Exclusive -- Professor Tribe Breaks His Vow to "Not Comment Further"!

Yesterday we reprinted Professor Tribe's statement issued on April 13, 2005, addressing Harvard's resolution of the plagiarism/ghostwriting scandal which has enveloped him for the past six months.

He concluded his statement with a vow never to comment further:  "Therefore, like the University, I now consider the matter closed and will not comment further about it." (emphasis added)

Just five days later, Professor Tribe broke that pledge, in an e-mail sent to his entire class on April 18 which a student kindly forwarded to us.  (Okay, you're skeptical that we're magically getting such quick feedback from Tribe's students, so that this juncture we should fess up that one of us is actually in Tribe's class, which is one reason we are so disappointed with Tribe's handling of the situation.)

As you'll see, rather than just laughing it off, he seems obsessed with the "I'm Larry Tribe" parody skit staged last month.

The e-mail from Professor ("Not Comment Further") Tribe reads in full as follows:


Subject: Not careful enough 20 years ago
               
At the time of the recent HLS parody in March, I thought the song (sung to tune of “I’ll survive”) about my supposedly having “stolen” chunks of another writer’s work needed to be “answered,” but I didn’t feel free to say anything about the matter while President Summers and Dean Kagan were conducting their inquiry into the circumstances involved, so I sent around an e-mail to each of you explaining that you’d hear more about this later in the semester.

As you may have heard or read, Summers and Kagan issued a statement last Wednesday which said essentially what I had been saying from the outset: I’d been less careful than I should have been some 20 years ago in using and/or transcribing my research notes in the course of writing a small, footnote-free book for the general public, and I was right to apologize when someone called attention to my book’s insufficiently specific attribution to a book published by another author in 1974.

Their statement added that “the unattributed material related more to matters of phrasing than to fundamental ideas” and said they were “also firmly convinced that the error was the product of inadvertence rather than intentionality.”

If you’re interested in receiving a copy of the university’s one-page statement and my one-page response, you can drop by Hauser 418 and ask Kathy to let you have a copy of each.

The Tribe Transgression: Professor Tribe's Statement of April 13, 2005

Here, courtesy of Dean Velvel, is Professor Tribe's statement of April 13, 2005, released April 14, 2005:

April 13, 2005

Statement of Professor Laurence H. Tribe

When a magazine article last fall identified several passages and phrases in my 1985 book, God Save This Honorable Court, that were not properly attributed to Professor Henry Abraham's 1974 book, Justices and Presidents, I reviewed both books in an effort to try to determine what had happened two decades earlier. In a letter I sent at once to Prof. Abraham, I wrote that, while I had singled out his book in a bibliographic note as the "leading political history of Supreme Court appointments," that general acknowledgement was no substitute for more precise attribution. I promptly did the only thing I thought I could do to set things right: I issued a public statement apologizing to Prof. Abraham, acknowledging my lapse and accepting full responsibility for it.

For over six months, I have said nothing further about this 20-year-old error, even as I have seen some mischaracterize it as intentional theft of another's ideas and have watched as my character and integrity have been impugned. I did not think I should comment while President Summers and Dean Kagan reviewed the results of the inquiry they asked President Bok and Professors Knowles and Verba to conduct.

President Summers and Dean Kagan have now issued a joint statement concurring that what I did 20 years ago was a significant lapse in proper academic practice but adding that the unattributed material related more to matters of form than of substance and stating their firm conviction "that the error was the product of inadvertence rather than intentionality."

No statement can erase the fact of my having been less careful than I should have been in my 1985 book, and today I want to reiterate my apology for that error and my assumption of responsibility for it. At the same time, I am gratified that the University's inquiry found no basis for accusations of dishonesty or of intellectual theft. Therefore, like the University, I now consider the matter closed and will not comment further about it.

The Tribe Transgression: Harvard's Official Statement of April 13, 2005

Dean Velvel has kindly provided us with copies of Harvard's official statement, and of Professor Tribe's statement e-mailed to the press.

Dean Velvel obtained these statements from a source other than the Harvard administration or Professor Tribe. It is unfortunate neither the Harvard administration nor Professor Tribe cooperated in making these statements available on the Internet.

Here is Harvard's official statement, dated April 13, 2005, and released April 14, 2005. We will next post Professor Tribe's statement.

April 13, 2005

STATEMENT OF PRESIDENT LAWRENCE SUMMERS
AND DEAN ELENA KAGAN

This past fall, a magazine article contended that a 1985 book by Professor Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, entitled God Save This Honorable Court, contained a number of passages or phrases not appropriately attributed to a 1974 book by Professor Henry Abraham of the University of Virginia, entitled Justices and Presidents.

After learning of this report and reviewing the books in question, Professor Tribe promptly issued a public statement acknowledging his failure to properly attribute some of the material identified in the magazine article, and taking full responsibility for that failure. He also sent a letter of apology to Professor Abraham.

Regarding the matter as one warranting examination, we jointly asked three distinguished faculty members -- Derek Bok, President Emeritus, Jeremy Knowles, former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Sidney Verba, Pforzheimer University Professor and Harvard University Librarian -- to inquire into the circumstances by reviewing the materials and speaking with the individuals principally involved. They in turn reported their factual findings to us.

With the benefit of this inquiry, and as publicly acknowledged by Professor Tribe himself, it is apparent that his book contained various brief passages and phrases that echo or overlap with material in the Abraham book, and that he failed to provide appropriate attribution for them. We have taken note that the relevant conduct took place two decades ago, that Professor Tribe's book (written without footnotes and for a general audience) mentioned the Abraham book in a concluding bibliographic note, and that the unattributed material related more to matters of phrasing than to fundamental ideas. We are also firmly convinced that the error was the product of inadvertence rather than intentionality. Nevertheless, we regard the error in question as a significant lapse in proper academic practice -- as does Professor Tribe himself. The failure of an author to attribute sources properly, however inadvertent the error, is a matter of serious concern in an academic community.

We have conveyed these conclusions and concerns to Professor Tribe, and now consider the matter closed. In line with usual University practice, we intend no further comment on the matter.

The Tribe Transgression: our e-mail exchange with Dean Velvel on the "Tribe ghostwriter did it" defense

At Dean Velvel’s suggestion, we post here our e-mail correspondence with him of yesterday and today pertaining to our suggestion that Harvard’s reason for clearing Professor Tribe of any intentional academic misconduct was that his ghostwriter was the one who copied from Professor Abraham. Also, on our related suggestion that to pin down the exact facts, Dean Velvel might enter into an exchange with Professor Tribe, just as he did with Professor Ogletree, by asking Professor Tribe if he can truthfully make certain statements.

