Israeli-born designer and academic Prof. Neri Oxman, the wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, has apologized after it was reported that her 2010 dissertation contained a number of instances of plagiarism.
Earlier this week, Business Insider reported Oxman had “plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation.”
Oxman writes on X that in four cases, though she cited the source for her text in the paragraph, she “did not place the subject language in quotation marks, which would be the proper approach for crediting the work.”
She also acknowledges that in one other case, she paraphrased the work of another writer without proper attribution, while noting she had acknowledged him and clearly quotes him in multiple instances throughout.
“I regret and apologize for these errors,” she writes.
Ackman was a leading figure in the campaign to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay. He says the allegations against his wife are part of “attacks on his family” due to his “actions to address problems in higher education.”
Gay resigned earlier this week amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over testimony at a US congressional hearing where she was unable to say unequivocally that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy.
Following the hearing, Gay’s academic career came under intense scrutiny by activists who unearthed several instances of alleged plagiarism in her 1997 doctoral dissertation.
In 2019, it was revealed that some $125,000 was gifted by convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein to Oxman’s Mediated Matter research group at MIT’s prestigious Media Lab.
According to the Boston Globe, Oxman’s lab went beyond the regular protocol for donors, producing a donor gift for Epstein that was mailed to his Manhattan apartment. The gift drew concerns from some students in Oxman’s lab, and emails obtained by The Boston Globe showed Oxman was aware of the concerns and of Epstein’s past.
