Kamala Harris this week faced accusations of plagiarism over multiple sections of her book, “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer.”
This is not the first such accusation, Harris has been accused of lifting a story from Martin Luther King. In 1965, King described “a moment in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother.” King recounted how the policeman asked the little girl “‘What do you want?’ and the little girl looked at him straight in the eye and answered, ‘Fee-dom’.” Harris would later tell the story of how her mother asked her “Kamala, what’s wrong? What do you want?” and I wailed back, “Fweedom.”
As found by various media outlets, the new allegations from her book would qualify as plagiarism despite the denial of the campaign. It is doubtful it will matter to many voters in the hardened political silos of this election. However, it could prompt a long-needed discussion about how we handle plagiarism in academia.
Here is a slightly expanded version of my Hill column:
“I wrote my own book, unlike Kamala Harris, who copied hers from Wikipedia.” That criticism, from vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, was only the latest salvo in what has become known as the “the Plagiarism War.”
Like virtually every aspect of our lives, plagiarism has become politics by another means. It is hardly new. President Joe Biden admitted to plagiarism long ago. The seriousness of the allegation often depends on how sympathetic the media is toward the author.
Vice President Kamala Harris was accused of plagiarizing her 2009 book, “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer.” Immediately, the New York Times ran a column citing a “plagiarism consultant” named Jonathan Bailey who suggested that, while Harris plagiarized from sources like Wikipedia, it was nothing to “make a big deal of it.”
Bailey took to social media Monday to confirm he had not done a full analysis of the book and that his “quotes were based on information provided to me by the reporters and spoke only about those passages.”
The response set off conservative media, which argued that the mainstream media would have had a very different response if the allegations were made against Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal.”
The fact is, an opponent of Trump could probably copy “War and Peace” word-for-word and would still be showered with literary awards in this political environment.
After Harvard President Claudine Gay became embroiled in the controversy over antisemitism on campuses, conservative activist Christopher Rufo and writer Christopher Brunet scanned her work for possible plagiarism. They found numerous examples in her work, going back to her 1997 dissertation. Soon after, Harvard’s diversity chief was accused of more than 40 incidences of plagiarism going back to her own dissertation.
The controversy leaves many professors in an uncomfortable silence, while others have pledged to weaponize reviews by targeting conservative academics in a hunt for academic wretches to hoist in retaliation. Indeed, for intellectuals who cherish the insulated world of academia, the tit-for-tat campaigns are apparently about as unnerving as a tax audit going back to your teenaged babysitting gigs.
Yet perhaps the reflexive defense of Harris could prove a positive development if critics are willing to put hypocrisy aside and embrace a new approach.
The fact is, much, if not most, non-student plagiarism is not due to a lack of ethics but a lack of diligence. It is the difference between negligent and intentional acts.
Most books and academic works take months or years to complete. Hundreds or thousands of sources can be reviewed and incorporated into a publication. In the age of computers, it is extremely easy to cut and paste your way into a plagiarism problem. Quotation marks can be lost or omitted by authors or research assistants; attributions can be omitted in basic background development. It is all too easy to lose track of original sources in production.
That fact is evident from past plagiarism controversies involving accomplished figures, including Harvard professors Lawrence Tribe and Charles Ogletree, as well as historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Steven Ambrose.
These writers have well-earned reputations that are the product of their own insights. Alex Haley’s fame was not the product of the plagiarized material in his work on “Roots.” When viewed in isolation, a paragraph or multiple references can appear damning, but these often arise in works that reach hundreds of pages.
There is a tendency to treat all such allegations as monolithic and equally culpable. Yet even homicide has lesser offenses on a range from murder in the first degree to simple manslaughter.
Moreover, there remains a striking lack of uniformity in how such allegations are treated. For popular figures like Goodwin or Ogletree, the allegations were mere speed bumps in their careers. For others who may be less popular or well connected, the same acts can result in contract terminations or even the stripping of tenure. There are no sentencing guidelines for academics and the result can turn as much on the popularity of the person as the gravity of the offense.
Defining Plagiarism
In the first century, the Roman poet Martial was upset when he recognized some verses in the work of another poet. He immediately declared the man a kidnapper or “plagiarius” of his words. With that, the term plagiarism was born.
Despite its ancient origins, the actual definition of plagiarism remains dangerously vague.
