Dean Lawrence Velvel on Kagan's Nomination to the Supreme Court

Former Harvard law school dean Elena Kagan (now Solicitor General), a central figure in this blog, has now been nominated for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.  Dean Lawrence Velvel, another central figure in this blog, is not exactly backing her nomination (which should come as no surprise to readers).  See here.

Earlier, Evan Gahr of Jewish World Review discussed Kagan's role in whitewashing the Harvard Law School ghostwriting/plagiarism scandals involving Laurence Tribe and Charles Ogletree, here.

It's also discussed by blogger Robert Stacy McCain (The Other McCain) here.

Harvard Crimson story on plagiarism

The Harvard Crimson recently revisited the subject here.

"Harvard Clown School" blog

Last week "Dunc Hunter" (we presume a pseudonym) published a new blog entitled "Harvard Clown School."  It decries what certainly seems to be a recent decline in scholarly standards at the (formerly?) prestigious Harvard Law Review.  It artfully (in our view) links that decline to the earlier toleration, by Dean Elena Kagan and others, of professors' use of student ghostwriters, even when those ghostwriters turn out to have plagiarized from legitimate scholars.

We recommend it highly, but we must point out that the blog consists largely of links to stories about Harvard plagiarism which we initially collected and publicized on our blog -- yet "Dunc Hunter" doesn't see fit to mention our blog even once!  We leave it to our readers to decide whether he's plagiarized our blog about Harvard Plagiarism.

We must give "Dunc Hunter" credit for one thing:  he has boiled down the basic story about the Harvard plagiarism/ghostwriting scandals, and the key sources, much more concisely than we have ever done -- particularly with regard to the Dershowitz affair.  Therefore the "Harvard Clown School" blog serves as a good starting point for readers new to this subject.  We will follow with interest any further posts on the blog.

IPBiz on Harvard Plagiarism

Lawrence B. Ebert at the IPBiz blog has posted recently on the continuing Harvard plagiarism problem, here and here.

Harvard Medical School plagiarism scandal

Accusations of plagiarism have been leveled against Lee S. Simon, a professor at Harvard Medical School.  Harvard Crimson article here.

Dean Vevel on Harvard's Ghostwriting Problem

Dean Velvel just will not stay away from the Harvard ghostwriting story!  For that, we are grateful.  We recommend his excellent post of last week, which you can read here.

Former Tribe Assistant Comments on Ghostwriting Charges

Former Tribe research assistant Michael Dorf (now a law professor) comments on the ghostwriting charges against Tribe and other Harvard figures, here.

Dorf states that"I did not ghost-write anything substantial for Larry's academic projects when I worked as his research assistant.

Two questions readily come to mind:

1.  Dorf is not precise.  What does he mean by "substantial"?  If he drafted 50 pages of a 1000-page book for Tribe, presumably that might not count as "substantial," yet many would regard the absolute volume of writing as involving an unethical amount of delegation of authorial work (absent full disclosure of the delegation).

2.  Are any other Tribe research assistants able to make Dorf's statement?

Blogger on Tribe's Self Parody

The "Self-Absorbed Boomer" blog has some humorous comments about the Harvard Parody treatment of Professor Tribe (which we blogged about here, here, here, and here) and about Tribe's own self parody on his website (which we blogged about here).

Dershowitz's Attack on Finklestein

The Harvard Crimson has had some solid recent coverage of Alan Dershowitz's attacks on Norman Finklestein (who accused him of plagiarism back in 2003), which contributed to Finklestein being denied tenure at DePaul University, here, here and here.

Dean Velvel on Judge Posner on Plagiarism

We strongly recommend this wonderful, long post by Dean Velvel of last week, in which touches on the Harvard plagiarists by noting how little they really suffered on account of the scandals.

Dean Velvel on Dean Kagan

Recently Dean Velvel posted some very negative remarks about Dean Elena Kagan.  Here.

More Plagiarism By Charles Ogletree

The Harvard Crimson recently published an open-and-shut case of Professor Ogletree committing yet more plagiarism in the 2004 book which was apparently ghostwritten for him (at least in part) by students.  Four sentences were lifted, with only minor wording changes, from a 1996 book by University of California professor Roy Brooks.  Story here.  New York Times followup story here.

Not entirely coincidentally, shortly after the Crimson story appeared, a website sprung up fully documenting all the details, including copies of the relevant pages of each book.  It's authored by one "R.O. Denver."  Here. Given the website, we see no need to offer our independent discussion.

Disclosure:  "R.O. Denver" is a pseudonym for a law professor with whom we've corresponded in the past year, and we knew about the tip to the Crimson in advance (indeed, we suggested that Denver contact either the Boston Globe or the Crimson, given their past interest in Harvard plagiarism stories).  For professional reasons the professor must remain anonymous, but the professor has authorized us to state that he or she teaches at a law school somewhere east of the Mississippi and is generally viewed as a political "conservative" (at least by heavily liberal law faculty standards), though that orientation had no role in the professor's decision to provide the tip (according to the professor).