A new report to Congress confirms that after The Post contacted Harvard University about plagiarism allegations against its former president last year, the Ivy League school’s board retained a powerful law firm — in which the longtime board chairman was a senior partner.
William Lee, a partner at WilmerHale, is, until June 2022, a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Corporation.
Despite stepping down from the Harvard Corporation in 2022, Lee, who is also a law professor at the school, “has continued to exert significant influence among Harvard’s top leadership, including senior administrators, members of the Corporation and his successor, Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker,” according to Harvard Crimson.
A prominent law professor, who declined to be named, criticized Harvard’s choice to retain Lee’s firm, telling The Post that “it doesn’t meet the appearance of justice,” because Lee’s role at the university gives his firm “a tremendous advantage. He is a key figure in law firm and is a key figure in the company.”
“There is no conflict,” Lee told The Post.
But that didn’t satisfy New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.
Former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned earlier this month amid mounting allegations of plagiarism. Harvard University/AFP via Getty Images
“The Harvard Corporation actively seeks to cover up the negligence and failures of Harvard University, doubling down on its defense of its corrupt leadership,” Stefanik told The Post in a statement. “In fact, instead of protecting Jewish students and getting rid of Claudine Gay, former Harvard Corporation Board senior fellow William Lee is lining the pockets of his law firm WilmerHale, [hired] to defend the former Harvard President’s history of serial plagiarism and antisemitism. The reckoning is taking place; Our robust congressional investigation will continue to expose the institutional problems that plague many of our elite colleges and universities and deliver needed accountability to the American people.
Neither Lee nor a spokeswoman for WilmerHale responded to The Post’s questions about whether or not the firm was paid when, as the report said, “it was maintained … in connection with this. [plagiarism] allegations.”
According to an April 2022 article on his firm’s website, Lee was “instrumental in the past two university presidential searches.” He explained to The Post that it was referring to past Harvard presidents “Drew Faust and Larry Bacow. I was not involved in the latest search.”
William Lee, who stepped down from the leadership of Harvard’s governing body last year, is a partner at WilmerHale, one of two high-powered law firms hired to respond to Claudine Gay’s alleged plagiarism. Wilmer Hale LLP
Lee, 74, was personally involved, along with another lawyer from his firm, in preparing Gay before his damning testimony — led by Stefanik — about campus antisemitism to Congress last month. Earlier this month, the embattled president, who faced multiple allegations of plagiarism, resigned.
“Harvard is playing games with everybody,” said Carol Swain, a former political science professor at Vanderbilt University and a prominent African American scholar who accused Gay of plagiarizing her work. “This is how they react every step of the way.”
Swain said his attorney sent a letter to the Harvard Corporation on Jan. 3, asking to know what “remedies” the Ivy League institution wanted to take for the unauthorized use of his work. Swain told The Post Wednesday that he has not heard back from the school’s governing body.
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik questioned then-Harvard president Claudine Gay during a December Congressional hearing. “The Harvard Corporation actively seeks to cover up the negligence and failure of Harvard University,” he told The Post. @RepStefanik / X
“I do not intend to leave this issue,” he said. “It is deeply troubling that Harvard University can ignore its own academic guidelines – rules that the rest of us expect.”
In its six-page report to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce released last week, the Harvard Corporation acknowledged that “we understand and acknowledge that many view our efforts as non-transparent, raising questions about our review process and standards.”
The corporation appointed a subcommittee of four fellows, which later named a review panel of “three of the nation’s most prominent political scientists” to conduct a review of Gay’s work, the letter said. The corporation declined to name the three scholars, citing their own desire to remain anonymous.
Penny Pritzker, a senior fellow at the Harvard Corporation, hired WilmerHale and another high-powered law firm after The Post contacted the school about alleged plagiarism against Gay. Yevhen Kotenko/Ukrinform via ZUMA / SplashNews.com
“They’re anonymous because they know what they’re doing is fake,” Swain said. “They should be ready to put their name on it. It was clearly someone who wanted something from Harvard and was scared.”
The corporation made all these moves following questions from The Post in October about more than two dozen instances of plagiarism alleged by Gay. Three days after The Post submitted questions to the school’s public relations office on Oct. 24, we received a threatening 15-page letter that said in part that the allegations against Gay were “clearly false” even before the Corporation began its own investigation.
Now watchdog groups are demanding that the accrediting institution investigate Harvard University over its handling of Gay’s alleged plagiarism — a move that could determine whether the Ivy League school continues to receive hundreds of millions in federal funding, The Post has learned.
Prominent political scientist Carol Swain says that Claudine Gay plagiarized her seminal work on black American representation in Congress. He said it was “deeply troubling” that Harvard had abandoned its own guidelines on the integrity of academic work. Fox News
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit corporation based in Washington, DC, sent a formal complaint earlier this month to the New England Commission on Higher Education, a group that has accredited universities for the Department of Education since its founding in 1885.
A spokeswoman for Harvard Corporation declined to comment.
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