According to news reports, on April 14, 2005, the president of Harvard and the dean of Harvard Law School issued a joint statement regarding the plagiarism charges made against Professor Laurence H. Tribe, a matter we previously blogged about in these posts (some minor ones excluded):
September 25: Our initial report on the Weekly Standard article by Joseph Bottum.This official statement by Harvard comes four months after Dean Velvel publicly attacked Dean Kagan for her failure to do or say anything about the Tribe plagiarism case, see here, and more than six months after the plagiarism charges first surfaced in the Weekly Standard.
September 27: Our report on the Harvard Crimson article and on comments by Professor Glenn Reynolds (of "Instapundit").
October 3: More links to stories.
October 23: More links to stories. Also, our criticism that, unlike Professors Ogletree and Dershowitz, Professor Tribe had neither made any detailed statement regarding the charges against him, nor made himself available for any interviews concerning the charges.
October 28: Our observation that at the same time Professor Tribe was refusing to address in any detail the charges of unscholarly conduct made against him, he was making detailed charges of unscholarly conduct against the new dean of Stanford Law School
November 10: Our report on Professor Tribe's use of proxies to defend him on the plagiarism charges, and even to assert "facts" on matters as to which these proxies lacked personal knowledge (so at best they were repeating hearsay from Professor Tribe, making obvious he was thereby using the proxies to make public these asserted "facts"). Also, our argument that it would be both more effective and more honorable for Professor Tribe to address the charges further directly, rather than use proxies, particularly proxies who are subordinate to him and to some degree dependent upon him for future advancement.
November 23: Our report on the national television appearance of noted historian, and author of a recent book on plagiarism, Professor Peter Charles Hoffer, in which Professor Hoffer expressed his disappointment with Professor Tribe, who had been his son's constitutional law professor. Of note, as we also mentioned, following up on the information in the Weekly Standard article suggesting much of the 1985 book in question was written for Professor Tribe by a first-year law student (something Professor Tribe did not deny after the article came out), Professor Hoffer stated that rather than being the author of everything which is published under his name, Professor Tribe may be at least to some degree merely a "compiler" of material ghostwritten for him by others. To the best of our knowledge, to date Professor Tribe has not questioned the truth of this charge, which he could do and would do if he actually writes everything which appears under his name and thus could truthfully rebut the charge.
November 26: Our report on a November 24 New York Times article expressing our surprise and disappointment that in contrast to Professor Ogletree, who granted at least two interviews on the problems with his book, even though the reporters who approached him were only at local papers, Professor Tribe refused to grant an interview even to the New York Times. Also, our observations about Professor Tribe's continuing use of proxies, this time his office staff, to publicize as "facts" matters outside their personal knowledge -- in particular, asserted "facts" which it seems the New York Times reporter apparently was unable to confirm as true.
December 18: Our report on Dean Velvel's attack on the Harvard administration, particularly Dean Elena Kagan, for failing or say or do anything further on the topic of Professor Tribe's plagiarism.
March 28: Our report on the parody of Professor Tribe's plagiarism by Harvard law students and their efforts to publicize their parody via the Internet.
The most extensive news article on the statement is in yesterday’s Harvard Crimson, here. Yesterday short articles also appeared in the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald (AP story).
Because we have not yet had an opportunity to read the statement itself and the e-mail from Professor Tribe referenced in the Harvard Crimson article, we will withhold comment on this obviously important development, and will not even characterize the statement, until after we have done so. We hope to post on this within a few days, after we finish a chronological compilation we’re doing of the debate concerning the National Review article on Professor Tribe, previously mentioned here.
However, we must note for immediate attention that although the statement was apparently issued jointly by Harvard president Lawrence Summers and Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan, no copy of the joint statement has been posted on the websites regularly used by Harvard to set forth such official statements. We are concerned about the possibility that the statement was only issued as a press release to journalists, and that Harvard does not plan to post an official copy of the statement on a Harvard website so that members of the public can read the entire statement. This would relegate members of the public to reading descriptions of the statement set forth in news articles, and would not make available to bloggers any definitive official statement to which they can link.
The statement does not appear on the Harvard president’s website, which he routinely uses to make announcements about Harvard matters pertaining to his office, and which he has even used recently to issue statements regarding his controversial remarks made in a largely personal capacity about possibly innate differences in the intellect of men and women. See here and here.
Similarly, the statement does not appear on Harvard Law School’s news site used to make a myriad of announcements regarding matters relating to the school, some relatively minor. See here. For example, this is where the official statement regarding Professor Ogletree’s plagiarism was posted, and where it remains posted. See here.
Perhaps this was a simple oversight. Regardless of why this official statement was not posted on a Harvard website on the day it was released, we hope and expect it will promptly be placed on both the Harvard president’s website and the Harvard Law School news website, which will help minimize any perception that Harvard’s failure to post the official statement is part of some sort of public relations effort to minimize awareness and criticism of the exact contents of the official statement, and to downplay the matter of Professor Tribe's plagiarism in general.
