The board of Harvard University has expressed unflinching support for its president, Claudine Gay, despite admitting plagiarism allegations.

“As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University,” said a statement on Tuesday signed by all of the board members except Ms Gay.

Well-known writer Christopher Rufo, on his X account on Sunday, revealed that the Harvard President “plagiarised multiple sections of her PhD thesis, violating Harvard’s policies on academic integrity.”

This comes amidst calls for her resignation by donors and politicians after her controversial comment before a House committee last week about antisemitism.

“In academic writing, it is considered plagiarism to draw any idea or any language from someone else without adequately crediting that source in your paper. It doesn’t matter whether the source is a published author, another student, a website without clear authorship, a website that sells academic papers, or any other person: Taking credit for anyone else’s work is stealing, and it is unacceptable in all academic situations, whether you do it intentionally or by accident,” Harvard said in a statement on its website.

However, the Havard board backed its embattled president, saying she remains the best person to help the institution address societal issues.

Although, after intense scrutiny, the board cleared the president of violating the school’s policy, it still called for corrections in the form of citations and quotation marks to be made in two of the affected articles.

“Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the institution added. “So many people have suffered tremendous damage and pain because of Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, and the university’s initial statement should have been an immediate, direct, and unequivocal condemnation.”

The institution’s statement added that calls for genocide “are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values” but that Ms Gay “has apologised for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the university’s fight against antisemitism.”

The university disclosed that per Ms Gay’s academic writings, the university became aware “in late October of allegations regarding three articles.”

“At President Gay’s request,” said the Harvard statement, “the Fellows promptly initiated an independent review by distinguished political scientists and conducted a review of her published work.”

“On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation,” it added. “While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”

Harvard insisted that in this “tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay.”

“At Harvard, we champion open discourse and academic freedom, and we are united in our strong belief that calls for violence against our students and disruptions of the classroom experience will not be tolerated,” stated the board. “Harvard’s mission is advancing knowledge, research, and discovery that will help address deep societal issues and promote constructive discourse, and we are confident that President Gay will lead Harvard forward toward accomplishing this vital work.”