American education society has been in turmoil after the fire of the Israel-Hamas war reached prestigious universities like Harvard, MIT, and more. Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman turned hyper-active ever since incidents of hate crime and speeches against Jews amped up in prestigious universities and Pro Palestine supporters allegedly chanted to wipe out the Jews on the education institute grounds. While most of the universities including Harvard advocated for freedom of speech, Bill Ackman jumped into the controversy and assured the people that Jew-hating students would not get jet after they passed out from the universities. Not only this, Ackman expressed that being a donor to the prestigious university he would ask the administration to make the names of students public who are supporting Palestine. Amid the controversy, Ackman had accused former Harvard President Claudine Gay of being a plagiarist. However, Ackman's wife Neri Oxman is now facing the same accusations. Now, the question arises who is Neri Oxman?
Who is Neri Oxman?
Neri Oxman is the wife of Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire. She is quite a famous name in the world of American academics. Neri Oxman is a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She came under the scanner after Business Insider flagged her contest as plagiarised i.e. copied from other sources including Wikipedia, scholars' work without proper attribution in her 2010 dissertation.
The report found out that four passages of Neri Oxman’s dissertation as plagiarized – without any attribution – from Wikipedia entries. But by Friday, the outlet had found at least 15 such passages, a turn of events that was similar to that which led to Harvard President Gay’s ouster.
Reacting to it, billionaire Ackman on his official X handle wrote, "My wife, @NeriOxman, was just contacted by Business Insider claiming that they have identified other plagiarism in her work including 15 examples in her dissertation where she did not cite Wikipedia as a source...Business Insider told us that they are publishing their story this evening. As a result, we don't have time to research their claims prior to publication."
"It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family. This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews. We will begin with a review of the work of all current @MIT faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism. We will share our findings in the public domain as they are completed in the spirit of transparency."
Neri also took to her official X handle and wrote, "I was forwarded an email this morning from a reporter at Business Insider who noted that there are four paragraphs in my 330-page PhD dissertation: “Material-based Design Computation,” which I completed at MIT in 2010, where I omitted quotation marks for certain work that I used. For each of the four paragraphs in question, I properly credited the original source's author(s) with references at the end of each of the subject paragraphs, and in the detailed bibliography end pages of the dissertation. In these four paragraphs, however, I did not place the subject language in quotation marks, which would be the proper approach for crediting the work. I regret and apologize for these errors."