For other mentions of the Harvard statement regarding Professor Tribe to date (we will try to update this listing if more items come out in the next few days), see:
April 14
The widely read “Betsy’s Page” blog by a high school history teacher is apparently the first to comment on Harvard's official statement, here, opining: “Come on. If a student at Harvard did the same thing, would they excuse it as an honest mistake? . . . I guess the message is that if you're a big shot, we can give you a slap on the wrist, and trust in your professional standards.”
Freerepublic.com posts part of the AP story and has commentary on it, here. (If anyone can provide us with further information on one point mentioned in the commentary, a petition Professor Tribe assertedly signed many years ago which once criticized he said he never read, please e-mail us, as it may be relevant to part of our analysis of the National Review article on Professor Tribe.)
From the Harvard Crimson story and this New York Post story, it appears on the day Harvard's official statement was released, Professor Tribe was unavailable to provide immediate answers to press inquiries because he was in New York preparing to defend a New York hotel owner’s constitutional right to turn hotel rooms into condominiums. We trust Professor Tribe will make himself available for press inquiries in the near future on the presumably even more important matter of his academic work and academic reputation -- in particular, on what exactly he and his research assistants did on the 1985 book which copied from Professor Abraham, and who did the copying -- just as did Professor Ogletree made himself available for press inquiries after his statement was released last September.
“University Diaries," which has covered Harvard plagiarism stories in the past, reprints the Boston Herald story on the Harvard statement here.
April 15
Howard Bashman, as usual, is the first legal blog to link to this story, here.
The Washington Post has a brief report, here.
CNN.com reprints the AP story on Harvard's official statement, here.
“LawyerNews.com” likewise reprints the AP story, here.
“The SanityPrompt” blog has this report on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s coverage of the Harvard statement, sarcastically noting the “growing little industry of plagiarists” at Harvard, and the severe punishment handed out to “students caught plagiarizing.”
Inside Higher Ed” has this brief report.
April 16
In the “IPBIZ” blog, a lawyer briefly recaps the Tribe plagiarism matter and the double standard regarding how harshly student plagiarism is treated compared to plagiarism by professors, but suggests the story “will now fade into the shadows,” concluding: “I don’t think this story has legs. Maybe it ought to.” For an earlier item, see here.
"JawsBlog" asks "what the results of this case would have been say, if a Harvard student had done the exact same thing as Tribe in one of his papers. How would s/he have been treated by a faculty board/pannel? Would they be found guilty of a transgression of academic dishonesty?" It asks if there is "a double standard here for Professors" and if so, "what kind of message does that send through the academy"?
(Update, 4/21/05 and 4/25/05)
April 16
Echoing the teacher's reaction set forth on "Betsy's Page" (April 14, above), an English teacher, Michael W. Hobson, has this reaction to Harvard's official announcement regarding Professor Tribe's plagiarism:
should i thank these people?
It's research paper time again in my English classes. And sure enough, like clockwork, another plagiarism scandal has hit the news . . . . It's a strange sort of comfort, knowing I can count on an annual headline to illustrate for my students the seriousness of academic integrity. I never have to pull out an old article -- I get a new one every year.
April 18
A blogger on "Stationary Bandit" asks this question:
Punishing Plagiarism at Harvard. What happens when a Harvard Law Professor committs plagiarism? Nothing. * * * I wonder if the students are also reproached if they "unintentionally" take another's ideas without attribution?
April 19
Echoing an earlier editorial about the Ogletree matter, the student-written Harvard Crimson has this editorial about the outcome of the Tribe matter, entitled: "A Disappointing Double Standard: Tribe's rebuke amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist."
April 21
A commentator on "Instapunk," in a post which may elicit the response, "but what do you really think?," has this comment:
The Far Side of the Charles River
Of all the wretched things at Harvard, I cannot be alone in thinking that Lawrence Tribe is the worst. Perhaps, in charity, we can hope that his left-wing crusades have been as phoney as his pretensions to respectable scholarship, and that he's always been committed to whatever he does just for the money . . .
UPDATE (5/6/05)
On May 2, The Harvard Crimson published this letter by seven current or former Harvard Law School students who have worked for Professor Tribe, entitled, "University Responded Properly to Tribe's Transgressions," and contesting or placing into perspective several aspects of The Crimson's April 19 editorial on the Tribe matter.
The letter was signed by Daniel Richenthal, Michael B. Fertik, and Stephen L. Shackelford, and it was co-authored by Jeffrey Jamison, Tara Grove, Chris Egleson, and John Rappaport. We are looking closely at aspects of this letter and will likely address it in a future post.
For our previous comments expressing concern about Professor Tribe's evident reliance on proxies, particularly ones subordinate to him, which we see as both counterproductive and perhaps not the most honorable course of action, see here (under the entry for October 18), here, and here.
On May 3, the "IPBIZ" blog reprinted several key paragaphs of Dean Velvel's lengthy post on Tribe, Summers, and Kagan, here.
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