Neri Oxman accused of plagiarism following husband’s Harvard row
American-Israeli architect and designer Neri Oxman is currently under fire after several instances of plagiarism were alleged to be found in her published academic work and PhD dissertation. Although Oxman has not been an active force in the art world for some years, this controversy has thrust her back into the spotlight.
The plagiarism scandal comes after her billionaire husband, Bill Ackman, led a public campaign against Harvard University’s president, Claudine Gay. In a series of over 100 tweets on the social media platform X, Ackman repeatedly accused Gay of plagiarism, and she subsequently resigned earlier this month.
The campaign of Oxman’s husband to oust Gay introduced further scrutiny to his wife’s work. It was reported by Business Insider that the former MIT professor had plagiarised multiple passages of her 2010 dissertation. In a post on X, Oxman said: “I regret and apologise for these errors.”
Outside of academic writing, Oxman’s visual art uses naturally found materials. She has previously collaborated with high-profile figures like Björk and drew much media attention when Brad Pitt visited her MIT lab.
This is not the first time Oxman and her husband have been at the centre of controversy. In 2019, it was reported that Ackman had “pressured” MIT to downplay Oxman’s involvement in a scandal over a sculpture.
Oxman had given Jeffrey Epstein the sculpture after he donated $125,000 to her design lab, Mediated Matter. She later said she regretted having taken funds from Epstein and apologised to her students for their “inadvertent involvement in this mess”.