Even when an academic cites such work, the failure to do so in a specific paragraph or line can be charged as plagiarism. It is common to rely on the work of others for background history or cases that lay the foundation for a new approach. Harris’s defenders insist that much of the lifted material was background support for her own arguments.
Plagiarism hawks often dismiss such habits as a “pawn sacrifice,” where a writer will “put the citation somewhere else, or you put the citation in and have the exact words, but you forget the quotation marks.” While hawks may view this as a “tell,” it can also be an honest mistake or poor habit. In such cases, the academic is citing the work but fails to do so sufficiently.
Then there is the concept of “self-plagiarism,” which many of us view as something of an oxymoron. Universities are now cracking down on academics using their own material. Some of us have criticized this effort, but it is now taking root in many departments. Universities threaten action if you “recycle ideas” from earlier work.
Harvard’s Diversity Chief Sherri Ann Charleston was hit with a complaint alleging dozens of incidents, including self-plagiarism by her husband. The latter allegation is that her sole peer-reviewed journal article—coauthored with her husband, LaVar Charleston, in 2014 was a recycling of an earlier work. LaVar Charleston was the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is accused of pawning off the old material as a new work with his wife.
The problem is that many academics write papers restating prior work or ideas before pushing them into new areas or further evolutions. Some writers are often starting where they left off, repeating earlier work and ideas before advancing the work further in a new paper.
The definition of the act does not establish the gravity of the act. Treating plagiarism as a capital offense ignores that there are vastly different levels of culpability.
Antebellum Plagiarism
Just as we need a better understanding of what plagiarism is, we may need to recognize changes in the ability to spot it before publication. For the last four decades, academic work has become faster and arguably more precarious with the ease of computer storage and copying. Yet, there is now technology that may counter that danger and reduce the excuse for academics. Various systems, including Artificial Intelligence-based systems, can check work for potential plagiarism.
If these systems prove effective and cost efficient, we may need to adopt an antebellum and postbellum classification for plagiarism cases. The war over the Gay scholarship happens to fall on this very line. The availability of plagiarism software makes future violations less excusable.
If these systems prove effective and cost efficient, we may need to adopt an “antebellum” and “postbellum” classification for plagiarism cases. The war over the Gay scholarship happens to fall on this very line. The availability of plagiarism software may make future violations less excusable.
Indeed, in a recent survey, more than 78 percent of faculty said that they used software to check the originality of student work. It may be time for academics to direct such programs on their own work as a check for inadvertent attribution problems.
I decided, for the first time, to give these systems a try for my new book on free speech. “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” is over 400 pages. I decided that I would use the work to compare these services and share the results.
I chose two of the leading services: Ithenticate and Copyleaks. Both are pricey options. For Ithenticate, I had to break the book up into 25,000 word parts and pay roughly $100 per part. That resulted in hundreds of dollars for a complete review. Copyleaks charges roughly the same.
In both systems, the review is blazingly fast and impressive. With Ithenticate, you can literally watch the results pop up in minutes.
Both reports were a bit of a heart stopper. They showed a percentage of hits that could be as high as 30 percent for my material. After I was resuscitated, my assistant explained that each of the hits showed less than one percent overlap or block quotes from cases or other works. Most were hits from something on the Internet. I had two individuals review each of the hits to make sure that there were no substantive attribution problems. That also cost money and time.
That is obviously expensive and labor intensive. Moreover, both systems could use a bit more analytical content rather than just assembling hits. However, it also offers some peace of mind. It does not guarantee that you will not be the next snared in a plagiarism scandal, but it certainly reduces the odds for you.
As these systems improve and the costs drop, there may be a point where the failure to put your own work through such a source check becomes unreasonable and even unforgivable. The future of academic plagiarism may indeed fall along an antebellum line of technology.
Harris’s alleged plagiarism is unlikely to change many minds in this election. She could have begun her book with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” and it would have been at least poignant, if plagiarized.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Philosophical question: If you hire someone to write your book and that person plagiarizes, compounded with your failure to even read your book, are you then culpable for plagiarism? Or is that a legal question? Or ethical*?
* Ethics has departed from politics.
“If you hire someone to write your book and that person plagiarizes, compounded with your failure to even read your book, are you then culpable for plagiarism?”
