“White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo accused of plagiarism

Robin DiAngelo, an author and “anti-racism consultant” who rose to fame and made a fortune by criticizing white people for their inherent bigotry, was accused of plagiarizing the work of two Asian-American scholars in her 2004 doctoral thesis.

A complaint filed with the University of Washington and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon lists 20 examples of alleged plagiarism in the dissertation “White Fragility” by the author of “Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis.”

Among the examples cited are two paragraphs copied almost entirely from Thomas Nakayama, an Asian-American, and his co-author Robert Krizek of Northeastern University, in which DiAngelo fails to adequately cite the source.

Another example in the complaint shows that DiAngelo allegedly handled a paragraph by Asian American professor Stacey Lee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with inaccuracy.

It did not make it clear that Lee had summarized the work of scientist David Theo Goldberg, but presented the information in such a way that it appeared as if DiAngelo had written the summary himself.

Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, told the Beacon that such a move would amount to “forgery” in academic circles.

“It is never appropriate to use a secondary source without acknowledging it, and it is even worse to pass it off as your own words,” said the former rector of Boston University. “That is plagiarism.”

In the “Statement of Responsibility” on her own website, DiAngelo goes into great detail about how she claims to take responsibility in a variety of different contexts when it comes to her business and personal dealings with non-whites.

“Always cite and acknowledge the work of BIPOC [black, indigenous and people of color] People who have shaped your thinking,” she writes in a section that explicitly deals with how to correctly cite scientific citations.

“If you use a term or idea that comes from a BIPOC person, cite its source.”

As the Beacon points out, DiAngelo's status as a doctor and her doctorate in multicultural education have been crucial to marketing her book, her expensive speaking events and her therapeutic seminars, where participants pay up to $40,000 per person to learn all about their racism.

She is often officially referred to as “Dr. Robin DiAngelo” or “Robin DiAngelo, PhD” in marketing materials, including in the header of her own website, where she claims to have coined the term “white fragility” in a 2011 academic article.

The allegations against DiAngelo follow a spate of similar accusations that have recently been made at the highest levels of American science.

Former Harvard President Claudine Gay faced dozens of plagiarism allegations before resigning in disgrace in January. Her Columbia University colleague, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, who resigned earlier this month following a wave of anti-Israel protests on her campus, came under fire for allegedly cheating a former subordinate out of credit for a 1994 research paper.

DiAngelo's controversial book, White Fragility, received little attention when it was published in 2018, but became a New York Times bestseller after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. During this time, DiAngelo appeared regularly on television and frequently gave paid speaking engagements.

Although the book became popular when the national spotlight was clearly on racial issues, it also had many critics. Journalist and author Matt Taibbi called it “pseudo-intellectual nonsense” and linguist John McWhorter called the book a “racist treatise” in an article for The Atlantic.

DiAngelo did not respond to The Post's request for comment, sent through the contact form on its website.

The University of Washington did not respond to an email seeking comment.