Complaint Alleges Harvard Diversity, Inclusion Officer Plagiarized Work

Sherri Ann Charleston, Harvard University’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, has been accused of plagiarism.

According to a complaint, “Sherri Ann Charleston’s dissertation contains a lot of other scholars’ language verbatim without quotation marks. Parts of Charleston’s dissertation were published previously, word for word, by her advisor, Rebecca Scott, and others. Charleston will lift whole sentences and paragraphs from other scholars’ work without quotation marks, then add a correct reference somewhere in the footnote ending the long paragraph.”

The Washington Free Beacon analyzed the plagiarism allegations.

A paper from 2014 takes content from a paper from 2012, which was authored by Charleston, her husband, and Jerlando Jackson, who now serves as the dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education.

The two papers contain identical student interviews, a violation of research ethics.

Peter Wood, the head of the National Association of Scholars and a former associate provost at Boston University, told the Beacon that the 2014 paper may be “entirely counterfeit.”

He emphasized that the paper is “research fraud pure and simple.”

The allegations against Harvard’s diversity officer follow former Harvard University president Claudine Gay being accused of plagiarism.

While she no longer serves as the university’s president, it is believed that Gay will remain as a political science professor.