Fareed Zakaria ’86 resigned from his position on the Yale Corporation on Monday, 10 days after he was exposed for plagiarism in Time Magazine.
In a letter to University President Richard Levin, Zakaria wrote that he is reexamining his professional life and has decided to “shed some of my other responsibilities” in order to focus on the “core” of his work.
“My service at Yale is the single largest commitment of time, energy, and attention outside of my writing and television work,” Zakaria said. “The work of the Yale Corporation needs and deserves such attention, but I simply do not have the capacity to do it and keep up with my main professional obligations.”
Zakaria, the editor-at-large of Time Magazine and host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, was one of 10 successor trustees on the Corporation, Yale’s highest governing body. He chaired the Corporation’s education policy committee, beginning his second of two possible six-year terms as a successor trustee in July.
Conservative website Newsbusters first noted in an Aug. 10 blog post that a paragraph in Zakaria’s Aug. 20 Time column on gun control closely resembled a portion of an April New Yorker article by Jill Lepore GRD ’95. In the days after the scandal broke, CNN and Time suspended Zakaria and several media outlets, including the New Haven Register, called for him to leave the Corporation.
Zakaria called the incident a “serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault” in an Aug. 10 statement.
Levin told the News on Aug. 10 that the Corporation’s committee on trusteeship, of which Zakaria is a member, would “discuss the process for reviewing the matter,” but the University said Monday that the investigation has been discontinued in light of Zakaria’s resignation. Levin said in a statement that he is “deeply grateful” for Zakaria’s previous work on the Corporation.
Levin declined to comment further on the situation Monday evening.