Robin DiAngelo Accused of Plagiarism in Doctoral Thesis

Robin DiAngelo, well-known for her works on racism such as “White Fragility” and “Nice Racism,” faces accusations of plagiarism concerning her doctoral thesis.

A complaint alleging 20 instances of research misconduct was filed with the University of Washington, where DiAngelo is an affiliate associate professor of education and where she completed her PhD. The accusations were made public by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site that has previously reported similar complaints against diversity officers and staff of color at various U.S. universities.

DiAngelo’s 2004 thesis, titled “Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis,” is said to contain multiple instances of exact or closely paraphrased wordings from other authors without proper citations. This constitutes plagiarism under the University of Washington College of Education’s academic integrity policy.

Although these authors are listed in the references section at the end of her thesis, their names are not cited next to the corresponding text within the thesis itself. For instance, page five of her thesis closely mirrors arguments from David Theo Goldberg’s “Racist Culture” as referenced in Stacey Lee’s “Unraveling the Model Minority Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth,” yet it lacks an in-text citation for Lee.

According to Mike Reddy, a senior lecturer at the University of South Wales and a member of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education’s academic integrity advisory group, this complaint includes multiple genuine instances of plagiarism. He noted, “the frequency and severity would show evidence of knowing plagiarism of texts.”

Robin DiAngelo, who is white, is best known for her book “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,” released in the UK in 2019.

DiAngelo responded to the accusations, stating, “I am confident that the University of Washington will thoroughly review any concerns and I trust the legitimacy of the peer-review process. Accusations of plagiarism should be guided by the norms of academia and not by partisan actors with a well-documented agenda to discredit anti-racism work.”

The University of Washington mentioned that complaints are confidential, so it could not verify whether the complaint had been submitted, nor who submitted it.

Sherene Razack, whose work is cited in the complaint as having been misused by DiAngelo, expressed skepticism regarding the investigation. She questioned whether it was part of an orchestrated attack on a scholar discussing white supremacy, referencing the scrutiny faced by Harvard’s former president Claudine Gay.

Recently, the Washington Free Beacon has published other similar complaints. In January, the site reported alleged plagiarism by Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, leading to her resignation. Later, in February and March, the outlet published complaints against a diversity officer at Columbia University and the chief diversity officer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Stephen Gow, a member of the QAA’s academic integrity group and a Leverhulme research fellow at Edinburgh Napier University, suggested the allegations against DiAngelo possibly stem from political motivations. “I have no doubt that these allegations have been made by someone with an axe to grind,” he said. While he acknowledged that plagiarism accusations can be politically charged, he asserted that this did not mean they were unfounded and stated in his opinion, plagiarism had taken place.

Razack added, “I think that citational practices may differ and for some, it would seem like the paraphrasing of my work should really have been put in quotation marks whereas for others, paraphrasing is just fine. Personally, I am not concerned by any of this and I am glad that her arguments rely on arguments I’ve made.”

Reddy argued that significant academic misconduct has serious repercussions. He believes that the removal of a doctorate would be a “reasonable consequence of a valid investigation.” He emphasized that political or other motives should not influence the assessment of misconduct, adding, “Far too frequently are prominent academics given ‘benefit of the doubt’ when their students can be heavily penalized for similar offences.”

Source: The Guardian, NBC News