Harvard's president might not be the last to lose her job over plagiarism claims, thanks to the power of AI

• The Harvard president stepped down after allegations of plagiarism in her doctoral thesis.
• Software tools could easily accuse many more academics of plagiarism.
• An expert said academics often use similar wording to describe the same concepts.

AI could mean many other academics will face the same plagiarism allegations that led to Claudine Gay's resignation as president of Harvard University.

Gay stepped down on Tuesday after facing mounting pressure over her comments about antisemitism on campus and accusations of plagiarism.

Davarian Baldwin, a historian at Trinity College, Dublin, told the Associated Press that AI software could easily find a similar overlap in wording between research papers of other academics.

He said that in specialized fields, scholars often use similar wording to describe the same concepts.

While he said Gay clearly made mistakes, he added that plagiarism software would be dangerous if it "falls into the hands of those who argue that academia in general is a cesspool of incompetence and bad actors."

While Gay did not specifically cite the plagiarism accusations in her resignation letter, she called out doubts cast over her ability to uphold scholarly rigor.

Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors said there is a risk that these plagiarism tools could be "weaponized" to pursue academics, the AP reported.

"There is a right-wing political attack on higher education right now, which feels like an existential threat to the academic freedom that has made American higher education the envy of the world," Mulvey said, per the AP.

She did not comment on the accusations raised against Gay, per the AP.

The similarities between Gay's and others' work were first highlighted by the conservative website The Washington Free Beacon. The website pointed to four of Gay's academic papers and her doctoral thesis. It is unclear if software was used to find the similarities.

The report came after Gay had been facing backlash over her handling of antisemitism concerns on campus and testimony at a congressional hearing during which she did not clearly state that calls for genocide of Jews violated Harvard policy.

The Harvard Corporation, which governs the institution, had cleared Gay of accusations of plagiarism, Business Insider previously reported. The board stated it had investigated instances of similarities, where some text had not been included in quotation marks.

Harvard Corp. found that there were some "instances of inadequate citation" in Gay's work, but this did not constitute research misconduct. The board announced that Gay would request corrections to the published works to insert citations and quotation marks.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who accused Gay of plagiarism online, celebrated her resignation as a win for his campaign on X, the AP reported.

Rufo later announced on X he would be contributing "an initial $10,000 to a 'plagiarism hunting' fund."

"We will expose the rot in the Ivy League and restore truth, rather than racialist ideology, as the highest principle in academic life," he said in a post on Tuesday.

Gay was Harvard's first black president. She stepped down six months after taking office, making her the shortest-running president in the school's history. She is resuming her academic work.