Yes, absolutely. In fact, using a ghostwriter is imo a fundamental intellectual dishonesty. And I somewhat disagree with Turley’s hand waving about the ease with which plagiarism may go unnoticed by an author. If the author did not review what he or she wrote, after that fact, then that author is too lazy for anyone to consider publishing. If the author does review the writing prior to submission, there is no question that he or she would be able to distinguish his or her writing from quoted material by style, and make the requisite corrections to unquoted and/or uncited material.
I would explain it to Harris, et al, by pointing to the music industry where plagiarism can lead to litigation and substantial compensations. The music industry is business – not academics – but I believe it has some bearing on the topic, if only as an ethical matter. I searched and returned this quote: “Based on the provided search results, here are some examples of who sampled who: The Winstons’ “Amen, Brother” (1969) is the most sampled song of all time, according to WhoSampled. It has been sampled over 6,178 times, including by artists such as. . .(cut). . .WhoSampled’s database contains over 1,094,000 songs, 336,000 artists, and continuous daily additions, so there are likely many more examples of ‘who sampled who’ beyond what is listed here.” My follow-up is ethical musicians credit inspiration. They don’t rip-off colleagues.
I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics
Plagiarize
Plagiarize
Let no one else’s work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don’t shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobachevsky_(song)
Very interesting professor.
Good on you for taking the time and spending the money to analyze your own book.
I do believe you are correct. In the future, plagiarism will become more and more difficult. Be interesting to see who pushes back against the use of plagiarism tools. I am sure they will call it “racist.”
As for Harris and plagiarism, no surprise. A continuing trend.
There are now millions of books “out there” and a diminishing audience with the time and mental capacity to read a book that is longer than 300 pages. This deluge of “books” is best described by Stephen King as “diarrhea of the word processor.”
I often wonder if the books written by political candidates and politicians are little more than a money laundering scheme. They write a book and a rich donor or donors buy up large quantities of the book and pay the political author a lot of money. Then, when a favor is needed, like the Godfather, they cash in their chips. They probably shred their large purchases and sell the remains to make toilet paper. Who would read a book by Kamala, Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders?
There are few authors who can get their work published and fewer yet, especially if they are not infamous or famous, who actually get a book deal. Excellent writing is very difficult and it can take years and years of research and grinding work to produce a good book. If an author does not have a deal or the funds to hire a good editor, then the work is even more difficult!
In the vast ocean of the internet information and misinformation, I can see how researching what is and what is not valid would be difficult. However, if the work is original and descriptive a person’s own life or life’s work then it should be a slam dunk.
E.M.
Great comment.
Problem is, many people see themselves as the hero in their book. But their life is not nearly as interesting as they wished or would hope for.
E.M. posted: I often wonder if the books written by political candidates and politicians are little more than a money laundering scheme. They write a book and a rich donor or donors buy up large quantities of the book and pay the political author a lot of money.
Bernie Sanders has already done that, using his book as a campaign money laundering scheme. Well documented by Peter Schweizer, who tracked down all the money from the Clinton Crime Cartel and then afterwards Biden White House Crime LLC:
Sanders’ political campaign committees for the Vermont independent bought $843,000 worth of books from his publishers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2023/09/27/bernie-sanders-has-hauled-in-25-million-in-book-payments-since-2011/
Schweizer also detailed how Bernie Sanders, the commie that has figured out a wealthy style of communist capitalism, then diverted campaign funds into his family by them running and owning the businesses that took a cut of campaign cash and from his wife serving as his “media buyer” while being the bagmen paying for those actually doing campaign advertising. About 15% of all the campaign advertising cash spent…
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/bernie-sanders-public-service-rich-peter-schweizer
Bernie The Commie Sanders became a millionaire the same way as his fellow Marxist totalitarian Democrats Clinton and Biden did: good ol’ Democrat graft and corruption. But according to them, it’s Trump who got wealthy being corrupt – not them!
Harris, as far as we can tell, is like John Kerry in that she only falls in love with and marries millionaires; no graft or corruption required to get rich that way.
Peter Schweizer’s book “Profiles In Corruption” is the well documented and well footnoted exposure of Democrat corruption that the Democrat-Media Political Complex refuses to acknowledge even exists.
* Were Bernie’s books left in a drawer in hotel rooms?
Dear Mr. Turley, I am not at all surprised by this allegation against Ms. Harris. It is worth looking into. It may change a few Democratic minds or a few independent voters. Will the press give this any airtime? That’s the larger question here. My guess is the press will sweep it under the rugs as they have with the truth (confirmed by various witnesses) regarding Harris’ husband. Involving his slapping his fiancé and impregnating his children’s nanny. This story would be refreshed each 24-hour news cycle if this was a Republican candidate.
