The University of Maryland launched an investigation last September into its College Park president after accusations that cut to the heart of academic integrity: plagiarism.

Ten months later, the probe into the research work of President Darryll Pines is still ongoing, causing consternation on the campus. The university’s own internal documents show that most of these reviews should take far less time.

Some faculty members wonder why it has extended so long.

“It just feels like something weird is going on,” said Nick Seybert, a business professor and faculty senator at the university. “It doesn’t feel like they’re taking it very seriously.”

Mike Sandler, a spokesperson for the University System of Maryland, said that Ropes & Gray, an outside law firm, was hired to oversee the investigation. He did not share the cost or length of the process.

Ropes & Gray did not respond to requests for comment.

“These types of review can take some time to conclude,” Sandler wrote in an email. “In many cases, these reviews can take longer than a year.”

Universities have become a hot topic politically in recent years, said Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism expert.

“Academics who are seen as either DEI hires or [having a] connection with liberal viewpoints regarding race have been targeted for plagiarism investigations,” he said.

Sometimes, Bailey said, those accusations are baseless. Other times, they have more weight.

Pines, who began teaching at the university in 1995, became president in 2020 after a career teaching aerospace engineering. During his tenure atop the university, he has pushed to invest more in financial aid, artificial intelligence and sustainability.

He previously faced controversy for giving a presentation that listed Asian students as white instead of students of color. Pines also faced criticism after he allowed a pro-Palestinian campus group to host a vigil on the anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel. After backlash, he canceled the event, which still occurred after a federal judge intervened.

The university‘s lengthy policy on plagiarism includes details about how it usually maps out its probes.

An appointed research integrity officer has 60 days to determine if there is reason to investigate a claim of plagiarism, and then should complete the investigation within 120 days. But, according to the policy, investigations could last longer. The policy does not impose a deadline.

The plagiarism allegation first surfaced in a story by The Daily Wire, a conservative news outlet that had previously raised similar allegations against other academics.

The article alleged that 1,500 of the 5,000-word paper co-authored by Pines and published in 2002 was taken directly from a tutorial website called “Surfing the Wavelets,” which was last updated in 1996. Pines was a professor at the University of Maryland when the paper was published.

The Daily Wire’s stories have been criticized by some for targeting prominent academic scholars who are also Black. But on campus, the allegations against Pines still trouble some faculty members.

“There can definitely be racially driven motivations to dig this kind of stuff up, and I am sympathetic to that,” Seybert said. “But that doesn’t take away from the fact that he likely copied 1,500 words of a paper.”

In a statement to The Daily Wire, Katie Lawson, a university spokesperson, defended the use of “common language in introductory material,” and wrote that it “is not uncommon for historical and technical reviews to use recurrent language.”

That statement was more concerning than the plagiarism accusation, according to Seybert.

“You’re holding students to strict accountability standards for plagiarism, and then you have a president saying it’s standard scientific practice to use common language,” he said. “That’s such a bad lesson.”

Kim Coles, a professor in the university’s English department, defended Pines.

“I was, and still am, skeptical,” she said. “When these charges are leveled against Black professors, particularly Black presidents, it seems dubious.”

Coles said she didn’t think The Daily Wire would’ve “trolled through 250 papers had that not been the case.”

She pointed to other prominent Black academics who have been accused of plagiarism, adding that she felt they had all been targeted because of their skin color.

In 2023, Harvard University President Claudine Gay was accused of plagiarizing sections from multiple published papers. That same year, Alade McKen, who was in charge of diversity, equity and inclusion at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center, was accused of plagiarizing parts of his doctoral dissertation. And in 2018, Hobart and William Smith Colleges President Gregory Vincent was accused of plagiarizing his published work.

All three of those college leaders have since resigned.

Bailey said that the allegation against Pines was “incredibly serious.”

“Roughly 1,500 words were copied near verbatim, besides changing the UK spellings,” he said. “It’s pretty much identical, and the text is not cited at all.”

He said it’s likely that the outside investigation is spending time studying Pines’ other papers to see if there’s a pattern of plagiarism.

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