November 24, 2004

When Plagiarism's Shadow Falls on Admired Scholars

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/c.gifAMBRIDGE, Mass. - When it comes to its students, Harvard University policy shows little tolerance for plagiarism.

Undergraduates found guilty of "misusing sources" will "likely" be required to withdraw from the college for at least two semesters. They will lose all coursework they have done that semester (unless it is virtually over), along with the money they have paid for it. They must also leave Cambridge.

With such a policy for students, what is Harvard to do when two of its most prominent law professors, Charles J. Ogletree Jr. and Laurence H. Tribe, publicly acknowledge that they have unintentionally misused sources, as happened this fall? Weighing in on the matter, Harvard's student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, said the university appeared to have one set of rules for its famous professors, and another for its students. In an editorial about Professor Ogletree, The Crimson wrote in September that his transgression would likely have resulted in expulsion for a Harvard undergraduate.

The revelations came amid an atmosphere of heightened concern about academic integrity, with the increasing reliance on the Internet as a research tool making it both easier to plagiarize, whether intentionally or not, and to catch those who do.

Colleges and universities across the country have been cracking down on student plagiarism, adopting honor codes and in some cases using sophisticated search engines to ferret out cheats. Students and scholars alike can be tossed out for plagiarizing.

The two professors said their errors were accidental, and no scholar has suggested otherwise, but as Howard Gardner, a Harvard professor of cognition and education, pointed out, many students could make the same argument.

"I've never had a student tell me that they intentionally plagiarized," said Professor Gardner, who studies moral and ethical standards among academics and other professionals.

In a mea culpa posted on his Web site, Professor Ogletree said that several paragraphs in his 380-page book "All Deliberate Speed" (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), a memoir about his life as a child of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, had been taken "practically verbatim" from a Yale law professor, Jack M. Balkin. The error, he said, had occurred in his rush to meet a final deadline, when a pair of research assistants inserted the material into a draft of his manuscript and accidentally dropped the quotation marks and attribution. 

The six duplicate paragraphs were discovered by an anonymous law professor, who sent letters to both the dean of the law school, Elena Kagan, and Professor Balkin. "It was a crushing experience," Professor Ogletree said, referring to his discovery of the error.

He immediately notified his publisher, he said, which then inserted an errata note in all the undistributed books.

After Professor Tribe, one of the nation's leading constitutional law scholars, publicly expressed sympathy for Professor Ogletree, and raised questions on a legal affairs Web site about the "larger problem" of "writers, political office seekers, judges and other high government officials passing off the work of others as their own," The Weekly Standard reported that Professor Tribe's 1985 book about the selection of Supreme Court justices, "God Save This Honorable Court," (Random House) had "perhaps an 'uncomfortable reliance' " on a book by an emeritus University of Virginia professor, Henry J. Abraham.

The article was prompted by a tip from a law professor who wished to remain anonymous, according to Joseph Bottum, The Standard's books and arts editor, who wrote the article. Mr. Bottum said he found identical 19-word sentences in both books, and more than a couple of dozen instances of similar wording.

Professor Tribe, who had been named recently by Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers, as one of 17 university professors, the highest academic ranking, immediately issued a public apology. His "well-meaning effort to write a book accessible to a lay audience through the omission of any footnotes or endnotes - in contrast to the practice I have always followed in my scholarly writing - came at an unacceptable cost: my failure to attribute some of the material The Weekly Standard identified."

His book, however, did credit Professor Abraham's book, "Justices and Presidents," (Oxford University Press, 1974) as the "leading political history of Court appointments."

Professor Tribe declined to comment on the matter. His office released a letter that it said Professor Tribe sent to Professor Abraham 20 years ago, along with a copy of Professor Tribe's manuscript; Professor Tribe wrote that he had drawn on Professor Abraham's book, in part, and asked for his reactions.

At the behest of Dean Kagan of the law school, Derek Bok, the former Harvard president, and Robert Clark, the former dean of the law school, examined Professor Ogletree's book. Dean Kagan said publicly that she concurred with their finding: Professor Ogletree's error was "a serious scholarly transgression." Professor Ogletree said he had been disciplined, but neither he nor Harvard officials would be specific.

Professor Tribe's lapse is still under review, according to Harvard officials.

"Academic integrity is crucial to everything we do at Harvard Law School, and I feel very strongly about upholding those principles," said Dean Kagan, who declined to talk about either case.

Professor Tribe's book, which argued that the Senate should exert more influence over the selection of Supreme Court justices, is widely seen as having helped Democrats defeat the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork. While some scholars see lapses like Professor Tribe's as an erosion of academic standards, others view the Standard's article on Professor Tribe - along with another one that suggested Professor Ogletree's tenure should be revoked because of his error - as an ideological attack.

"It's payback time," said Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University Law School. 

Professor Gardner said that while he did not know the specifics of the two cases, his concern about the underlying issues had prompted him to release a "statement about plagiarism."

"When norms of scholarship are violated in a material way - by students or by teachers," he wrote, "significant consequences should follow."

Some scholars argued that Professor Ogletree's statement was a public humiliation more severe than any punishment that could be meted out to a student.

"The discovery is the punishment," Professor Gillers said.

Stephen W. Stromberg, a Harvard senior who is the Crimson's editorial chairman, said, "Realistically, you're not going to fire Laurence Tribe or Charles Ogletree. They're both star professors who are still incredible assets for the law school."

According to Harvard's student plagiarism policy described in "Writing With Sources," a booklet that is required reading for freshmen, the university gives some latitude to undergraduates who misuse sources "out of genuine confusion." The administrative board, which handles undergraduate plagiarism cases, may decide to place such students on probation, according to the booklet. Last year six undergraduates had to withdraw from the college for academic dishonesty, which includes plagiarism.

Along with the growing use of the Internet for research, some scholars say the increasing reliance of scholars upon research assistants in the quest to publish increases the risk of the sort of academic error made by Professor Ogletree.

"This is what happens when you have managed books," Professor Gardner said. 

Managed books, Professor Gardner said, is a recent phenomenon in which some academics rely on assistants to help them produce books, in some cases allowing the assistants to write first drafts.

"Scholarship - the core activity of the university - cannot be delegated to assistants," Professor Gardner said.