The e-mails are presented in the order they were written (Dean Velvel wrote his first e-mail before learning of our second e-mail). Except for the correction of a few typos (in our e-mails), no changes have been made. As time permits, we will try to add some links at various points to help orient readers as to what is being discussed.

[4/22/05 update: The e-mails now all appear in this post, below. Previously they were presented in eight separate posts, which readers complained was confusing.]


(first e-mail of 4/18 from AuthorSkeptics to Dean Velvel)

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:21 PM
From: "AuthorSkeptics"
To: Velvel@MSLaw.edu
Subject: The Tribe Transgression

Dear Dean Velvel:

We thought you might want to be alerted to our latest post, here:
http://authorskeptics.blogspot.com/2005/04/harvards-official-statement-regarding.html.

Has it occurred to you that the reason Summers and Kagan were so "firmly convinced" Tribe's plagiarism was the product simply of "inadvertence" was that Tribe's defense was, basically, "my ghostwriter did it"? That would be a valid defense to intentional plagiarism, wouldn't it?

Kagan seems to have some personal experience with Tribe's extensive use of ghostwriters, as it seems she was one of Tribe's ghostwriters in the 1980s as a student. Someone with a sense of humor (maybe a warped one) is impersonating Tribe at thebigmahatma.blogspot.com, and there "Tribe" talks about the 32 students who wrote the second edition of his treatise. I thought it was a joke, but the preface actually lists 32 students (obviously they drafted much of it, which is why he needed so many students; as you pointed out with Judge Posner, it takes many fewer helpers if one writes a book oneself, and typically Posner’s books have only one to three research assistants). And one of the students is "Elena Kagan," who I assume is the same Elena Kagan who is now dean.

Of course, that defense, which was pretty much Ogletree's, when you laid bare his September statement about his "corrections" to the "errors" in his book, seems ultimately more devastating to Tribe's reputation than the idea that Tribe personally copied from Abraham, especially coming after the November statements in the national media by Professor Hoffer (on CSPAN's "Booknotes") that Tribe may be merely a "compiler" of material ghostwritten for him by others, and by Professor Gardner (in the New York Times) about the phenomenon of "managed books." Tribe hasn't denied that he's a compiler of managed books, which presumably he would do if he could -- just as Ogletree would have made the two statements you suggested he make, to clear himself of the ghostwriting charge, if he could (as you may have noticed, we collected all those e-mails so they're easy to read, here: http://authorskeptics.blogspot.com/2004/11/full-text-of-exchange-between-dean.html).

Perhaps it would be fruitful to formulate, similarly, some questions for Professor Tribe which you could e-mail him and/or post on your blog, which would give him an opportunity to clear himself of any suggestion his defense, and the basis for the Harvard statement of "inadvertence," is basically, "my ghostwriter did it." If you want, we could draft up some for your consideration. If you don't do this, we might, but we think it would be more effective coming from you, as you were the one who used this technique with such effectiveness previously to expose the real deal on Professor Ogletree. It would be important to do it in a dignified manner, just as you did with Ogletree, so anyone reading it in the end would realize Tribe was given every courtesy and chance to clear himself, but simply isn't able to truthfully rebut the charge.

As with the Ogletree transgression, we feel the most important aspect of the Tribe transgression isn't the borrowing per se, but how it proves the use of ghostwriters (no one as smart and experienced as Tribe would have made these rookie mistakes, proving the first-year student who worked on the book must have been drafting chunks of it). Harvard seems to be trying to dodge that in this statement, and we don't think it should be able to do that -- we think Professor Gardner is right that Harvard has a special obligation not to sweep issues of plagiarism under the rug.

If you decide to start an e-mail exchange with Professor Tribe similar to your exchange with Professor Ogletree -- or at least post on your blog, and invite him to comment -- at least at this point, please don't mention we suggested this. Officially we're remaining silent until we can read all the statements, though we very much doubt our final bottom line will be any different than what I just sketched.

Feel free to contact us you wish, e.g., to run by any questions you might pose to Prof. Tribe on your blog, before you post, if that might help. But if you don't wish to have a dialogue with us, that's okay too. We mostly want to make the suggestion for what it's worth.

As far as e-mailing us, we have a strict rule we won't reprint on our blog anything anyone sends us without explicit prior permission to post it. So anything you send us will be kept confidential, unless you ask we post it.

Sincerely,

"Skipper"
(see http://slate.msn.com/id/2107361)

Author_Skeptics@allmail.net

"Helping ensure Harvard plagiarists face the music, since September 2004."

(Update, 4/21/05: As we said we'd try to do,we've now added links to the above text to orient readers as to what exactly is being discussed. The text itself has not been changed.)



(Dean Velvel's first e-mail to AuthorSkeptics, written by hand on 4/18 before he knew of their second e-mail, but not sent until 4/19)

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:01 AM
From: "Dean Lawrence R. Velvel"
To: author_skeptics@allmail.net
Subject:

April 18, 2005

Dear AuthorSkeptics:

It was a surprise to receive your email today (Monday). It came when I was in the middle of writing a lengthy piece relating to the Tribe matter, a project begun on Sunday and hopefully (though not likely) to be finished Tuesday. Parts of what I had already drafted, or was already planning to draft, when your email arrived were similar or identical to what you suggested, e.g., my post is going to deal with the possibility of ghost writing, and planned to say that Tribe should, if he truthfully can, make two statements identical with or similar to the two statements that were suggested to Professor Ogletree in an email. The discussion of the Tribe matter, however, is being written in context of an even larger matter: my view that it is time for Summers to leave Harvard, and that Kagan should leave as well.

I note that in your email you invite me to correspond with you and you offer to provide help, even to write questions to be asked of Tribe. I thank you for the offer of help, but, especially in the context of this current situation (although I would feel this way regardless), I believe it would be better by far to do all my work myself. (No ghostwriters for me, right?)

I do, however, want to post your email on my blog, along with this reply, to help ward off any accusations that could even theoretically arise in the future to the effect that my forthcoming post was written at your urging, or that the statements it will urge upon Professor Tribe were written at your urging. The current situation is, in my judgment, far too serious to allow there to be any possibility of even a remotely believable accusation of this nature. I hope, therefore, that you will not object to my posting your email and this reply early-on, since my own piece will likely be finished and posted late on Tuesday or, far more likely I am afraid, on Thursday or Friday. (It can’t be completed on Wednesday because I have to go to New York to attend a funeral there on Wednesday and, as you may know, I do not use a computer, so my secretary has to type, and I have to proof each of what usually are several drafts, making it impossible for me to finish the work on Wednesday.) (Incidentally, though I do not know how to operate a computer, I received your email today because it showed up on my BlackBerry.) In posting your email, I will have my secretary remove all identifying characteristics except to say that it came from the individual(s?) who operate AuthorSkeptics, a website devoted to the problems of plagiarism besetting Harvard.

