PROFESSOR LAURENCE TRIBE -- Harvard Crimson article

The Harvard Crimson (the undergraduate student newspaper) published an article this morning in which Professor Tribe began confronting the charges of scholarly misconduct contained in the Weekly Standard article. We will await his more detailed statement or letter to the editor further addressing these charges, and the results of journalists' interviews with him, before offering any commentary.

Below is the text of an e-mail we sent today to various media outlets summarizing part of the Harvard Crimson article and linking to the Weekly Standard article and this webblog. We thank Professor Glenn Reynolds of "Instapundit" fame for mentioning our webblog. See: http://instapundit.com/archives/018066.php. We recommend his post. It offers some perspective, warning against any rush to judgment, with a discussion of the perils of "parallel-hunting." It links to a chapter on plagiarism from an ethics book co-authored by Professor Reynolds. It links to important commentary by Professor Mark Tushnet.

Finally, Professor Reynolds observes that "beyond questions of plagiarism[,] [g]etting together a bunch of research assistants and outsourcing a book to them, with the product of their work appearing under one's own name, isn't exactly immoral -- but it isn't scholarship, either. ... Whether it results in plagiarism, or simply a shoddy product, you're not getting the work product of the person whose name is on the cover." In this connection, it will be interesting to see Professor Tribe's comments on the Weekly Standard''s report that a major legal newspaper in 1993 cited several sources to the effect that much of the book in question was written for Professor Tribe by a first-year law student.

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27 September 2004
PROFESSOR TRIBE ADMITS TO “SOME” PLAGIARISM
AuthorSkeptics@hotmail.com

In the third plagiarism story to hit Harvard Law School in the past 12 months, Professor Laurence Tribe has admitted to “some” plagiarism of Professor Henry Abraham’s classic 1974 book on Supreme Court appointments. See article in today’s Harvard Crimson, “Prof Admits to Misusing Source,” here:
http://www.thecrimson.com/today/article503493.html (admitting “‘failure to attribute some of the material The Weekly Standard identified’” in its recent article, see here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/674eijco.asp,
although apparently not explaining what material he believes was properly attributed).

The Harvard Crimson article reports that last week Harvard president Lawrence Summers stated that despite the plagiarism accusations against two Harvard Law School professors made in the past year (Alan Dershowitz and Charles Ogletree), “he did not see ‘a big trend’ of plagiarism problems at the Law School,” but “a third case would change his mind. ‘If you had a third one, then ... okay, you get to say this is a special thing, a focused problem at the Law School’....”

Despite the “crystal-clear definition of plagiarism” under Harvard’s rules applicable to students, under which Tribe’s admitted failure to attribute would be a violation if done by a student, the Harvard Crimson article states that Professor Dershowitz is defending Professor Tribe, in part, on the ground that “guidelines in the legal profession are murkier,” and there is “a ‘cultural difference’ between sourcing in the legal profession and other academic disciplines.”

For more background on stories involving the four Harvard-affiliated scholars accused of plagiarism in the past two years, see our webblog, at http://authorskeptics.blogspot.com, recently discussed in the“Instapundit” weblog, at http://instapundit.com/archives/018066.php.

AuthorSkeptics@hotmail.com