Harvard University’s chief diversity officer plagiarized large portions of her academic work, a complaint filed Monday with the Ivy League school alleges.
The allegations echo those against Claudine Gay, who stepped down as Harvard’s president earlier this month after a cascade of plagiarism allegations.
Sherri Ann Charleston, Harvard’s first ever chief diversity and inclusion officer, plagiarized parts of every publication she wrote, at least 40 times total, claims the anonymous complaint filed with the university, which was first reported by The Washington Free Beacon.
She quoted or paraphrased nearly a dozen other academics without proper attribution in her 2009 dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan, the complaint says.
Also, Charleston’s only peer-reviewed journal article, written in 2014 with her husband, lifted parts from a 2012 study her husband published, presenting it as new research, according to the complaint.
Her husband, LaVar Charleston is the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Charleston herself was previously assistant vice provost for diversity, equity, and inclusion and chief affirmative action officer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In the 2014 article, which was published in the Journal of Negro Education, even interviews with black computer science students from the 2012 study showed up word for word. The 2014 article also listed the same methods, findings, and descriptions of survey subjects as the older study, according to the Beacon’s analysis.
“The 2014 paper appears to be entirely counterfeit,” Peter Wood, the head of the National Association of Scholars, told the Beacon.
“This is research fraud pure and simple,” Wood said.
One significant problem is the fact that the 2014 publication not only appeared to copy parts of the 2012 study, it also added two new authors — Sherri Ann Charleston and Jerlando Jackson, who had nothing to do with the original study.
As chief diversity officer, Charleston served on the presidential search committee that ultimately named Claudine Gay as president.
Gay was accused last year of dozens of instances of plagiarism in her published works. Amid mounting criticism and pressure to step down, she ultimately resigned earlier this month.
The controversy around Gay’s academic writings comes on the heels of her highly criticized congressional testimony on Harvard’s response to anti-Semitism on campus.
Harvard is currently facing a congressional probe on how it handled anti-Semitism on campus as well as the school’s response to the plagiarism allegations against Gay.
However, Gay still collects a $900,000 annual salary as a tenured faculty member at Harvard.