Neil Gorsuch Under Pressure Over Plagiarism Allegations

After Harvard University President Claudine Gay's career came under the spotlight, forcing her resignation after a series of plagiarism allegations, some are calling for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch to face similar scrutiny.

Gay announced her resignation on Tuesday, just six months after becoming Harvard's first Black president. She was the second president of an Ivy League university to resign following backlash to their congressional testimony about antisemitism on college campuses.

Allegations of plagiarism came to light as conservatives sought to oust Gay, with some detractors making clear that their broader aim was attacking diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in higher education.

Harvard's governing body initiated an independent review of the plagiarism allegations in December and found some instances of "inadequate citation," but said there was no violation of the university's standards for research misconduct.

But the allegations kept coming, and Gay said in a statement on Tuesday that "it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual."

Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the campaign against Gay, celebrated her resignation on social media.

"We must not stop until we have abolished DEI ideology from every institution in America," he said in one post on X, formerly Twitter. In another post, he announced a new "plagiarism hunting fund," pledging to "expose the rot in the Ivy League and restore truth, rather than racialist ideology, as the highest principle in academic life."

The use of plagiarism allegations by conservatives to force Gay's ouster has led to some bringing up allegations of plagiarism against prominent conservatives and questioning whether conservatives would also call for them to step down.

Many mentioned Gorsuch, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, pointing to a 2017 report by Politico that accused the justice of plagiarism before he was appointed to the high court.

The report said documents show that several passages from a chapter of Gorsuch's 2006 book, The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, read "nearly verbatim" to a 1984 article in the Indiana Law Journal. The report also said that in several other instances in that book and an academic article published in 2000, Gorsuch "borrowed from the ideas, quotes and structures of scholarly and legal works without citing them."

The Trump White House defended Gorsuch at the time, saying the allegations were "strongly refuted by highly-regarded academic experts, including those who reviewed, professionally examined, and edited Judge Gorsuch's scholarly writings, and even the author of the main piece cited in the false attack."

According to Politico, the experts provided by the White House also asserted that "the criteria for citing work in dissertations on legal philosophy is different than for other types of academia or journalism" because while he may have borrowed language or facts without attribution, he did not misappropriate ideas or arguments.

Newsweek has reached out to Gorsuch through an email to the Supreme Court's spokesperson and to Rufo via email for comment.

"I assume Christopher Rufo will now move on and insist that Neal [sic] Gorsuch step down from the Supreme Court, given that he plagiarized parts of his 2006 book 'The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia.'" journalist James Surowiecki wrote on X.

In another post, Surowiecki added: "The defenses of Gorsuch's lifting, btw, were remarkably similar to the defenses of Gay's work: it was just "sloppy," not "mendacious" or malicious, and was not serious because while it copied language, it didn't involve the purloining of ideas."

Mikel Jollett, an author and musician, wrote: "Hey remember how Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch PLAGIARIZED a large portion of both his book and his academic articles and he still sits on the Supreme Court? My understanding from conservatives is that this makes him ineligible for a position of power."

Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, called on Rufo to "now do Neil Gorsuch. Then do Elise Stefanik who plagiarized a colleague."

The Republican representative, who questioned Gay during the congressional hearing and called for her resignation, was accused of plagiarizing a letter condemning university presidents about their response to antisemitism on college campuses.

Corinee Low, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, wrote that Gorsuch's "extensive plagiarism" was outlined in the Politico report and "no one is calling for him to resign, because there isn't a highly coordinated, politically and racially motivated effort to force him out."

Brian Allen, a pre-law student, pointed to Gorsuch's "alleged copying" and to Melania Trump's "replication" of a Michelle Obama speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

"It's time to apply the same scrutiny and standards that Claudine Gay faced to these prominent figures. No?" Allen wrote. "I'm not defending plagiarism. I'm pointing out that it was weaponized, quote me."

In an op-ed in The New York Times on Wednesday, Gay said the campaign against her was "about more than one university and one leader" and "a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society."

"Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders' credibility," she wrote. "For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal."

She acknowledged making mistakes, saying that her published work contained passages where "some material duplicated other scholars' language, without proper attribution," but added she had never misrepresented her findings or claimed credit for others' research.

She added those who campaigned to oust her "often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument" and "recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament."