The University System of Maryland announced Friday it has cleared its College Park president of allegations that he plagiarized a paper published during his time as a professor at the university.

The claims against Darryll Pines first surfaced in The Daily Wire, a conservative news outlet, last year. The investigation, conducted by the law firm Ropes & Gray, took more than a year, causing concern on the campus.

University officials said in a statement that Pines had cooperated with the probe, which they described as thorough, with three rounds of external review.

“The investigation committee found no evidence of misconduct on the part of President Pines,” said an email sent by system officials Friday.

“The committee did determine that the two works highlighted last year contained select portions of text previously published by another author in the introductory sections. In a separate text, a discrepancy in assignment of authorship was made.”

The Daily Wire alleged that 1,500 words of the 5,000 in the paper co-authored by Pines and published in 2002 were taken directly from a tutorial website called “Surfing the Wavelets,” which was last updated in 1996.

In a statement to faculty following the plagiarism claims, Pines wrote, “In the past year, like many of my fellow higher education presidents and chancellors, I have come under scrutiny and attack, both personally and professionally, for a variety of reasons, including aspersions cast on my decision-making and my values.”

He added, “While I am steadfast that our results, data and findings are sound, I acknowledge recurrent language in the introductory sections.

“While I do not believe there is merit to these claims, an impartial review is in the best interest of the university.”

The university concluded that Pines “was not found responsible for the inclusion of such text in any of the three works, nor was he found responsible for scholarly misconduct of any kind.”

University officials said the investigation had expanded to other papers that Pines had co-authored.

The Board of Regents for the University System and the chancellor said they continued to have faith in Pines.

The allegations came after other prominent Black academics were accused of plagiarism, including Harvard University President Claudine Gay and Alade McKen, who was in charge of diversity, equity and inclusion at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center.

Pines was not the only college president in the state accused of plagiarizing parts of his dissertation.

Heidi Anderson, president of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, was accused in September of plagiarizing parts of her doctoral dissertation. The system is reviewing that allegation.

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

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