Bill Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, has been accused of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation at MIT in 2010, according to a new report published by Business Insider. The report claims that Neri Oxman plagiarized several paragraphs in her thesis, including passages that were directly copied from other authors without proper citations.
The plagiarism scandal comes after Ackman vociferously criticized plagiarism accusations against Harvard President Claudia Gay, who stepped down after being accused of mishandling anti-Semitism on campus following a Hamas attack on Israel.
Bill Ackman Defends Wife Amid Scandal
Ackman, who is known for his tough anti-plagiarism stance, defended his wife in the wake of the allegations. On social media, Ackman speculated that the charges were being made out of revenge for his role in the Harvard plagiarism scandal. Neither Ackman nor Oxman responded to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Oxman Acknowledges Oversight
In response to the accusations, Oxman acknowledged that she did not cite the original authors, but said that she did not use quotation marks in the citations. Oxman also apologised for her oversight. Oxman’s downfall marks a major setback in her storied career as a professor at the Media Lab at MIT, where she was best known for her work on ‘material ecology,’ a combination of computational design, architecture, and synthetic biology.
Oxman’s Contributions and Future Endeavours
After leaving MIT in 2020 to launch her own company, Oxman has been at the forefront of innovation in a variety of design disciplines. However, her career is currently in a state of flux as she juggles this ongoing controversy. What does this mean for her future?
Regardless of the current state of affairs, the work of Oxman in the field of material ecology, as well as her contributions to design innovation, cannot be overstated.