If you have any objection to my posting your email, please notify me immediately. Otherwise your email and this reply will be posted late this afternoon or early tomorrow. If you do object, I will simply say somewhere in the piece I am writing that, in the midst of working on it, I received an email from people who are very interested in the problem and run a website devoted to it, urging me to deal with the possibility of ghostwriting and to put pertinent questions to Professor Tribe. I will of course add that I was in the midst of doing this, and did all my own work. Given the situation, I would regard this as necessary in order to try to ward off any possibility of an even remotely believable accusation of the type discussed above. But I do think it would be far more helpful if you were to allow your own email and this response to be posted.

The desirability of allowing this is only the more pronounced because, in my judgment, you have done a wonderful service to all by operating the AuthorSkeptics website, and there should be nothing done that would even theoretically reflect adversely on what has been a fine public service.

Sincerely yours,

Lawrence R. Velvel, Dean



(second e-mail from AuthorSkeptics to Dean Velvel, sent 4/18 before they received his first e-mail, written earlier by hand but not sent until 4/19)

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 5:04 PM
From: "AuthorSkeptics"
To: Velvel@MSLaw.edu
Subject: The Tribe Transgression: “My Ghostwriter Did It”? – 4 suggested questions

Dean Velvel:

Following up on my earlier e-mail, I've taken the liberty of drafting something like I think you might consider posting, to try to pin down that, in fact, Tribe's defense which the Harvard administration has endorsed is, "my ghostwriter did it."

Tribe might not want to address statements 3 & 4, which relate to other works, but if he's unwilling to make statements 1 & 2, that should confirm in the view of reasonable people the past suggestions that the book was written for Tribe by a law student -- which is really more shameful, in my view, than if Tribe had copied the material personally, as was Doris Kearns Goodwin's account of what happened on her books.

If Tribe at least by his silence confirms he used a ghostwriter, and that was the basis of finding it was only "inadvertence," if he has never used ghostwriters on his "scholarly" work (he's tried to draw a distinction between his other work and his 1985 book for laymen), then surely he will make statements 3 & 4, if he can. If not, perhaps he can at least explain the EXTENT to which he relies on students to draft material for him. If it's just here and there, or just footnotes (as seems to be the case with Dershowitz), one would think it would be better for him to say that than leave the impression most of his books and articles are drafted by students.

Feel free to use any or all of this, as you see fit, without attribution, though if you somehow feel you need to say this line of inquiry was suggested, go ahead -- though please don't say we suggested it without first checking with us, both in general and on the wording. Our preference would be, at least for now, to not be openly partisan unless we've fully analyzed everything. And we think these sorts of questions, which really just follow up on what you did earlier with Professor Ogletree, would carry vastly greater weight coming from you, and would be much harder for Tribe to ignore.

Sincerely,

Skipper


HERE'S THE MATERIAL:


The Tribe Transgression: “My Ghostwriter Did It”?

The Weekly Standard’s article on Professor Tribe suggested much of the 1985 book involved, “God Save This Honorable Court,” was written for Tribe by a law student (citing 1993 reporting by Legal Times, which had interviewed a number of the student’s friends who evidently he had told about it, or had seen him writing it during law school).

In November, on CSPAN, historian and professor Peter Charles Hoffer, author of a recent book on plagiarism, suggested that at least to some degree, Tribe may be merely a “compiler” of material ghostwritten for him by students. Also in November, the New York Times published quotations by Harvard professor Howard Gardner who is concerned about the recent phenomenon of “managed books,” in which some professors have students write first drafts of material in their books, and who believes: "Scholarship - the core activity of the university - cannot be delegated to assistants.”

These matters have been covered by the bloggers at authorskeptics.blogspot.com.

Harvard’s recent statement resolving the plagiarism charges against Professor Tribe mark it down to “inadvertence.” President Summers and Dean Kagan is “firmly convinced that the error was the product of inadvertence rather than intentionality.” Because, as documented in the Weekly Standard, the person who wrote the sections of Tribe’s 1985 book copying from Professor Abraham took some care to change the order of phrases and some words so as to avoid verbatim copying, in what was obviously a premeditated act of plagiarism, it would appear that Professor Tribe’s defense, which Summers and Kagan accepted, was essentially: “My ghostwriter did it.” If true, and if Tribe did not realize the ghostwriter had plagiarized from Professor Abraham, then it seems the Harvard statement is correct, and one understands the firm conviction of Summers and Kagan that only “inadvertence” was involved – Professor Tribe’s negligence in supervising the work of his ghostwriter.

If that was Professor Tribe’s defense to the plagiarism charges, then one expects he will never make any effort to rebut the above suggestions that he uses student ghostwriters, so that it turns out rather than being an author of works on constitutional law, he is a “compiler” of “managed books.”

In the event, however, that “my ghostwriter did it” was NOT Professor Tribe’s defense to the plagiarism charges, or if it was his defense to these charges but his use of a ghostwriter was limited to this one book and does not affect his other work, then I will offer Professor Tribe the opportunity to make one or more of the following simple statements regarding the use of ghostwriters, just as I earlier offered such an opportunity to Professor Ogletree.

Professor Tribe may elect to comment on only items 1 & 2, or only on items 3 & 4, or on all of the items, or on none of the items. If he can truthfully make all four statements, he will lay to rest all the suggestions regarding the use of ghostwriters to produce “managed books.” If he can truthfully make at least statements 3 & 4, we will have confined such charges to only one book. If he can truthfully make none of the statements, that will make more explicit what seems to be implicit in the Harvard statement on Tribe’s “inadvertence” regarding this book: that Tribe has been cleared of intentional plagiarism because his ghostwriter did it.


STATEMENTS WHICH MIGHT BE MADE BY PROFESSOR TRIBE, IF TRUE:

Considering the 1985 book, “God Save This Honorable Court,” only:

1. “Except for normal word changes made by others in the editing process, I personally wrote every word of the first and all subsequent drafts of the book.”