I used to require undergraduate students to submit their notes with their term papers as a control on plagiarism because I could have as many as 120 students in discussion section every term when I was a teaching assistant and no fewer than seventy when I was teaching undergraduate courses. This, of course, is more difficult if the students use computers to take notes.
I did not require graduate students to submit notes because I knew them personally and I had often read what they cited myself and I knew of what level of work they were capable.
The problem is, as Professor Turley notes, not a new one, but it is a serious one because if an author plagiarizes a significant amount of materiel, or crucial parts of his work, then he is essentially committing fraud. On occasion what appears to be be plagiarism is merely recklessness, but if there are repeated instances in a single work, then it is unlikely to be recklessness since academics, unlike journalists, do not work against deadlines.
Self-plagiarism is trickier, especially since most academics are specialists who repeatedly deal with the same or very similar topics, e.g., a historian writing about Nazi Germany would inevitably repeat himself, if not in the same words. Again, the problem become more difficult with computers because cutting and pasting is much too easy at the same time that proofreading is more difficult because it is easier to catch errors of all kind in a print document than it is to do so with one on a computer screen.
An earlier comment that politicians and others who are not professional writers use ghost-writers to research and write books is correct and places those works in an entirely different category from those by academics and professional writers. Harris is clearly neither an academic nor a professional writer (nor is Trump), so it is unlikely that she personally plagiarized the passages Rufo has cited. Even so, she is responsible for a book she claims to have written, regardless of how improbable it is that someone who failed her first bar exam is capable of writing a serious book on the law, although, to be fair, anything is possible in politics.
Thanks for an interesting article on the phenomenon of plagiarism; in Kamala’s specific case, the vast majority of the book was almost certainly ghostwritten anyway, as with any book by a politician since perhaps Churchill, and the lazy editing job was as certainly delegated. Whoever said “Good artists copy; great artists steal” would be in very hot water today.
Cannot make this up…
Who in their right mind would vote for more of this Democrat Marxist nonsense. I think Trump did a great job his first term, the disruption to our country during his tenure came from the left subverting everything the man did for the people. If you can’t see that you’re a blind fool.
Traveler: Very true. And moreover, ain’t nobody who’s ever gonna plagiarize Trump’s words or his take on things! He’s an original!
He’s definitely unique but he’s spot on with almost everything he’s said and done. People only want to hear what they want, the truth is sometimes not always pleasing. $35T in debt
2 proxy wars raging
Enemies at the gate
COG tripled
Tax tax tax, yet they continue on their course to collapse thinking America will fall on their BS Socialism revision of America. Not gonna happen!
It won’t change minds, but I believe she is guilty of plagiarism. It knocked her boss out of the 1988 presidential race. Copying passages from Wikipedia should be a disqualifier. It will be meaningless to Harris and her team. It Harris was running based on her character, it would matter. But her campaign is about ginning up hatred for the opponent, nothing more, nothing less.
* Her campaign is about destroying the constitution and the United States. It is now
->The Americas.
The enemy is apparent. Adaptation to a world without the USA is the future.
Young people may opt for sterilization. Many will. Who’d leave people behind in Hell.
They sat at your table and ate your food, Judas. You bought a paupers graveyard.
PT , why was it necessary to defend Gay? They’re only there to raid Harvard’s coffers.
On The View when asked what she will do differently than Biden: “Not a thing comes to mind.”
On Fox News: “Let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, fresh and new ideas.”
How can anyone reconcile these two statements? This is more than mental gymnastic, it’s simply mental! No one can be so obtuse can they?
Well, apparently plagiarism is one of the many things that didn’t come to her mind. They’re both serial plagiarists.
Are we that surprised that two of the most ridiculous candidates of all time for President, Biden and Harris, are also serial plagiarists? After this, we should make plagiarism a felony.
Harris just plagiarized Barack Obama. During a 2008 campaign event, Barack Obama made a comment about the difficulties some people face in obtaining voter ID cards, including a reference to the potential lack of access to resources like Kinko’s.
Will the left ever stop calling their own colored voters too damn stupid to get voter ID?
* O Bama was saying IDs are frauds anyway in the kinkos reference. Just admit and allow the central committee to select its federal members. The ballgame are State governments now. Smart founders—
Obama is an expert on fraud!
