Update on National Review article and Harvard Parody project

A week ago we reported on the June 28 National Review article by Robert VerBruggen (article here) revealing important new evidence supporting what we have long contended:  that Professor Laurence Tribe has for years run a ghostwriting mill in which his books and articles (including his career-making constitutional law treatise) are drafted for him by his current and former students, with Tribe serving mostly as a compiler of material written by others, not as an actual "author" of the works bearing his name.

One of our most important posts on this point, dated Feb. 2, 2006, discussed an essay by Dean Lawrence Velvel touching on our "ghostwriting mill" description of Tribe's method of producing books. See here.  In particular, we quoted Dean Velvel's comment that a law professor he knows had recently told him that while a student at Harvard Law School he had been asked "to work on American Constitutional Law" and "he knew several people who had done so.  . . .  The people who had worked for Tribe, said this professor, had written large tracts of Tribe's treatise."

As we mentioned last week, we first learned of the National Review article from one of the Harvard Parody bloggers.  They ended up doing a lengthy video (which we provided significant help with), explaining in detail the Larry Tribe ghostwriting/plagiarism scandal which Dean Elena Kagan was instrumental in whitewashing, entitled:  "I'm Larry Tribe":  The Story Behind the Parody. The end of the video includes highly entertaining audio, photos, and lyrics of the 2005 live performance of the "I'm Larry Tribe" parody skit.  (If you want to watch only the skit, it's available as a discrete clip on YouTube, here.)

The full video is posted at the new Harvard Parody site on WordPress.com (which apparently has video hosting capabilities not available on the old Harvard Parody platform). [7/12 update: a reader suggested we embed the video; here it is]



[7/15 UPDATE: In case you have difficulty viewing the Harvard Parody videos, either as embedded on this blog or at HarvardParody.wordpress.com, the videos are also posted on YouTube on the Harvard Parody channel, here: http://www.youtube.com/user/harvardparody]

One final point.  In response to our post of last week, "R.O. Denver" e-mailed us about the new evidence of plagiarism by Tribe discussed in the National Review article, of which he had quite detailed knowledge.  Denver was the law professor who tipped off the Harvard Crimson to new evidence of plagiarism by Charles Ogletree in 2006.  See here.  Denver immediately supplied us with very helpful background information (particularly on the research assistant singled out by Tribe) which we used in helping put together the video.  Denver recently informed us that he plans to launch a website (similar to the one he created on the new evidence of Ogletree's plagiarism, see here) setting forth that background information and fully documenting the new evidence of plagiarism by Tribe, complete with images of the relevant pages of Tribe's treatise and of the sources which were copied into Tribe's treatise.  We greatly appreciate his assistance, which will minimize our burden in keeping this blog up to date. We will post a link to his website once it is available.

On Elena Kagan Covering for Alan Dershowitz

Blogger Tony Greenstein has an interesting post on Elena Kagan's effort as dean of Harvard Law School to cover for Alan Dershowitz's plagiarism (a subject which we've given little attention, focusing more on her efforts to cover for Laurence Tribe and Charles Ogletree).

You can read it here.

For an excellent primer on the Dershowitz affair, we recommend Harvard Clown School.  (For our discussion of that blog, see here).

Elena Kagan, Medical Ghostwriter?

We note with some amusement that after drawing enormous flak from Dean Lawrence Velvel for her apparent role in the 1980s as a legal ghostwriter for Laurence Tribe (see here), Elena Kagan faced tough questioning in her confirmation hearings over the possibility that in the 1990s she served as a medical ghostwriter on a sensitive political matter involving abortion.  Here.  It's a shame no one (apparently) asked Dean Kagan about her legal ghostwriting work.

Last month Professor David Bernstein noted Kagan's ghostwriting work for law professors (hardly the first such work, it appears!) during the Whitewater affair, in a Volokh Conspiracy post here.  Some of the commentators are quite critical of Kagan.

National Review Article on Professor Tribe

A few days ago the National Review published an article on new evidence of the use of ghostwriters, and/or the commission of plagiarism, by Professor Laurence Tribe.  The article is "Pearls Richer Than Tribe," written by Robert VerBruggen.  You can read it online here (apparently it's not in the print edition).

Despite our interest in the subject matter, we did not know about it until today, when a Harvard Parody blogger (we discussed that blog here) called it to our attention.  Based on a quick Google search, it appears the article has received little attention.  Mr. VerBruggen's article mentioned both the Harvard Parody blog and our blog (which we certainly appreciate).  The Harvard parodists tentatively plan to do another post or set of posts in an effort to renew interest in their efforts, and in the Harvard plagiarism scandals, and have asked us for our input, which we will try to provide if our schedules permit.

Update (7/2013) -- Above link to article is broken.  Here is a summary of the article (link to article there is broken, too).   Apparently some of the urls on the National Review website have been changed, but not all cross-references have been updated.  The new url for the article is here.

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).