2. "Although in the process of writing that book I received and adopted ideas and suggestions from others, those ideas and suggestions did not come to me in the form of drafts of portions of the book which I then inserted in the book pretty much unchanged except for some editing. Rather, I myself wrote the language that reflects those ideas and suggestions.”

Setting aside that book (whether or not Professor Tribe makes any comment on it), as to all other books published by him since 1985, particularly the treatise, American Constitutional Law, and all law review articles published by him since 1985:

3. “Except for normal word changes made by others in the editing process, I personally wrote every word of the first and all subsequent drafts of those books and law review articles.”

4. "Although in the process of writing those books and law review articles I received and adopted ideas and suggestions from others, those ideas and suggestions did not come to me in the form of drafts of portions of the books or law review articles which I then inserted in the books or law review articles pretty much unchanged except for some editing. Rather, I myself wrote the language that reflects those ideas and suggestions.”



(Dean Velvel's second e-mail to AuthorSkeptics, written and sent 4/19, responding to AuthorSkeptics' second e-mail of 4/18)

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:01 AM
From: "Dean Lawrence R. Velvel"
To: author_skeptics@allmail.net
Subject:

April 19, 2005

Dear AuthorSkeptics:

I have now (early on Tuesday morning) received your second email (on a BlackBerry). Many things you discuss are already in my draft. So it seems to me more important than ever, for reasons enunciated previously, to post both of your emails and my two replies. I greatly appreciate all the work you have done on the plagiarism and copycatting matters, and, as said before, think you have performed a real public service. But I do not want it thought, that I am carrying anyone else’s water on this matter or that I am acting as a front man, as it were, for someone else’s views, gripes, etc., or for persons obviously opposed to Tribe, regardless of how well taken I may think some or all of the views and gripes are. Therefore, I hope you will not object to my posting your emails and my replies, with the sender of the emails to me being identified only as the operator(s?) of AuthorSkeptics.

I must add that, given some of the statements that you suggest Tribe be asked to make, your first two, if memory serves, are pretty close to the two I previously suggested Professor Ogletree make, and are very close to two that I had written into my draft before receiving your email.

Given all these points, I reiterate the sincere hope that you will not object to your emails and my replies being posted. And given all these points and your second email, I have to say, very unhappily, that I now may post these things even if you do object -- it is that important to me that there be no hint of carrying water for persons who obviously are very much against Tribe, regardless of how well taken I think some or all of their points may be and regardless of how great a public service I believe they have rendered.

Sincerely yours,

Lawrence R. Velvel



(third e-mail by AuthorSkeptics to Dean Velvel, 4/19)

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 1:17 PM
From: "AuthorSkeptics"
To: Velvel@MSLaw.edu
Subject: The Tribe Transgression

Dear Dean Velvel,

Thank you for your two e-mails of today. The irony, maybe absurdity, of the situation had not occurred to me: I ghostwrote some material for your consideration, in so doing plagiarizing pretty much verbatim from the questions you put to Professor Ogletree last fall (you're right that's why the questions I drafted and your questions are so similar), for the purpose of highlighting what seems obvious to me: that despite the stonewalling by Harvard found in its official statement (at least what can be gleaned of it from press reports), it seems Professor Tribe's defense was, "my ghostwriter did it."

We of course have no objection to our e-mails to you being reprinted, along with your e-mails to us. However, we would ask that you permit us to be the ones to post them, which we would like to do in the next few hours once we get your affirmative OK, which we feel we need to do, because once we post them, everyone will know what you're preparing to post. We think it's tidier for us to post them on our blog, which among other things will allow us to include links to what we're discussing in the e-mails, so others can follow the content more easily. Then, when you post, you can have a short line about us having suggested, based on your past exchange with Professor Ogletree, a similar exchange with Professor Tribe, and about our suggestion having been made after you were already well under way with work on a much broader post.

We had planned to officially withhold any editorial comment on the Tribe matter until we had an opportunity to read the official Harvard statement, and Professor Tribe's e-mail to the press. We requested those materials in e-mails we sent to President Summers, Dean Kagan, and Professor Tribe at 11:40 a.m. yesterday, referencing our recent blog post calling attention to the fact that the official Harvard statement had not been posted on the Internet. All three of them (or at least people in their offices) received the e-mails and went to our blog within a half hour (our referral logs show three separate Harvard IP addresses visiting our blog right after we sent our e-mail). When five hours passed and the information had not e-mailed to us, and indeed we hadn't received any sort of e-mail response, we concluded Harvard was stonewalling even on releasing the official explanation of the Tribe matter, and we drafted up the detailed language for your consideration. (As of now, 25 hours after we sent our e-mails, we've still received nothing.) At this point, given the extent to which Harvard is stonewalling, we see no need to further withhold public comment on the matter. Otherwise, Harvard's stonewalling would have the effect of thwarting comment on the matter, which perhaps is the intent behind it.

We plan to post shortly about Harvard stonewalling on making the official statement public, though that post won't mention you, or this e-mail exchange; we'll wait to hear from you to make sure we can post your e-mails, and when we can post them.

For the record, your e-mails to us today are the first substantive e-mails you've sent us, ever. The only e-mail I could find from you was a simple link you sent us on September 29 to one of your posts about Professor Ogletree, which included no comments, which I assume you sent simply because we had mentioned your blog on our blog. I assume your technical people could confirm that fact for anyone who wants to inquire, though I suppose that won't satisfy anyone inclined to think there's a vast right-wing conspiracy at work here with you, a prominent liberal legal academic, somehow at the center. We have similarly sent you links to several of our blog items discussing your blog on several occasions, but we haven't previously made any suggestions as to the content of your posts.

Also for the record, you're correct that at this point, we "are very much against Tribe." People should be aware of that and take it into account for what it's worth (as we said in an early post, since we're anonymous, people should assume the worst regarding our motives). We're particularly negative about the Tribe matter because we waited -- for nothing -- more than six months to comment on the substance of the charges against Tribe, to allow Professor Tribe and the administration an opportunity to make a fully transparent statement on the matter, and the end result was an official statement saying even less about the matter than was said about the Ogletree matter, an official statement which unlike the Ogletree statement Harvard won't even post on a website. However, our problem is not with Professor Tribe per se, but with the culture of non-transparency at Harvard regarding academic misconduct by its professors, something Professor Howard Gardner has complained about on your blog, and in the Harvard Crimson.

That's what led us to start e-mailing people last September, and eventually set up a blog, to call attention to the outrageousness of Harvard having stonewalled on the Ogletree plagiarism for at least four months, while it allowed Professor Ogletree to celebrate Brown v. Board's anniversary and go on a book tour, and then released the news about supposed "corrections" of "mistakes" involved in the "editing" of the book, by posting it on the Friday afternoon of Labor Day Weekend. When a law student objected that calling ourselves, as we did then, "OgletreeSkeptics" made it seem like we had a vendetta against Professor Ogletree personally, we changed our name, as suggested, to "AuthorSkeptics."

Our concern about non-transparency, and also the double standard in how professors and students are judged on academic misconduct which is the reason for the non-transparency (to try to obscure the fact that the standards being applied to professors are more lenient than those being applied to students), is what led us to attack Professor Dershowitz for a lack of candor in confronting the plagiarism charges against him (much less serious ones, in our view), in not admitting up front that he had students write the footnotes of his book for him, and directed them to copy a number of the footnotes verbatim from another book.

And it's what is now leading us to criticize Harvard and Professor Tribe for the non-transparency regarding the plagiarism charges against him, of a sort even more outrageous than the non-transparency involving Professor Ogletree. We did not start out with any animus toward Professor Tribe. Indeed, if you look at our blog you will see various positive statements about him, especially early on. As corroboration of that fact, please consider the following e-mail we received from Professor Tribe last September, which we never reprinted on our blog even though he authorized us to do so, and never sent anyone (even you, though it concerned you), because it portrayed Professor Tribe in a negative light, and we saw no point to reprinting it, though we did note the existence of the e-mail on our blog. We think it's appropriate to disclose now, to answer any suggestion we started out with an animus toward Professor Tribe, given your observation we "obviously are very much against Tribe." Our forbearing from reprinting it earlier helps show we didn't start out being very much against Professor Tribe. Anyway, here it is:

From: "Larry Tribe"
To: "OgletreeSkeptics" , Ttribe@law.harvard.edu
Subject: RE: Ogletree Plagiarism -- Our Revised News Archive Mentioning You
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 22:30:58 -0400

Your use of my statement -- which, incidentally, I hadn't authorized Dean Velvel to release, despite the contrary inference he chose to draw from my failure to express an active objection when I had made clear to him that I was immersed in meeting numerous pressing deadlines and when he must therefore have known I would be unlikely to have time even to think about whether a letter I had written to him personally was a letter I would be willing to share more broadly -- borders on the ridiculous, and crosses the line of the indecent. I resent being involuntrily associated with what looks and smells to me like an ugly effort to smear an able and honorable colleague, and I have far more pressing things to do than to become involved in an exchange with you -- whoever you might be! Feel free to post this wherever you wish, but don't expect me to respond further.

Larry Tribe

Laurence H. Tribe
Carl M. Loeb University Professor
Harvard University
Hauser Hall 420
1575 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Office: 617-495-4621

-----Original Message-----

From: OgletreeSkeptics [mailto:ogletreeskeptics@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 8:54 PM
To: tribe@law.harvard.edu
Subject: Ogletree Plagiarism -- Our Revised News Archive Mentioning You

Professor Tribe:

We admire the principled, yet compassionate, stance you took in your e-mail to Dean Velvel. We have featured it prominently in this updated listing of news stories on the Ogletree story. The listing has gone through several versions in the past week. As you may know. In the spirit of your statements, and based on comments we’ve received, we’ve toned down some of the past language which was perhaps too negative in tone. We’re in the process of sending this to the Harvard student newspapers and others in the next few hours. We wanted to send you it first, as a courtesy. We understand you’re probably too busy to offer comments, but wee’d appreciate any suggestions you might have for calling further attention to these issues. We agree this should not be a personal controversy. Whether or not people like or dislike Ogletree, everyone in academia should take a serious look at the issues raised by this story. The less focus on Ogletree specifically, the better, though Dean Velvel is makes a good point that some discussion of the specifics is necessary.

Sincerely,

OgletreeSkeptics@yahoo.com




(Dean Velvel's third and final e-mail to AuthorSkeptics, 4/19)

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 3:47 PM
From: "Dean Lawrence R. Velvel"
To: "Author Skeptics"
Subject:

April 19, 2005

Dear AuthorSkeptics:

Thank you for your email.

I sympathize with the reasons why you wish to post our exchanges, approve of your posting them, and believe you should include our third exchange and this fourth one as well along with the first two. But while I approve of your posting the exchanges for reasons germane to your own readership and work, my concerns that my readership too have relevant knowledge requires that our exchanges shall also be posted on my blog, and that shall therefore be done at around 4:30 p.m. today.

In view of the fact that you apparently have been unable to get the statements of Summers and Kagan, and Tribe, dated April 13th and issued April 14th, I have attached them via Adobe Acrobat. It is perfectly alright with me if you wish to post them.

You are right in apparently thinking that I obviously did not know about Tribe’s statement to you regarding my posting his comment on my blog. I find Tribe’s remarks "remarkable," shall I very tactfully say? The reason they are "remarkable" is that after being explicitly told on September 13th by an email of 5:03 p.m. that "you may respond if you wish" to posted criticisms of him, he then was "able" to quickly write a response that he posted at 5:29 p.m. on September 13th, less than half an hour later, and he was then explicitly told the following in an email posted on September 14th at 3 p.m., after he had been able to respond within less than thirty minutes to the initial email: "Thank you for your email. I would like to post it, along with this response, but will not do so if you object. Please let me know if you do object." Then, after some substantive comments, he was again told, "As said, please let me know if you object to the posting of your email and this response." Tribe did not object, and his response was then posted at 11:26 a.m. on September 16th, after a lapse of over forty hours.

Need I say explicitly that Professor Tribe’s ability to act less than half an hour after receiving my email of 5:03 p.m. on September 13th makes what he said to you more than a little "remarkable"?

I have appended below the relevant email correspondence between myself and Professor Tribe, and suggest that you post it too, as I shall.

Let me conclude by saying, in good humor, which I hope is the way it is taken, that I hope we can now stop exchanging emails so that I can get back to the business of writing the post on Summers, Kagan and Tribe.

All best wishes.

Sincerely,

Lawrence R. Velvel, Dean



From: Dean Lawrence R. Velvel velvel@mslaw.edu
Date: Monday, September 13, 2004 5:03 PM
To: tribe@law.harvard.edu tribe@law.harvard.edu
Re: Velvel on National Affairs Web Log - The Ogletree Transgression
September 13, 2004

Professor Laurence H. Tribe
Harvard Law School
1511 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138

Dear Professor Tribe:

In the attached response to a blog (which is also attached ), Michael Parenti has made some points which, I believe, are likely to be thought very acute by readers. He also made a comment regarding a statement which the Globe quoted you as making. I feel that fairness dictates that Mr. Parenti’s response be forwarded to you so that you may respond if you wish.

Sincerely,

Lawrence R. Velvel
Dean


From: Larry Tribe
Date: Monday, September 13, 2004 5:29 PM
To: 'Dean Lawrence R. Velvel'
RE: Velvel on National Affairs Web Log - The Ogletree Transgression

Dear Dean Velvel:

I very much appreciate your letting me see both your long and thought-provoking statement and Michael Parenti's shorter but no less pointed critique. The fact that Mr. Parenti takes a humorous jab at me as his parting shot doesn't in itself lead me to put down the other matters on which I'm working. Some of those matters are quite pressing and involve writing deadlines that I have to give priority over my thus far entirely tangential involvement in this sad episode. I like Charles Ogletree as a person and continue to have enormous respect for much of the important work he has done as a lawyer and as an academic. What I told the Boston Globe about the way in which he has overextended himself was not intended to be a complete explanation or justification of anything but a purely factual description. I don't see it as my place either to offer excuses for my colleagues' and friends' missteps or to pile on when the world is already heaping calumny upon them. That I personally believe Professor Ogletree to be a person of great talent and basic integrity, when it's not my role to judge him, seems to me a fact that shouldn't draw me involuntarily into a protracted exchange of views simply because I was willing to answer a couple of questions from a newspaper reporter and tried to do so as truthfully as I could. As to the larger problem you describe -- the problem of writers, political office-seekers, judges and other high government officials passing off the work of others as their own -- I think you're focusing on a phenomenon of some significance. I do wish, though, that its exploration could be separated, in the interest of basic human kindness and simple decency as well as that of accuracy, from public excoriation of individuals and episodes about which your knowledge is necessarily limited.

Best regards, Larry Tribe

Laurence H. Tribe
Carl M. Loeb University Professor
Harvard University
Hauser Hall 420
1575 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Office: 617-495-4621


From: Dean Lawrence R. Velvel
Date: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 3:00 PM
To: Larry Tribe
Re: Velvel on National Affairs Web Log - The Ogletree Transgression
Via E-mail

September 14, 2004

Dear Professor Tribe:

Thank you for your email. I would like to post it, along with this response, but will not do so if you object. Please let me know if you do object.

With regard to the last sentence of your letter, let me say this. I often think of major philosophical and societal problems in the context of concrete cases. Indeed, philosophical and societal ideas are useful only in the context of such cases. In the abstract, divorced from life, they are of little or no consequence. The Ogletree matter is a concrete case illustrating widespread problems, so it seems proper to discuss the overall problems and the concrete case together. This is only the more true because the problems involved have received so little attention and are the subject of so little general concern.

Beyond this, if kindness and decency require that one not discuss a matter on the basis of what has become known with some degree of certainty in the public sphere, then how is criticism to be leveled by any person whose "knowledge is necessarily limited" to what has appeared in that sphere? And wouldn’t we have to depend for criticisms on those who are closest to the situation, who have the most reason not to discuss it lest they or their institution be harmed, and who are least likely to publicly discuss or criticize? To be honest, while I certainly do appreciate and applaud your human concern for Professor Ogletree, it is nonetheless difficult to believe that you, one of the great champions of civil liberties in our generation, would make the point you made were this a case involving first amendment rights.

My fine secretary sends you her regards. She is the former Rosa Martins, who knew you when she used to work for Professors Andrews, Horowitz and Surrey in the early 1980s.

As said, please let me know if you object to the posting of your email and this response.

All best wishes.

Sincerely yours,

Lawrence R. Velvel
Dean



(fourth e-mail from AuthorSkeptics to Dean Velvel, 4/19)

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 3:53 PM
From: "AuthorSkeptics"
To: Velvel@MSLaw.edu
Subject: Tribe Transgression

Dear Dean Velvel:

I've prepared a compilation of the e-mails we've exchanged, in the logical order I mentioned earlier, which is below. Actually, I've prepared the entire post we're prepared to put on our blog either later today if you OK it, or later, closer to when you post, if you'd prefer we wait. Please let us know your preference, or whether you really think the below is something that ought to be posted on your blog. I suppose we could both post it, though that might be overkill.

If you're okay with this, but want some change to the first two introductory paragraphs -- for example, to say you insisted on the e-mails being posted, which would be a fair characterization, as it wasn't our idea -- please propose any edits you'd like.

Skipper

[the draft, which consisted of a series of posts on authorskeptics.blogspot.com which has now been made, omitted]



(fifth and final e-mail from AuthorSkeptics to Dean Velvel, 4/19)

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 4:13 PM
From: “AuthorSkeptics"
To: "Dean Lawrence R. Velvel"
Subject: Re:

Dear Dean Velvel:

Thanks for your e-mail, which crossed in the mail with mine, setting out how I propose to post our e-mail exchange.

I'll start where you ended: in all good humor, we too would like to focus more on the substance of what Harvard has done, and seems to be doing, rather than on an e-mail exchange with you. Ultimately the exchange between us is a sideshow and potential distraction, although your point was entirely well taken about being sure no one thinks you're carrying any water for anyone as you continue to address the plagiarism problems at Harvard.

I thank you for enlightening me about your e-mail exchange with Professor Tribe. It accords with our analysis last September: it seemed perfectly clear you put Professor Tribe and everyone else on notice that anything sent you could be posted on your blog, but just to be 100% sure he was on notice, and as a courtesy to him, you went out of your way to remind him of that, and gave him a final chance to veto you posting his e-mail. Yet he didn't veto your posting it. Then, as an odd way to repay your courtesy, he went out of his way in his e-mail to us to attack you, and gave his OK for us to post his e-mail, evidently thinking we would, and that it would make you look bad. We were confident that, in fact, it would make Professor Tribe look bad, but we had no interest in doing that, and just wanted to focus on the merits of the plagiarism issues, so we posted nothing, and said nothing about Professor Tribe's outrageous e-mail attacking you. Until now, that is, when we felt it would help rebut any charge that we have any particular axe to grind against Professor Tribe.

For clarity, we will probably assemble a compilation in chronological order of the e-mail exchange between you and Professor Tribe, and between us and Professor Tribe, and the related blog posts, similar to the chronological compilation we did on your exchange with Professor Ogletree, to make it easy for readers to judge themselves whether you or we treated Professor Tribe unfairly last September, or vice versa. I must say the September e-mails seem somewhat relevant at this juncture because they illustrate how eager Professor Tribe was fire off comments regarding the plagiarism charges against Professor Ogletree, in contrast to his past and present stance as to commenting in some reasonable level of detail about the plagiarism charges against him.

It seems that, in the interests of our respective readers, we will each end up posting the e-mail exchange on our own blog, which I suppose is the best thing in terms of full transparency. Thank you for giving us permission to post your e-mails.

Thanks again for e-mailing us. We look forward to reading the substance of your posts regarding Professor Tribe, and probably even more importantly, President Summers and Dean Kagan.

Skipper

The Tribe Transgression: What, and Why, is Harvard Hiding? -- Cracking the Academic "Code of Silence"

About 26 hours ago, at 11:40 a.m. on April 18, following up on our April 16 post complaining that the official joint statement by Harvard on the plagiarism charges against Professor Tribe had not been posted on any Harvard website, see here, we sent the following e-mail to President Summers and Dean Kagan, and copied Professor Tribe on it (we're omitting the e-mail addresses):

Dear President Summers and Dean Kagan:

We run a blog devoted to plagiarism issues at Harvard,
authorskeptics.blogspot.com, one which Timothy Noah of Slate has called "pretty thorough."

As part of our efforts to provide comprehensive coverage of these issues, we wish to obtain with a minimum of fuss your April 14 joint statement concerning Professor Tribe. Please e-mail it to us today.

Also, please post the statement on the two pertinent Harvard websites, as we have suggested you do in our latest post, here:
http://authorskeptics.blogspot.com/2005/04/harvards-official-statement-regarding.html

Thank you.

"Skipper"
(see http://slate.msn.com/id/2107361)

Author_Skeptics@allmail.net

"Helping ensure Harvard plagiarists face the music, since September 2004."

Ten minutes later, we sent the following e-mail to Professor Tribe, and copied President Summers and Dean Kagan on it:

Dear Professor Tribe:

We run a blog devoted to plagiarism issues at Harvard,
authorskeptics.blogspot.com, one which Timothy Noah of Slate has called "pretty thorough."

As part of our efforts to provide comprehensive coverage of these issues we wish to obtain with a minimum of fuss the full text of the statement you e-mailed one or more reporters, quoted in the April 15 Harvard Crimson article, and also the full text of the statement you e-mailed one or more reporters back in September, also quoted in the Harvard Crimson then. In analyzing the charges brought against you in light of the joint statement issued on April 14 we want to be sure we have a full and accurate understanding of all statements by you on these charges to date.

Please e-mail us both statements today.

Thank you.

"Skipper"
(see http://slate.msn.com/id/2107361)

Author_Skeptics@allmail.net

"Helping ensure Harvard plagiarists face the music, since September 2004."

Within half an hour of when we sent our first e-mail, all three of them (or at least people in their offices) received the e-mails and went to our blog (our referral logs show three separate Harvard IP addresses visiting our blog right after we sent our e-mail).

In the 26 hours since we sent our e-mails, we have not received anything in response -- no copy of Harvard's official statement, and no copy of Professor Tribe's statement e-mailed to the press. No copy of Harvard's official statement has been posted on any Harvard website, to the best of our knowledge.

Which leads to this question: What is Harvard hiding, and why?

In particular, why has Harvard's non-transparency on matters involving alleged academic misconduct by its professors, of which Harvard professor Howard Gardner has complained here and here, reached the point that Harvard and the professor involved are not even willing to disclose in full their official statements on the matter?

What does it take to crack the academic "code of silence" which appears to be in operation at Harvard?

Harvard's official statement regarding the plagiarism charges against Professor Tribe

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.

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.

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.

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.

The return of the fake blog "by" Professor Tribe

Last November, we did a bit of detective work into a fake blog purporting to be "by" Professor Tribe which for at least a short while was active at thebigmahatma.blogspot.com. See here. For a related post, see here.

As Amber Taylor was the first to report, and as we also learned via an anonymous e-mail apparently sent by the blogger behind the fake blog in an effort to get attention, the blog, entitled "The Big Mahatma," is back. See here.

Most of the blog seems devoted not to the plagiarism story involving Professor Tribe, but to highlighting a somewhat embarrassing home page he apparently once had on his family's website some years ago, with most of the material in the blog playing off Professor Tribe's tendency (at least on that home page) to chat unselfconsciously about himself and his personal interests with little if any heed to who might read it, and how it might strike others.

Some of the links tend to suggest that some of Professor Tribe's statements on his own home page were insincere or inaccurate. Some of the links are very negative, actually quite offensive.

It is frankly unclear to us whether the references to Judge Alex Kozinski are intended to portray him in a positive light, as "cool" and "hip," in implied contrast to Professor Tribe, or whether they are part of an effort to paint both him and Professor Tribe as equally kooky. We are a bit surprised that such a respected judge would disclose such personal details on the Internet, although we have to admit that the more we looked at the personal information on him, the more we liked what we saw.

"The Big Mahatma" blog may simply be a one-shot April Fool's joke of some sort, as it was posted on April 1, and it has a quote suggesting Professor Tribe is a "Fool." (If so, then it seems what was posted in November may have been a draft which was inadvertently left online and was never meant to be seen, which would explain why there apparently was no effort to publicize it.) If there are further posts we will cover them, at least to the extent they bear on the plagiarism story.

We will also try to contact the "mysterious stranger" behind the blog (to use Amber Taylor's term, although we suspect the stranger isn't totally mysterious to Ms. Taylor, although we also doubt she herself is the blogger) in an effort to obtain some better idea of who is doing it, and why.

More on Harvard Law School parody -- and Tribe e-mail

We have received a very helpful e-mail from a student in Professor Tribe's constitutional law class, supplying us with a copy of Professor Tribe's e-mail to his class which was lampooned in the Harvard parody blog mentioned in our last post, here. It provides useful background for understanding the launch of the "Harvard Parody" blog, which we mention in an update yesterday here (bottom of post on parody).

The e-mail was sent on the evening of March 14, and read:

I'm told the parody, which I had hoped to see with my wife on Saturday evening but had to miss, contained some pretty funny stuff about me. The only thing I've heard that I wish I could comment on but don't feel free to say anything about just yet is the business of my supposedly copying some passages from somebody else's work without sufficiently crediting the original author. Because you ought to care about such things, especially when they involve your own professors, I wouldn't blame you for wanting to know more about the matter. Hopefully, I'll be free to satisfy whatever curiosity you might have about it before the semester ends.

