Columbia Official Is Accused of Plagiarizing Dissertation From Wikipedia

An official in command of variety, fairness and inclusion at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center was accused this week of plagiarizing giant sections of his doctoral dissertation, in accordance with an nameless criticism filed with the college.

The 55-page criticism accused the official, Alade McKen, of copying materials in his 2021 dissertation at Iowa State University from greater than two dozen different students and from Wikipedia, which is written and edited by volunteers from most people.

The criticism was printed on-line Thursday by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news web site that led a marketing campaign final 12 months towards the previous president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay. She resigned in January following accusations of plagiarism and after her response to antisemitism on campus was criticized.

Plagiarism allegations have rocked the world of elite academia in current months. They have usually had explicitly political overtones, with conservative critics leveling accusations towards left-leaning directors and at the very least one high-profile accusation that has been portrayed as an act of liberal revenge.

The criticism printed on-line on Thursday accused Mr. McKen of copying passages of his dissertation from the Wikipedia entry for “Afrocentric education” and from the printed scholarship or the doctoral dissertations of at the very least 28 individuals.

“Is Alade McKen a plagiarist?” the nameless writer of the criticism wrote on the high of web page 1. “A small selection of examples from his dissertation are included below to guide your investigation.”

Mr. McKen didn’t reply to messages in search of touch upon Thursday. Angie Hunt, a spokeswoman for Iowa State University, mentioned the varsity had “received and is in the process of reviewing the complaint.”

“The university is committed to the highest ethical standards to ensure the integrity and public trust in research conducted at Iowa State,” Ms. Hunt mentioned in an announcement.

Columbia declined to touch upon the case, saying in an announcement that it doesn’t touch upon “the details of individual personnel matters.”

“Columbia University has clear standards and policies regarding academic ethics and integrity for all members of our community, including faculty, and we take allegations about misconduct seriously,” the varsity mentioned.

The passages in Mr. McKen’s dissertation which are in query had been largely copied verbatim from different students or from Wikipedia with solely small modifications to grammar or verb tenses, in accordance with the criticism. The New York Times reviewed parts of the dissertation and the Wikipedia web page and located components that gave the impression to be almost the identical.

“Woodson critiqued African Americans’ education as ‘miseducation’ because he held that it denigrated the black while glorifying the whites,” Mr. McKen wrote on web page 53 of his dissertation, referring to the influential Black scholar Dr. Carter G. Woodson. “For many early Afrocentrists, the goal was to break what they saw as a vicious cycle of the reproduction of black self-abnegation.”

Nearly the identical phrase seems within the Wikipedia article for “Afrocentric education.” Mr. McKen appeared to have modified the order of some phrases and eliminated one hyphen.

“Woodson critiqued education of African Americans as ‘mis-education’ because he held that it denigrated the black while glorifying the white,” the Wikipedia article states. “For these early Afrocentrists, the goal was to break what they saw as a vicious cycle of the reproduction of black self-abnegation.” The Times reviewed variations of the web page courting again to 2013 in a web-based archive, and located similar language.

Mr. McKen is the third variety administrator from an Ivy League college to be accused of plagiarism within the span of 1 month, following Sherri Ann Charleston and Shirley R. Greene, each at Harvard.

At Harvard, Dr. Gay resigned in January after greater than 40 situations of plagiarism had been uncovered in her tutorial work by an nameless tipster. Those allegations started shortly after Dr. Gay survived an earlier marketing campaign to oust her over what critics referred to as her inadequate response to antisemitism after the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel.

She had served as Harvard’s president — the primary Black lady within the position — for roughly six months.

Days later, an investigation by the news web site Business Insider accused Neri Oxman, the spouse of certainly one of Dr. Gay’s chief critics, the hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, of plagiarizing parts of her doctoral dissertation from different students in addition to from Wikipedia.

Ms. Oxman later apologized for what she referred to as “errors” in a submit on Twitter. Mr. Ackman mentioned he believed the allegations towards his spouse had been retribution for his advocacy for Dr. Gay’s ouster, which he described as “my actions to address problems in higher education.”

Mr. McKen started his job at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, which incorporates the college’s medical faculty, in September 2023. Before that, he was the assistant dean of recruitment, variety, and inclusion on the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, in accordance with a college profile.

In addition to his doctoral diploma in training, social and cultural research from Iowa State, Mr. McKen obtained a grasp’s diploma in increased training administration from Baruch College and a variety and inclusion certificates from Cornell University, the profile mentioned.