Neri Oxman admits plagiarism in doctoral dissertation after BI report

Billionaire's wife Neri Oxman apologizes for plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation, similar to former Harvard president. Husband Bill Ackman praises her transparency.

Neri Oxman, the wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, has admitted to failing to properly credit sources in portions of her doctoral dissertation. Business Insider published an article finding that Oxman engaged in a pattern of plagiarism similar to that of former Harvard president Claudine Gay.

Business Insider identified four instances in Oxman's dissertation in which she lifted paragraphs from other scholars' work without including them in quotation marks. In a post on X, Oxman acknowledged that using quotation marks would have been "the proper approach for crediting the work" and expressed regret and apology for these errors.

Meanwhile, Ackman has been calling for Gay to resign, and she did so this week. The revelation of Gay's plagiarism, publicized by far-right activist Christopher Rufo, added fuel to Ackman's calls for her to step down after protests against Israel's war in Gaza rocked Harvard's campus.

Ackman has criticized Gay for mishandling the student protests and creating a culture of antisemitism at the elite Cambridge institution. He wrote on X, calling Gay's plagiarism "very serious" and underscoring her lack of fitness to lead the institution or teach at Harvard.

Oxman, an architect and artist, received her Ph.D. from MIT in 2010 and became a tenured professor there in 2017 before leaving the university in June 2021, according to an MIT spokesperson. Her failure to use quotation marks to identify passages of text from other sources meets the definition of plagiarism as spelled out in MIT's academic integrity handbook.

In response, Oxman wrote on X that she plans to review the original sources and "request that MIT make any necessary corrections." She emphasized the importance of recognizing the contributions of her peers and those who came before her, expressing hope that her work will be helpful to future generations.

Oxman now leads her eponymous company, Oxman, focused on "innovation in product, architectural, and urban design." She wrote on X that OXMAN has been in stealth mode and that she looks forward to sharing more about it later this year.

Her husband, Ackman, praised her transparency in his own post on X following the publication of Business Insider's article, emphasizing that part of being human is making mistakes, owning them, and apologizing when appropriate.