Updated Jan. 16

The University will not disclose whether or not a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumna—and President-elect Donald Trump's former pick for a top National Security Council position—will have her Ph.D. rescinded following Politico's recent report that she plagiarized portions of her dissertation.

In light of these accusations, Monica Crowley, GSAS '00, announced that she will not be taking a position in the Trump administration on Monday.

Columbia has rescinded a Ph.D. for plagiarism in the past, but whether the dissertation Crowley completed will even undergo a review is confidential, according to University policy. The University also declined to make administrators available to comment on the matter.

After examining Crowley's dissertation, titled "Clearer Than Truth: Determining and Preserving Grand Strategy: The Evolution of American Policy Toward the People's Republic of China Under Truman and Nixon," Politico found "sections of text that have been lifted, with little to no changes, from other scholarly works without proper attribution," with some portions improperly cited and others "heavily paraphrased with no attribution at all."

The report highlights the specific passages in which the dissertation violates the University's policies on both unintentional and intentional plagiarism.

In some passages, Crowley failed to properly quote an author's exact words or paraphrase in her own words, even if the author was documented. In others sections, she directly copied and pasted quotations or made only small modifications to the text without citing or referencing her sources at all, according to Politico's investigation.

Politico's report came just two days after CNN released a report revealing that Crowley plagiarized over 50 sections of her 2012 book, "What the (Bleep) Just Happened?" Crowley was also accused of plagiarism in 1999 after a reader noticed that certain portions of her column published in the Wall Street Journal repeated almost word for word passages from Paul Johnson's 1988 piece, "Commentary."

Politico incorrectly reported that Crowley graduated from the School of International and Public Affairs because the International Relations program is currently in SIPA, but was in GSAS when Crowley attended Columbia.

olivia.baker@columbiaspectator.com | @ColumbiaSpec