The chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer of Columbia University's medical school, Alade McKen, plagiarized extensively in his doctoral dissertation, lifting entire pages of material, without attribution, from sources that include Wikipedia, according to a complaint submitted to the university on Wednesday.

The allegations implicate approximately a fifth of McKen's 163-page dissertation, "'UBUNTU' I am because we are: A case study examining the experiences of an African-centered Rites of Passage program within a community-based organization," submitted to Iowa State University's School of Education in 2021. More than two of those pages are a near-verbatim facsimile of Wikipedia's entry on "Afrocentric education," which is not cited anywhere in the dissertation. ...

"The passages you shared can definitely be classified as plagiarism," Ezeanya-Esiobu told the Washington Free Beacon. McKen lifts pages worth of material from Ezeanya-Esiobu's 2019 chapter "A Faulty Foundation: Historical Origins of Formal Education Curriculum in Africa," published in the Frontiers in African Business Research book series.