Neri Oxman, wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, has come under fire for allegations of plagiarism in her 2010 doctoral dissertation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to a report in Business Insider, Oxman was found to have plagiarized multiple paragraphs, with at least one passage being lifted directly from another writer without citation.
The allegations have caused a stir, with Ackman citing them as one of the reasons he spent weeks calling for the removal of Harvard President Claudine Gay. Notably, Gay, the school’s first Black leader, resigned Tuesday following allegations of plagiarism and criticism of her handling of antisemitism on campus.
In response to the allegations, Ackman took to social media to defend his wife, stating that “you know you struck a chord when they go after your wife.” Oxman also addressed the claims, acknowledging that she inadvertently failed to cite the original authors of the work she paraphrased and expressing regret for the errors.
Oxman, a former professor at MIT’s Media Lab, specializes in a field she terms “material ecology”, using disciplines including computational design, architectural elements, and synthetic biology. She left MIT in 2020 and has since created her own company called Oxman.
The news of the plagiarism allegations has caused a stir in academic and professional circles, raising questions about academic integrity and ethical practices in research and publishing. As the controversy continues to unfold, Oxman and Ackman are sure to face further scrutiny in the public eye.