Following that assessment, "it was determined that there was not sufficient credible evidence to support further review of the Allegation," said the letter, which was shared with The State News by an MSU spokesperson.

"The (research integrity officer's) thorough review encompassed relevant documents, records, and materials referred to in the Allegation and confirmed that Dean Jackson’s work meets our institution's highest standards of academic integrity. In alignment with the university's exoneration policy, we recognize the importance of restoring the reputation of individuals involved in unsubstantiated misconduct allegations. Michigan State University will continue to actively support Dean Jackson and his distinguished career in education."

Guskiewicz and Jeitschko’s letter also addressed backlash against Jackson, much of which occurred on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. 

"In addition to academic concerns, Dean Jackson has unfortunately been the target of racist, vile and despicable attacks," the letter said. "We condemn these attacks on him and reinforce our support of him as a valued member of leadership at Michigan State University."

After publishing a story about the complaint against Jackson in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative, Washington D.C.-based media outlet, journalist Aaron Sibarium posted a thread to X summarizing his reporting.

The replies to the post, which has close to 400,000 views, are rife with racist implications about why Jackson — who is Black and whose scholarship has largely focused on diversity — allegedly committed plagiarism.  

The Washington Free Beacon has reported extensively on allegations of academic misconduct by Black scholars, and scholars of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). That reporting has won the praise of conservative activists, but has also been criticized by others as disproportionately going after Black scholars. 

As universities’ internal reviews of plagiarism complaints are seldom the only, or final, word on such matters, it remains to be seen if MSU’s "exoneration" of Jackson will end the saga.  

Harvard’s review of its former president, Claudine Gay — who eventually resigned over plagiarism allegations, as well as her handling of campus hate speech — was widely scrutinized in the national press after its completion. In a more recent case, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a story that litigated details of a plagiarism complaint against the University of Indiana’s president, Pamela Whitten, only after the university had concluded its investigation clearing her. 

In the case of Stanford University, reporting from the school’s newspaper detailing allegations of academic misconduct by the university’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, predated a university internal review, albeit one that did ultimately lead to his resignation. Still, subsequent reporting from the student newspaper questioned the investigatory methods used by that committee. 

The news of MSU’s clearing of Jackson comes amid a broader cultural and political debate around DEI, which refers to a set of policies and programs designed to make institutions, both public and private, inclusive of people across identity lines.  

In recent months, conservative media has cast blame on "DEI hires" — referring to people perceived to be in their professional position solely because of their minority identity — for the California wildfires and the security breach that led to an assassination attempt on President Donald Trump. 

And, on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order into law ending "illegal DEI and 'diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility' (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear." A press release from The White House labeled such policies as "illegal and immoral."

Though some observers have said the executive order is unlikely to affect universities in the immediate sense, some conservatives, who largely oppose DEI, have opined it’s a positive sign for what’s to come. 

"Tomorrow morning, the general counsels for every major corporation and university are going to be reading President Trump's executive orders on DEI and figuring out how they can avoid getting ruined by federal civil rights lawyers," wrote conservative journalist and activist Christopher Rufo in a post on X, formerly Twitter. "Huge changes imminent."

MSU’s vehement defense of Jackson also provides a potential window into how Trump’s vision for higher education — which has included dissolving the federal Department of Education — might come into tension with MSU’s institutional aims.

Asked about a potential chasm between MSU’s aims and that of the federal government, Board of Trustees Chair Kelly Tebay said in an interview with The State News Wednesday, "who knows what decisions (Trump’s) going to make, but I fully support higher education, that’s why I’m a board member here."

"If it comes to it, we’ll certainly advocate for funding, and the importance of higher education for our country."

The backstory

Though a plagiarism complaint exclusively against Jackson was eventually filed with MSU, the pressure on the dean began when he was implicated in a series of plagiarism stories about top officials at Harvard, which received pickup in the national media last January. 

Around that time, pressure was mounting on Harvard’s then-President Gay to resign, following her appearance at a congressional hearing on university leaders’ handling of campus protests related to the Israel-Hamas war. Gay’s testimony at the hearing sparked outrage, and was deemed by many to fail to condemn antisemitic hate speech on Harvard's campus. 

Mere days after her testimony, Rufo, the conservative journalist and activist, published a story on his Substack detailing allegations of plagiarism by Gay. The story was covered by national media, and exacerbated the already-mounting pressure on the embattled president.  

Next in the saga came a story from the conservative outlet, The Washington Free Beacon, which detailed plagiarism allegations against Harvard Chief Diversity Officer Sherri Ann Charleston. 

"It’s not just Claudine Gay," the story opened. 

That story examines a 2014 academic article that Charleston co-authored with her husband LaVar Charleston and, pertinently, Jackson. The Free Beacon report says that the 2014 paper reused material from a 2012 study that LaVar Charleston alone published. The Free Beacon interviewed "experts who reviewed the allegations," who said that Jackson's reuse of material amounts to a "severe breach of research ethics."

"Through that sleight of hand, Sherri Ann Charleston effectively took credit for her husband’s work," the Free Beacon story said. Months later, in October, the Free Beacon published a story detailing a plagiarism complaint exclusively against Jackson that was filed with MSU that week.

"The complaint includes nearly 40 examples of plagiarism that span nine of Jackson’s papers, including his Ph.D. thesis, and range from single sentences to full pages," the Free Beacon story focusing on Jackson said.

It included side-by-side comparisons of papers authored by Jackson, and papers he allegedly plagiarized from. 

What one person who Jackson allegedly plagiarized from said

The Free Beacon story features comments from one scholar, Henry Mintzberg, a professor of management at McGill University, who Jackson allegedly plagiarized from especially egregiously. 

The Free Beacon story said Mintzberg sent the reporter a "garbled response" and quotes him as writing "A lot of it is clearly not plagiarism, but coming to the same conclusions."

Mintzberg’s quote continues, "I don’t know what he references of my work, but there are places where he could have. There may be some passages that are close, and should’ve been quoted; I’ll leave you to list what those are. Overall, this does not look to me to be a blatant example of plagiarism, certainly not much that you have highlighted."

The State News reached out to all of the living scholars that the Free Beacon story named as those who Jackson plagiarized from for comment on whether or not, in their view, Jackson did indeed plagiarize their work. 

Mintzberg was the only one to respond by time of publication, though he initially said "I am sorry, but this is the first I hear of this," and in a separate email, "By the way, I never heard of the Washington free beacon, so how could I have been quoted there? Would you be able to send me that article?"

A State News reporter emailed a link to the Free Beacon story to which Mintzberg replied, "I do recall a conversation like this faintly, it doesn’t look like something that could be made up. And as I look at some of the examples, I would probably say the same thing today."

"I can’t comment on the decisions that were made finally," Mintzberg said.