Harvard's Plagiarism Problem Multiplies

Another administrator at the Ivy League university appears to have plagiarized her dissertation

Harvard has a plagiarism problem. At the beginning of the year, Claudine Gay resigned as university president following a plagiarism scandal. Weeks later, the Washington Free Beacon published a report indicating that Harvard’s chief diversity officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, apparently plagiarized passages in multiple academic papers.

Now allegations have emerged that another Harvard DEI administrator, Shirley Greene, of Harvard Extension School, plagiarized more than 40 passages of her 2008 dissertation, “Converging Frameworks: Examining the Impact of Diversity-Related College Experiences on Racial/Ethnic Identity Development.” According to the Harvard directory, Greene is a Title IX coordinator affiliated with the Office for Gender Equity. She has worked to advance “Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” and hosted a panel on “The Past, Present, and Future of Juneteenth” in conjunction with the DEI department. (Harvard did not respond to an emailed request for comment.)

The Harvard Crimson previously reported on the allegations against Greene, which a whistleblower lodged anonymously. I have obtained the full complaint, which paints a much more damning indictment of Greene’s scholarship than the student newspaper had let on. Seen in its entirety, the complaint raises serious questions about Greene’s scholarship and academic integrity.

In the most serious instance, Greene lifts directly from Janelle Lee Woo’s 2004 dissertation, “Chinese American Female Identity.” In two significant sections, Greene copied words, phrases, passages, and almost entire paragraphs verbatim, without proper attribution or quotation. She also copies most of an entire table on “Racial/Ethnic Identity Development Models,” a foundational concept in the paper, without acknowledging the source.

We can examine one representative paragraph that illustrates the brazen nature of this adaptation. In her paper, Woo writes:

Stage 2, White Identification (WI), is a direct consequence of the increase in significant contact between the individual and white society. This stage entails the sense of being different from other people and not belonging anywhere. The individual’s self-perception changes from neutral/positive to negative, and she begins to internalize the belief systems of white society. Consequently, the individual does not question what it means to be Asian American. The individual alienates herself from other Asian Americans, while simultaneously experiencing social alienation from her white peers. Only when the individual seeks to “acquire a political understanding of [her] social status” (Kim 1981: 138) does she enter into the next stage.

Here is Greene’s version, with the duplicated portions of Woo and Woo’s citations italicized:

White Identification (WI), is a direct consequence of the increase in significant contact between the individual and white society. Individuals in this stage have the sense of being different from other people and not belonging anywhere. Their self-perception changes from neutral/positive to negative and they begin to internalize the belief systems of white society. Consequently, the individual fails to question what it means to be Asian American and alienates themselves from other Asian Americans, while simultaneously experiencing social alienation from their white peers. In order to move to the next stage, the individual must acquire a political understanding of social status.

The complaint, which has been sent to Harvard’s research-integrity officials, features more than three dozen other examples of Greene allegedly lifting language from other scholars, without proper attribution or quotations. For another typical example, we can compare a passage from Anthony Antonio’s paper, “Developing Leadership Skills for Diversity,” with Greene’s dissertation.

Here is Antonio’s original text:

Astin found that independent of students' entering characteristics and different types of college environments, frequent interracial interaction in college was associated with increases in cultural awareness, commitment to racial understanding, commitment to cleaning up the environment, and higher levels of academic development (critical thinking skills, analytical skills, general and specific knowledge, and writing skills) and satisfaction with college.

Compare this with Greene’s dissertation, which copies the entire paragraph verbatim, adds the word “ethnic,” and, though it cites the source, does not include quotation marks. Here is Greene, with italics added to mark the plagiarized content:

Astin found that independent of students’ entering characteristics and different types of college environments, frequent interracial interaction in college was associated with increases in cultural awareness, commitment to racial/ethnic understanding, commitment to cleaning up the environment, and higher levels of academic development (critical thinking skills, analytical skills, general and specific knowledge, and writing skills) and satisfaction with college.

In total, the complaint identifies dozens of such passages in Greene’s dissertation, ranging from minor infringements to what appears to be outright theft of concepts and language. Most of these instances would appear to violate Harvard’s own plagiarism policy, which states: “If you copy language word for word from another source and use that language in your paper, you are plagiarizing verbatim … you must give credit to the author of the source material, either by placing the source material in quotation marks and providing a clear citation, or by paraphrasing the source material and providing a clear citation.”

In its initial report, the Crimson chose to downplay these violations and focus on the fact that the complaint against Greene “marks the third set of anonymous plagiarism allegations against Black women who hold or held leadership positions at Harvard.” The implication, of course, is that the anonymous critics are motivated by racism—which other commentators have made explicit in defending Gay, Charleston, and Greene.

This should sound familiar. For years, America’s elite institutions have maintained the convenient fiction that all racial disparities can be explained by racism, not disparities in behavior. For the subjects of Harvard’s plagiarism scandal, however, another plausible explanation exists: namely, that academics who focus on DEI and advocate lower standards for “oppressed” racial groups might hold themselves to lower standards of academic integrity than academics in more legitimate disciplines.

Regardless of the cause, Harvard should ask itself a simple question: how did so many alleged plagiarists rise to positions of power at the nation’s most prestigious university? If Harvard officials believe that they can shrug off the university’s growing plagiarism crisis, they should know that this may just be the beginning. My sources indicate that many more allegations may be coming.

This article was first published in City Journal.