* No, if he were an expert he’d have left after the 1st term of his fraud.
Kamela will say or do whatever her mulatto marxist handlers or the CCP tells her, there is zero chance they will ever allow her to give an independent thought, if one were to happen.
It’s funny because the right believes this to be a flaw, whereas the left believes this to be a feature.
“Is Kamala Harris a Plagiarist” or is she a Socialist, Marxist, Communist?
She’s a weed head party girl.
D) All of the above
“This is not the first such accusation” of plagiarism.
I actually like it when she plagiarizes. It’s the one time you can understand what she (via others) is saying.
Sam: One of your best!
Sam sayus: I actually like it when she plagiarizes. It’s the one time you can understand what she (via others) is saying.
SAVAGE!!!!!
Sam for the win today!
25,000 word parts x $100 per part = $2,500,000 !?! Yikes.
Or, is each “part” of the manuscript, 25,000 words in length? I suppose the English language is much less precise and unambiguous than Mathematics. My bad.
Perhaps it’s a problem of punctuation. 25,000-word parts is different than 25,000 word-parts and simply 25,000 word parts is ambiguous are, at least, open to interpretation.
“25,000 word parts ”
25,000 is the maximum number of words per submission. He had to make multiple submissions (“parts”).
Self plagarism is nonsense.
You own your ideas and can reuse them however you wish without attribution.
Plagarism by an academic in academic work is a very big deal.
Plagarism by a serious author such as Ambrose or Kearns is a big deal.
Plagarism of often ghost written political screeds is meaningless.
I do not care that Harris cribbed MLK nor would I have beleived her story.
I do not care about the plagarism in her book – I do not consider her a serious enough writer for it to matter.
I presume everything in her book is recycled from elsewhere and just hope for those reading it as if it is important that what is stolen is also correct.
I am not enamored of authors using AI systems to look for plagarism in their own work.
If what you have done is ACTUAL plagarism – YOU KNOW IT, You do not need AI to tell you that you stole the words of another.
These tools are for catching Academics (and students) who steal the work of others.
I am not surprised by Harris’s plagarism. But I do not care.
John: Why quoting one’s self without attribution is considered plagiarism, in part, is because of the implications of copyright law. The original author has a copyright claim from the moment the ideas or thoughts are written down, even if they are not registered with the copyright office. If someone then steals them without attribution (i.e., plagiarizes them), the original author may have a copyright infringement claim against the thief. Also, some publishers, for example, medical and scientific journals, require that authors relinquish to them all copyright rights as a condition of publication. In return for publication, the author voluntarily relinquishes these rights. Should the copyrighted words later be stolen and used by others, the publisher may proceed legally against the thieves. I agree that it sounds illogical that someone could steal her own work but there are factors that can complicate copyright infringement suits if and when this happens for the reasons I’ve mentioned, especially if the original author transferred her copyright to a publisher. Theoretically, the same complication might arise when the published author of a ghost-written manuscript fails to disclose that her words and ideas are those of another.
jjc: Excellent summary.
(I had to sign over copyrights for a year-after-year side gig writing SCOTUS summaries for law and academic text books. It became onerous if and when I later wanted to cite some of those cases in legal commentary or litigation briefs! There’s only so many words you can employ when trying to succinctly explain a decision, opinion or dissent without falling off the rails!)
It appears that karmela is plagiarizing “1984” when she vows to end slavery and weakness because ‘freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.’
Very few writers outside of academia today author their own books. Most use ghost writers or professional commercial sources to draft their books. The possibility (and probability) of plagiarism is greater when the author is not the editor or writer of the manuscript but merely commissioning its production. Self-plagiarism is not a mystery but simply when an author quotes herself without attribution. This may seem like a non-violation but it constitutes a technical violation of the rules just the same. If you quote yourself, cite yourself. It’s as simple as that. Kamala stole words from MLK just as her boss stole words from Neil Kinnock, former Labour Party leader in the UK. Biden paid the price by losing his bid for POTUS. Kamala will likely lose her bid but for many good reasons beyond plagiarism.
I would say that plagiarism is one of her lesser faults. After this woman was laid by Mayor Willie Brown she was stood up by Mayor Willie Brown. She has no skills or experience in actual work.
Harmeet Dhillon has the details on the Tucker Carlson show.
Must watch.
Kamala has never had a thought beyond….climbing up the pole
She is truly ignorant.