Harvard’s Shame: ‘Chief Diversity Officer’ Scandal Exposes University’s Integrity Crisis

Harvard University is currently embroiled in another potential scandaI, now involving its Chief Diversity Officer, Sherri Ann Charleston. A detailed examination of Charleston’s 2009 dissertation has revealed numerous instances of alleged plagiarism. This comes after former Harvard President Claudine Gay had to resign due to accusations of plagiarism.

The complaint levels 40 accusations of plagiarism against Charleston, covering her entire range of published work. It alleges that in her 2009 dissertation for the University of Michigan, she either quoted or paraphrased the work of almost a dozen scholars without appropriately crediting them. Charleston was appointed as Harvard University’s inaugural Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer (CDIO) in August 2020.


The document contains several examples where Charleston appeared to have used language verba tim from other scholars’ work without proper quotation marks, raising questions about the integrity of her academic contributions.