Harvard Syllabus Appears on West Georgia U. Class Website

A professor at the State University of Western Georgia (UWG) copied and posted online a lecture outline originally created by a Harvard professor without any attribution or permission.

“That the professor would use it without permission is disconcerting,” said Dillon Professor of International Affairs Jorge I. Dominguez, to whom the outline belongs. “That he would post it on a webpage without attribution for people to see is doubly disconcerting.”

The official website for Dominguez’s course—Historical Studies B-64: “The Cuban Revolution, 1956-1971: A Self-Debate”—on which his lecture outline was posted, notes that all content on the website is copyrighted by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

But Denis J. Berenschot, an assistant professor at UWG who teaches a course entitled “Cuba: Past, Present, and Future,” duplicated Dominguez’s outline verbatim on his UWG website.

“I based the titles on his outline which I found online,” Berenschot said. “I thought it was excellent material.”

Despite posting the outline, Berenschot said he never used the outline to structure his own lectures. The Harvard course’s content, Berenschot said, could not be applied to his own course.

“Our classes are of a much lower level of knowledge,” he said, which resulted in a syllabus that was “completely different” in content from the Harvard course.

“That’s even worse,” Dominguez said. “I would have felt better had he used it for his students.”

Even though Berenschot said he did not actually use Dominguez’s outline for his course, he conceded that students and the general public were still able to access the outline on his website. He admitted that he had asked neither Harvard nor Dominguez for permission to post the outline.

“I should probably take it away,” Berenschot said. “It is kind of misleading.”

Berenschot said that if he actually were to use the outline in structuring his lectures, then the situation would have been different.

“I would have had to have asked permission if I were going to use it,” he said.

Dominguez said that he would have granted permission had it been sought, and would not have asked for compensation. He does not intend to take any legal action.

“I’m only annoyed,” he said. “I don’t want to penalize anyone for transmitting it. It’s just a shame.

“Professors profess, and that’s what we do,” Dominguez said. “The only real requirement that we ask is that we receive acknowledgment.”

Within hours after Berenschot spoke with The Crimson, the outline was inaccessible from Harvard servers.

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.