-- Larry Tribe

We find it quite surprising that a public intellectual of Professor Tribe's stature would remain silent for months while journalists and other academics (most notably, Dean Velvel) pressed him for an explanation of how passages from another scholar's book ended up in his own book, but then would break his silence in response to a student-performed parody. Plainly it seems that more parodies on this subject are in order!

Sadly, the student informs us that, to try to deflect attention from this matter Professor Tribe actually joked about the parody in the next day's class session. Tribe apparently said that the reason he had to miss the parody was that he had received a couple of Nobel Prizes over the weekend, and he'd also been hit with a lawsuit by Steven Spielberg claiming  that Tribe's most recent book, "Saving  Private Ryan," somehow infringed on a movie Spielberg had done. The student indicated that these comments struck most students as odd, even pathetic, especially when combined with Tribe's e-mail indicating that he was unwilling to explain in simple terms exactly how parts of Professor Abraham's book somehow found their way into Tribe's book.

Harvard Law School Parody

In a fascinating development, Harvard Law School students in a recent annual parody production included a song parodying Professors Tribe and Ogletree for their plagiarism. Indeed, the students seem so intent on using humor to spotlight the plagiarism issue that they recently released an audio of the song, and the lyrics, to both Howard Bashman of the "How Appealing" blog, and The Weekly Standard, which as you may recall last September published one of the first articles on Professor Ogletree's plagiarism (our coverage of that and other stories can be found here), and then broke the news about Professor Tribe's plagiarism of Professor Abraham.

(Hat tip: Howard Bashman was the first to cover this development, here, when he linked to the audio of the song, "I'm Larry Tribe," which can be found here. Shortly thereafter, he posted the full lyrics to the song here.)

The song is hilarious in its depiction of Professor Tribe's plagiarism and his downfall as a result of coverage of Professor Ogletree's plagiarism, which then prompted the tip about Professor Tribe's own plagiarism after Professor Tribe had the temerity to comment on Dean Velvel's blog about the significant problem of some scholars passing off others' work as their own (see Sept. 29, 2004, e-mail from Joseph Bottum at the end of this post). We think the song is a good illustration of our comment last October, following Judge Posner's joke about the plagiarism scandals during a trip to Harvard Law School, and following a similar joke by Professor Brian Leiter, that if the professors involved and the administration will not candidly face this issue, at least the rest of us can have a bit of fun, and try to keep the spotlight on the issue, by joking about it (see here, under both our introductory comments about Professor Tribe and under the item dated Oct. 19, 2004).

For the brief item in The Weekly Standard mentioned by Mr. Bashman, see here.

If any reader saw the parody production and has any additional information or comments for us, please let us know. We will do our best to reach out to various students, in particular the writers of the parody production, for comment, either on or off the record.


UPDATE (3/30)

Browsing through our referral logs, we just noticed what appears to be a further effort by Harvard Law School students to publicize their parody of Professors Tribe and Ogletree, through a new "Harvard Parody" blog, located at harvardparody.blogspot.com.

The person(s) behind it go by the pseudonym "Frumpy the HLS Clown," who apparently is some sort of unofficial mascot of the Harvard Law School Drama Society which does the law school parody production each year. It's unclear to us whether "Frumpy" is an actual student at the law school, like the student who writes "Fenno" for the law school newspaper, or just a character who has appeared in past productions; perhaps someone could clarify this for us. We will also try to contact "Frumpy" at the e-mail address listed on the blog (revengeoftheclown@hotmail.com), and we will report anything we learn.

We thank "Frumpy" for the several links to our blog. We will try to return the favor by covering any further developments on the Harvard Parody blog, at least regarding plagiarism at Harvard. To date, at least based on a quick check of search engines mentioning the blog, it appears to have received little attention, perhaps due to its rather over-the-top, overtly mean-spirited tone (which is evidently an aspect of the "Frumpy the HLS Clown" persona, or perhaps a parody of that persona) which may make bloggers reluctant to link to it. As for us, if it relates to plagiarism at Harvard, we have no such reluctance!

For the brief mentions of the Harvard Parody blog to date, see:

The post of Harvard law student Amber Taylor on the blog, and her update denying she is "Frumpy," here.

The humorous post of lawyer Tom Veal, here.

Two minor posts, here and here.

National Review article on Professor Tribe

About a month ago the National Review published an article on Professor Laurence Tribe which took as its predicate Professor Tribe's own 2002 letter to The Harvard Crimson defending Doris Kearns Goodwin against the plagiarism charges brought against her (for more background on the Goodwin case, see here).

In his letter, Professor Tribe distinguished Goodwin's case as much less serious than that of other scholars (evidently referring to scholars such as Joseph Ellis) "who have been caught falsifying as fact what was, in truth, fantasy — either about their own lives or about the events they were chronicling," and he stated that "purveying false or misleading information" is "the cardinal sin for any scholar."

According to the National Review article, Tribe himself committed this "cardinal sin" in 2003 in an essay about his first U.S. Supreme Court argument.

The article is by National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru and is entitled: "How to Be a Hero of Liberty." It appeared in the print edition dated March 14, 2005, and first appeared online February 25, 2005. An electronic copy is available online here.

The essay by Professor Tribe discussed in the article, which appeared in the Green Bag legal journal in 2003, is available online as a PDF file (courtesy of Legal Affairs) here: Part 1 and Part 2.

There has been a considerable amount of blog commentary concerning the National Review article, both pro and con, since it came out, but we have refrained from posting anything on this subject out of a desire to give Professor Tribe the benefit of the doubt until we have an opportunity to see both his reply letter in the National Review and Ponnuru's reply to that letter, which according to Ponnuru are due out in the next issue. We hope that the National Review will make Professor Tribe's letter and Ponnuru's reply freely available on its website, just as was the original article, so everyone interested will be able to fully evaluate the exchange and draw their own conclusions.

We will update this post once links to the letter and reply become available. We will then try to do an a chronological listing of all known links to Internet-available material concerning this story. We may also take the relatively rare step (for us) of editorializing on this topic, as we believe much of the commentary to date dwells on minor details and on the motives of those on both sides, and does not get to the heart of the issue concerning Professor Tribe's 2003 Green Bag essay: namely, whether it meets the standards Professor Tribe himself laid down for judging other scholars, in his 2002 letter to The Crimson regarding Goodwin.


UPDATE (3/29)

The National Review has now published Professor Tribe's letter to the editor, and Ramesh Ponnuru's reply, and they are freely available online here. (Hat tip: Howard Bashman, "How Appealing")

We plan to post further on the National Review article, time permitting.