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I have served as a voting member of the Harvard College Honor Council, the body tasked with upholding the College’s community standards of academic integrity.
In my time on the Council, I heard dozens of cases. When students — my classmates, peers, and friends — appear before the council, they are distraught. For most, it is the worst day of their college careers. For some, it is the worst day of their lives. They often cry.
It is because I have seen first-hand how heart-wrenching these decisions can be, and still think them necessary, that I call on University President Claudine Gay to resign for her numerous and serious violations of academic ethics.
Let’s compare the treatment of Harvard undergraduates suspected of plagiarism with that of their president.
A plurality of the Honor Council’s investigations concern plagiarism. In the 2021-22 school year, the last year for which data is publicly available, 43 percent of cases involved plagiarism or misuse of sources.