Harvard Plagiarism Archive: Dean Velvel on Dean Carrington

Harvard Plagiarism Archive

"[T]he problem of writers . . . passing off the work of others as their own . . . [is] a phenomenon of some significance."
PROFESSOR LAURENCE TRIBE, e-mail to Dean Lawrence Velvel, 9/13/2004

"'I . . . delegated too much responsibility to others . . .,' [Prof. Charles Ogletree] said. 'I was negligent
in not overseeing more carefully the final product that carries my name.' * * * Ogletree told The Crimson that
he had not read the passage of Balkin’s book that appears in his own work. An assistant inserted the material
into a manuscript . . . . But Ogletree said he was closely involved in most of the drafting of the book . . . ."
STEVEN MARKS, "Ogletree Faces Discipline for Copying Text," The Harvard Crimson, 9/13/2004

"'Ronald Klain . . . then only a first-year student at Harvard law . . . spent most of his time with
Tribe working on Tribe's [1985] book God Save This Honorable Court,'" the Legal Times added in 1993.
* * * 'Many of Klain's friends and former colleagues say that he wrote large sections of the book . . . .'"
JOSEPH BOTTUM, "The Big Mahatma," The Weekly Standard, 10/4/2004

"[A]fter several plagiarism scandals broke over distinguished faculty members at Harvard's law school, including
Laurence Tribe,a group of students there set up a blog, Harvard Plagiarism Archive, to follow the University's
handling of the problem. They believe that the University, President Summers, and Dean Elena Kagan
essentially white-washed the scandal and are demanding further action.
PROF. RALPH LUKER, History News Network's "Cliopatria" blog,4/26/2005

“The Tribe and Ogletree matters have catalyzed bitter complaints from Harvard students that the university
employs a double standard. . . . The students have every right to be incensed over this gross double standard.
They in fact ought to raise hell peacefully about it: a constant barrage of letters, emails, statements . . . .”
DEAN LAWRENCE VELVEL, "Velvel on National Affairs" blog, 4/28/2005

"If you want to keep track of this story, I recommend the new Harvard Plagiarism Archive. . . . [I]t's pretty thorough."
TIMOTHY NOAH, Slate's "Chatterbox" blog,9/28/2004

"[Y]ou have done a wonderful service to all by operating the AuthorSkeptics website . . . a fine public service."
DEAN LAWRENCE VELVEL, author of "Velvel on National Affairs," e-mail to AuthorSkeptics, 4/19/2005

Friday, May 06, 2005

Dean Velvel on Dean Carrington

Dean Velvel has posted comments regarding Dean Carrington’s statement, on his blog here.

We appreciate Dean Velvel’s support of our effort, but wish to make clear we had no prior notice of the content of his post, although we did encourage comments from him. The relevant portions of our e-mails to him, to which he was responding, are reprinted below

Because so much of Dean Velvel’s post addresses us, and Dean Carrington’s comments about us, we will leave it to readers to evaluate the posts and send us comments for posting if they wish.

We feel it important to add, however, that although we are in agreement with a number of Dean Velvel’s comments about Dean Carrington’s statement, we have genuine respect for Dean Carrington as a legal scholar and leading figure in the legal academy, we were honored he was willing to take the time to comment on our blog, and we do not take personally his criticisms of our anonymity and we understand and respect his negative view of it.

Even readers who find themselves agreeing with Dean Velvel’s criticisms, we believe, should credit Dean Carrington for being willing to comment publicly on the matters addressed by our blog. Dean Carrington was only the third law professor to contact us with a comment. (We posted Dean Carrington’s statement first because he is likely viewed as the most established of the three very prominent law professors who wrote us; we will do our best to post comments from the other two professors in the coming days, and we hope more professors will write us).

A proper concern for free and open dialogue requires that one have respect for those with opposing views who make the effort to debate important issues rather than take the easier step of avoiding debate entirely. So we believe Dean Carrington deserves great credit for stepping forward to address these issues and to offer comments which we believe make a substantial contribution to the debate, even though we do not agree with him on some points.

Here are our two e-mails to Dean Velvel. We did not hear back from him prior to his post.

Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 1:09 PM
From : "AuthorSkeptics" (author_skeptics@allmail.net)
To : Velvel@MSLaw.edu
Subject: Harvard plagiarism -- our upcoming blog post on Dean Carrington

Dear Dean Velvel:

Excellent post on torture and "why blogther" (good pun). Ultimately far more important, of course, than what we're trying to do in our small corner of the world concerning plagiarism. . . .

About 4 p.m. we expect to post a statement from Dean Carrington, and commentary from us, which concerns in part your comments. . . . Of course, we would welcome any comments on the substance of this post, either for reprinting on our blog or not, as you wish.

Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 4:49 PM
From : "AuthorSkeptics" (author_skeptics@allmail.net)
To : Velvel@MSLaw.edu
Subject: Post on Dean Carrington

We have now posted on Dean Carrington: http://authorskeptics.blogspot.com.

AS