A brand new report back to Congress confirms that once The Publish reached out to Harvard College about plagiarism allegations in opposition to its former president final 12 months, the Ivy League faculty’s board retained a formidable legislation company — the place an established chief of the board is a senior spouse.
William Lee, a spouse at WilmerHale, used to be, till June 2022, the Senior Fellow of the Harvard Company.
In spite of stepping down from the Harvard Company in 2022, Lee, who could also be a legislation professor on the faculty, “has endured to exert vital affect amongst Harvard’s best management, together with senior directors, participants of the Company and his successor Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker,” consistent with the Harvard Pink.
A outstanding legislation professor, who declined to be named, criticized Harvard’s option to retain Lee’s company, telling The Publish that “it does now not fulfill the illusion of justice,” as a result of Lee’s position on the college gave his company “an amazing merit. He’s a significant determine within the legislation company and used to be a significant determine within the company.”
“There used to be no warfare,” Lee instructed The Publish.
However that doesn’t fulfill New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.
“The Harvard Company actively labored to hide up the negligence and screw ups of Harvard College, doubling down in protection of its corrupt management,” Stefanik instructed The Publish in a remark. “Actually, as a substitute of defending Jewish scholars and doing away with Claudine Homosexual, former Harvard Company Board senior fellow William Lee coated the wallet of his legislation company WilmerHale, [hired] to protect the previous Harvard President’s historical past of serial plagiarism and antisemitism. A reckoning is going on; our powerful congressional investigation will proceed to show the institutional issues plaguing our maximum ‘elite schools and universities and ship wanted responsibility to the American other folks.”
Neither Lee nor a spokesperson for WilmerHale spoke back to a query from The Publish about whether or not or now not the company used to be paid when, because the file mentioned, “retained … in reference to those [plagiarism] allegations.”
In step with an April 2022 article on his company’s internet web page, Lee used to be “instrumental within the college’s previous two presidential searches.” He clarified to The Publish that it used to be a connection with previous Harvard presidents “Drew Faust and Larry Bacow. I used to be now not concerned about the newest seek.”
Lee, 74, used to be individually concerned, together with some other legal professional from his company, in making ready Homosexual ahead of her disastrous testimony — led via Stefanik —about campus antisemitism to Congress final month. Previous this month, the embattled president, who confronted more than one allegations of plagiarism, resigned.
“Harvard is enjoying video games with everybody,” mentioned Carol Swain, a former political science professor at Vanderbilt College and acclaimed African American student who has accused Homosexual of plagiarizing her paintings. “That is how they spoke back each step of the way in which.”
Swain mentioned her legal professional despatched the Harvard Company a letter on Jan. 3, inquiring for to grasp what “treatments” the Ivy League establishment seeks to make for the unauthorized use of her paintings. Swain instructed The Publish Wednesday that she has now not heard again from the college’s governing frame.
“I don’t intend to desert this factor,” she mentioned. “It’s deeply demanding that Harvard College can forget about its personal educational tips — regulations that the remainder of us are anticipated to practice.”
In its six-page report back to the Area Committee on Schooling and the Body of workers made public final week, the Harvard Company admitted that “we perceive and recognize that many considered our efforts as insufficiently clear, elevating questions relating to our procedure and usual of overview.”
The Company appointed a subcommittee of 4 fellows, who then named a overview panel of “3 of the rustic’s maximum outstanding political scientists” to behavior the overview of Homosexual’s paintings, the letter mentioned. The company refused to call the 3 students, bringing up their very own want to stay nameless.
“They’re nameless as a result of they knew what they have been doing used to be bogus,” mentioned Swain. “They must had been prepared to position their identify on it. It’s obviously somebody who desires one thing from Harvard and is afraid.”
The Company made all of those strikes following questions from The Publish in October over greater than two dozen alleged circumstances of plagiarism via Homosexual. 3 days after The Publish submitted inquiries to the college’s public family members place of work on Oct. 24, we won a threatening 15-page letter that mentioned partially that the allegations in opposition to Homosexual have been “demonstrably false” even ahead of the Company had embarked by itself investigation.
Now a watchdog team is not easy that an accreditation establishment probe Harvard College over its dealing with of the plagiarism allegations in opposition to Homosexual — a transfer that might decide if the Ivy League faculty continues to obtain loads of thousands and thousands in federal investment, The Publish has discovered.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Washington, DC-based non-profit, despatched a proper grievance previous this month to the New England Fee of Upper Schooling, a bunch that has been accrediting universities for the Division of Schooling since its founding in 1885.
A spokesman for the Harvard Company declined remark.
