Where is the Academy?

In June distinguished constitutional law scholar Laurence H. Tribe ’62 was named one of Harvard’s 19 University Professors. This week, he admitted to improperly crediting another professor’s work in his 1985 book, God Save This Honorable Court.

Tribe’s embarrassing admission came after an article on The Weekly Standard’s website detailed several uncomfortable similarities between his work and Henry J. Abraham’s 1974 book, Justices and Presidents. Among other resemblances, Abraham’s text contains a 19-word passage which also appears verbatim in Tribe’s book. The accusations were the third instance of a Harvard Law School (HLS) professor being accused of plagiarism in the past year—and the second this month. On Sept. 2, Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree issued a statement admitting that six paragraphs of his recent book All Deliberate Speed—an amount equivalent to nearly two pages of text—had been lifted from the work of a Yale Law School professor. And last year, Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz fought plagiarism charges leveled against him.

Despite the relatively close proximity between events, it is important not to conflate them. In Dershowitz’ case, for example, the charges against him—that he improperly omitted a secondary source from which he ostensibly obtained certain primary source citations—do not unambiguously point to plagiarism. On the other hand, HLS Dean Elena Kagan has labeled Ogletree’s offense “a serious scholarly transgression.” Ogletree defended his errors by explaining that the mistake resulted from an editing mix-up caused by his assistants. After Ogletree failed to recognize that he had never written the text in question, the other author’s words were subsequently published as his own.

The irony in Tribe’s case is that two years ago, he fervently came to the defense of another well-known Harvard academic—historian and University Overseer Doris Kearns Goodwin. She herself was accused of lifting substantial passages in her 1987 book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. In a letter Tribe wrote responding to The Crimson Staff’s call for Goodwin’s resignation from Harvard’s 30-member Board of Overseers, he sought to deemphasize Goodwin’s oversights in relation to her greater body of work. He chided Goodwin’s critics, writing “as one scholar who values his own integrity and reputation for meticulous attribution as much as anyone could” on behalf of a colleague he deemed “one of the truly outstanding historians of our time.”

It is in this context that Tribe’s latest admission strikes us as especially worrisome. Unlike Goodwin, Tribe has few excuses on which to fall back. As Tribe pointed out, Goodwin may have been guilty of inadvertently lifting language from another text, but she had at least cited her source among some 3,500 footnotes. Tribe’s 1985 book, on the other hand, contains no footnotes or endnotes on account of a desire to make the book more “accessible” to the general public. To be sure, the book does reference Abraham’s book in the appendix as background literature, but Tribe has no citations to lean on—as Goodwin did—when claiming no intent to deceive.

We do not wish to besmirch the academic integrity of one of Harvard’s foremost minds, but we do want to know how such sloppy research could go unnoticed for close to 20 years. In fact, Abraham told The Weekly Standard that he has been aware of the plagiarism for years but never confronted Tribe. Yes, God Save This Honorable Court was meant for popular consumption—and no, it should not be judged a serious scholarly endeavor—but neither excuse reduces the gravity of Tribe’s error. When a distinguished professor attaches his name to a published work, there is no justification for any plagiarism contained therein.

Indeed, Harvard has no patience for undergraduates caught plagiarizing—inadvertently or otherwise. And it is in terms of discipline that Harvard’s most obvious double standard applies. Whereas the expository writing handbook “Writing with Sources” advises students that most cases of plagiarism ordinarily warrant withdrawal from the College for at least two semesters (with exceptions sometimes granted for “genuine confusion” over citation procedures, though Professor Tribe could hardly make that argument), in comparison, Harvard’s disciplinary policy towards its professors is laughable. In Ogletree’s case, the Law School has refused to provide any details about how Ogletree will be punished, but it is safe to say that a scholar of his stature will walk away relatively unscathed.

We do not believe Tribe should be forced to step down due to his errors, but they are of utmost seriousness and should be treated that way. If the University is unwilling or incapable of disciplining Tribe properly, public scrutiny and condemnation are the only forms of discipline available.

Harvard’s distinguished Faculty are a source of pride to most Harvard students, and the newly minted University Professor ought to be ashamed of the example he set with his transgression. Had he been an undergraduate, such mistakes may have ruined his academic career. But because he is an all-star academic, they likely won’t even make a footnote in a biography of his life. In truth, what is most disheartening about the whole affair is that Tribe’s colleagues let him down for 19 years by allowing the plagiarism to pass by without scrutiny. All of academia is poorer for it.