Columbia President Accused of ‘Intellectual Theft’

(Getty Images)

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik is being accused of taking full credit for a research paper that she co-authored, according to a Yale University professor.

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak took to X to post two images: One of a 1992 report Shafik co-authored for World Bank with researcher Sushenjit Bandyopadhyay, and another of a journal published in Oxford Economic Papers two years later in which Bandyopadhyay’s name was removed.

“Nemat [Minouche] Shafik – @Columbia Prez only has 1 well-cited publication in her life, in Oxford Econ Papers 1994,” Mobarak posted Friday on X.

“This paper is lifted almost entirely from a 1992 report coauthored with consultant not credited in the publication. This is wholesale intellectual theft, not subtle plagiarism”

In the 1994 published journal, Bandyopadhyay is only “thanked” in an acknowledgment section.

At the time both papers were written, Shafik was a World Bank vice president and Bandyopadhyay was a consultant who also attended the University of Maryland.

Mobarak says Shafik was Bandyopadhyay’s boss at the time.

“I’m an academic, and this is NOT okay to do. You cannot remove an author and claim intellectual property for yourself,” Mobarak posted.

“When a grad student tried this, we referred him to Dean for disciplinary hearings. And this is worse because of power imbalance – she removed a *junior* person”

Mobarak, an economics and management professor at Yale, told the New York Post the findings and research cited in both papers are pretty much the same.

“It got rewritten, but fundamentally it’s the same paper,” he told the newspaper.

“We can’t get in the room and [learn] what sentences did he write and what sentences she wrote, but what we do know is his contribution was sufficient to warrant co-authorship [in 1992]. What is not common is for someone to be a co-author and then suddenly their name is taken off.”

The Post reported that Columbia University spokesperson Ben Chang said Mobarak’s claim “is an absurd attempt at running a well-known playbook, and it has no credibility.”

Shafik has come under fire due to anti-Israel demonstrations having taken over Columbia’s main campus since April 17, when she testified at a Congressional hearing about antisemitism at the university.

The Columbia University Board of Trustees said it was standing behind Shafik, shortly after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called for her resignation.

Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned from her position in early January, after her first months in the role were rocked by her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus and allegations of plagiarism.

Reuters contributed to this story.