

“[I]t is impossible that your office has already reviewed the entirety of these materials,” the complaint reads, “as many … have not been previously reported or submitted.”

So instead of five examples of her work which contained plagiarized material, there are now seven which the WFB reports is nearly half of her scholarly work to date. You can click on that link for the document with all of the examples it contains. Here’s one example in which Gay apparently borrowed part of the dedication of her dissertation from someone else.

Uh Claudine Gay appears to have copied a couple phrases in her dissertation dedication from someone else's dedication? This takes… effort. https://t.co/SHOVeIsEKh pic.twitter.com/BdXywSwcTE

— Patrick Brennan (@ptbrennan11) December 19, 2023

I had my doubts whether Harvard would do much of anything about this simply because the Beacon was reporting on it. But this afternoon CNN weighed in with an article titled “Harvard president’s corrections do not address her clearest instances of plagiarism, including as a student in the 1990s.”

In response to accusations of plagiarism, the embattled Harvard president recently submitted corrections to two papers she wrote as a professional academic in 2001 and 2017. But a CNN examination of Gay’s published works documented that Gay committed other, clearer examples of plagiarism while she was studying for her PhD at Harvard in the 1990s.

Those include an instance in her dissertation where she copied lines verbatim from another source without citation.

In addressing the allegations of plagiarism, neither Harvard nor Gay have corrected or acknowledged these earlier instances from when she was a student. The instances were first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

CNN spoke to various experts, who gave them takes on the seriousness of Gay’s plagiarism. One person, Stephen Voss, whose work was taken without credit downplayed it and said it didn’t bother him and he didn’t want to see her punished for it. But others disagreed.

“I think the feelings of the true authors are largely irrelevant,” said Michael Dougherty, a professor of philosophy at Ohio Dominican University who has written two books on plagiarism. “The way I approach it is [to] focus on the text, not on the feelings of those whose work was stolen.”

“Conversations on plagiarism become very, very complex, and it just comes down to: is the work reliable? Are those who authored the words credited? And could a person tell that by reading?” he said.

I don’t think it’s likely that Harvard is going to find Claudine Gay guilty of plagiarism no matter how much evidence turns up. The debate has become politicized and at this point Harvard will not want to admit this was a problem when it’s clear the accusations are coming from the right. Also, having already given her the all clear, it would be an embarrassment to have to reverse course.

It goes without saying that no student could possibly get away with a fraction of what president Gay has allegedly done in these papers. They would be expelled in a heartbeat. But Harvard can’t afford to treat its own president like one of the paying customer. The rules are for the little people.

Update: Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Emma Pettit has received a response from Harvard to some of her questions.

First, Harvard says the U and Gay learned of the allegations when contacted by the New York Post, in October.

Five days later, President Gay asked the Harvard Corporation to "conduct an independent review of the articles referenced" in the Post’s outreach. pic.twitter.com/cFximYaeHs

— Emma Pettit (@EmmaJanePettit) December 21, 2023

So who looked at what?

Per Harvard, the expert panel looked at all “all of the anonymous allegations” from the Post's inquiry.

The subcommittee “further reviewed all of President Gay’s other published works from 1993 to 2019.”

The review *did not* include Gay’s diss…

— Emma Pettit (@EmmaJanePettit) December 21, 2023

Per Harvard, Gay is updating her diss to correct "these instances of inadequate citation." See my above tweet for the specifics.

Ok now back to what *was* looked at during the review…

— Emma Pettit (@EmmaJanePettit) December 21, 2023

https://t.co/Ky8JEaaoQ9
Here's that policy.

Harvard also told me that the subcommittee consulted Harvard's guide to using sources but says its a "reference resource," not a "governing policy."https://t.co/fQIjFYmw9o

— Emma Pettit (@EmmaJanePettit) December 21, 2023

Here’s the big one. Harvard has already decided the new instances submitted yesterday are “without merit.” No further action is required.

As for the complaint filed Dec. 19 with Harvard's research integrity office (first reported by @FreeBeacon): Harvard says it included old allegations already adjudicated, plus four new ones that the subcommittee determined "to be without merit." pic.twitter.com/h19SElTuti

— Emma Pettit (@EmmaJanePettit) December 21, 2023

Here's a screenshot of what Harvard sent me about its scope of what it calls its initial review, and its policies, which I quote from and reference above.

And with that, I've summarized all the new info I've gotten.

Still wrapping my head around it, so tell me your thoughts! pic.twitter.com/HBclzisNYu

— Emma Pettit (@EmmaJanePettit) December 21, 2023