Billionaire investor Bill Ackman’s wife, accused of plagiarism

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, has recently found herself embroiled in a plagiarism scandal that has sent shockwaves through the academic and artistic communities. Oxman, an esteemed professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a renowned architect and designer, has been accused of plagiarizing the work of other artists in her own creations.

Plagiarism is a serious offense that undermines the integrity of intellectual property and stifles creativity. It is particularly disheartening when it involves individuals who hold positions of influence and authority, such as Oxman. As an educator at one of the world's most prestigious institutions, she should be setting an example for her students by upholding ethical standards.

A Business Insider article published Thursday alleged Oxman plagiarized parts of her 2010 doctoral dissertation at MIT citing several passages that the report found lacked appropriate attribution. NBC News hasn’t independently reviewed the academic sources cited in the report.

Oxman is an American  designer who was a tenured professor at MIT before leaving the university and moving to New York.

The article highlighted issues similar to those found in Gay’s academic work, mainly involving technical passages that were missing quotation marks for proper citations.

In her response, Oxman described her mistakes as instances in which she "omitted quotation marks for certain work that I used." The cases she apologized for were similar in character to some cases that the Washington Free Beacon found in Claudine Gay's academic history — failures to use quotation marks around passages from works that were otherwise cited.

But a thorough review of her published work revealed that Oxman's failure to cite sources went beyond that — and included multiple instances of plagiarism in which she passed off writing from other sources as her own without citing the original in any way. At least 15 passages from her 2010 MIT doctoral dissertation were lifted without any citation from Wikipedia entries.

Oxman has been a notable figure in architecture since before even completing her PhD. Named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in 2009, she has long been at the forefront of using computation and advanced design technologies to integrate lessons and processes found in the forms created by ecological systems. A major 2022 solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art explored Oxman’s ecologically inspired designs dating back to 2007. Ahead of the exhibition’s opening, Oxman told Fast Company that the built world needs to be redesigned using some of the principles and patterns found in nature. “The concrete forest is too much like a monoculture and too little the thriving ecological niche it must become,” she said.

MIT did not reply to a request for comment sent outside normal business hours.

BI sought comment from Ackman and Oxman; they declined via a spokesperson. But after BI had emailed its findings to Oxman, Ackman posted a response on X in which he promised to conduct plagiarism reviews of MIT's leadership.

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Sara H

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