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- Bill Ackman led the crusade to get Harvard's Claudine Gay to resign over plagiarism accusations.
- His wife, Neri Oxman, admitted to plagiarizing portions of her dissertation following a BI report.
- Now Ackman says it's a "near certainty" that academics will improperly cite others' work.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman softened his tone on academic dishonesty after a report by Business Insider found his wife, Neri Oxman, plagiarized portions of her doctoral dissertation.
In an extensive, 5,139-word post on X made Saturday evening, Ackman — who led the crusade to get Harvard President Claudine Gay to resign over plagiarism allegations — said it is "a near certainty that authors will miss some quotation marks and fail to properly cite or provide attribution for another author on at least a modest percentage of the pages of their papers."
"Some plagiarism is due to the laziness of the author. Laziness is not a great excuse for a member of the faculty, but it does not seem like a crime to me," Ackman wrote. "It is more a reflection of the competency and motivation of the faculty member. In the real world, employees can be fired for being lazy, but this can be challenging to do under the tenure system."
A representative for Ackman declined to respond to questions from BI regarding his statements about plagiarism.
Ackman's softened stance on plagiarism is a marked difference from his statements made less than a week ago, in which he called allegations of plagiarism against Gay "a scandal and a stain on the reputation of Harvard."
Similar allegations against Gay and Oxman
Gay was accused in mid-December of plagiarizing portions of multiple academic articles, including her political science dissertation. In a series of posts on Substack and published news articles, conservative activist Christopher Rufo and American Conservative Contributing Editor Christopher Brunet, as well as the Washington Free Beacon and the New York Post, reported on portions of her writing that required quotes but were missing adequate citations or quotation marks.
Harvard cleared Gay of "research misconduct" on December 12 before the university discovered two additional occurrences of "duplicative language without appropriate attribution" on December 20.
Gay admitted to making citation errors and requested corrections to her writings. However, she said after her resignation that she stands by her work, adding she "never misrepresented" her research findings nor "claimed credit for the research of others."
Ackman's wife, Oxman, is now fielding similar accusations after BI found multiple instances in which the former tenured MIT professor lifted sentences and entire paragraphs from Wikipedia, fellow scholars, as well as technical documents without adequate citation in her academic writing.
Oxman has since admitted to the plagiarism, apologized, and pledged to review her sourcing and request corrections to her work as needed.
"Gay was accused, accurately in at least some of the cases, of using verbatim text from outside sources and, though in most cases the source was cited, it was not marked as quoted text," Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism expert, previously told BI when comparing the two incidents. "That seems to be pretty much what happened here with Oxman."
Ackman's real feud with Gay
Ackman's focus on ousting Gay from Harvard didn't begin with the plagiarism accusations that ultimately led to her resignation.
The billionaire first took aim at the academic leader following the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Ackman began his now monthslong crusade by writing a 3,138-word letter to Gay about antisemitism on campus and calling on Harvard leadership to issue discipline and suspensions for students engaging in antisemitic and pro-Palestinian actions on campus.
But the conflict between the pair reached a fever pitch after a December 5 congressional hearing in which Gay and the leaders of other elite universities testified about how they were handling reports of antisemitic harassment.
Gay, replying to pointed questions from New York Rep. Elise Stefanik said that calling for a "genocide of Jews" may be a violation of the school's code of conduct "depending on the context."
She later apologized for the remark, saying she got "caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures." Still, Ackman insisted her comments were an "ethical failure" that required she — and the other university presidents who responded similarly — "resign in disgrace."
University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill, who told Congress that if antisemitic speech "turns into conduct, it can be harassment," has since resigned. No known allegations of plagiarism were levied against her before she stepped down.
In the same hearing, MIT President Sally Kornbluth told Congress she had not heard anyone on her campus calling for the genocide of Jews, prompting outrage from critics, including Ackman.
MIT has not commented on the accusations against Oxman or the campaign by Ackman against Kornbluth. However, a representative for the university told BI, "Our leaders remain focused on ensuring the vital work of the people of MIT continues, work that is essential to the nation's security, prosperity and quality of life."
Kornbluth did not respond to a request for comment from BI. She thus far remains in her position, though Ackman has turned his focus to her ouster since Magill and Gay have both left their posts.
After news broke of Gay's resignation, Ackman ominously posted on X: "Et tu Sally?"