Quote:King's Plagiarism Makes it Impossible to Revere Him
Guest column by Gerry Harbison HARBISON is a professor of chemistry.

"... plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize - only be sure always to call it please 'research.'" "Lobachevsky," by Tom Lehrer

In 1988, the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project made a discovery that shocked it to its core.

The Project, a group of academics and students, had been entrusted by Coretta Scott King with the task of editing King's papers for publication. As they examined King's student essays and his dissertation, they gradually became aware that King was guilty of massive plagiarism - that is, he had copied the words of other authors word-for-word, without making it clear that what he was writing was not his own.

The Project spent years uncovering the full extent of King's plagiarism. In November 1990, word leaked to the press, and they had to go public. The revelations caused a minor scandal and then were promptly forgotten.

Indeed, I had never heard of them until I read a student letter to the Daily Nebraskan three weeks ago. That letter sent me in search of the truth about Martin Luther King Jr.'s student career.

Like most graduate students, King spent the first half of his doctoral work taking courses in his degree area, theology. His surviving papers from that period show that from the very beginning he was transcribing articles by eminent theologians, often word for word, and representing them as his own work.

After completing his course work, graduate students usually write a dissertation or thesis, supposedly an independent and original contribution to scholarship. King's thesis was anything but original. In fact, the sheer extent of his plagiarism is breathtaking.

Page after page contains nothing but direct, verbatim transcriptions of the work of others. In 1990, the King Project estimated that less than half of some chapters was actually written by King himself. Since then, even more of his "borrowings" have been traced.

Calculating the exact extent of his plagiarism will require a computer analysis, but having looked over Chapter III in detail, I estimate that at least three quarters of it was stolen from other authors.

King stole from the subjects of his dissertation, the theologians Tillich and Wieman. He copied the writings of other theologians - passages from philosophy textbooks. But most unforgivably of all, thousands of words in paragraph-sized chunks, were taken from the thesis of a fellow student, Jack Boozer, an ex-army chaplain who returned to Boston University after the war to get his degree.

We even know how he did it, for King was systematic in his plagiarism. He copied significant phrases, sentences or whole paragraphs from the books he was consulting onto a set of index cards. "Writing" a thesis was then a matter of arranging these cards into a meaningful order.

Sometimes he linked the stolen parts together with an occasional phrase of his own, but as often as not he left the words completely unchanged. The index cards still survive, with their damning evidence intact.

King fooled everybody: his adviser, his thesis reader and King scholars for more than 30 years. Nor did he stop after graduation; as early as the 1970s, King scholar Ira Zepp noticed that sections of King's first published book Striding Towards Freedom were taken verbatim from Anders Nygren's Agape and Eros and Paul Ramsay's Basic Christian Ethics (sheesh!).

Zepp, as so many have done since then, remained silent.

Everything I've written above can easily be verified in a couple of hours in Love Library. None of it comes from right-wing scandalmongers who might have a vested interest in damaging King's reputation.

But if King's plagiarism is so serious and so extensive, why do we so rarely hear about it? Partly it is because the American public thinks of plagiarism as an obscure issue that only an egghead professor could get steamed up about.

And to some extent they're right. King's academic dishonesty is after all mostly irrelevant to his life's work. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s did us all a great good by ending the greatest social evil of mid-20th century America - legally sanctioned segregation and racial discrimination. That movement is not in the least diminished by the ethical shortcomings of one of its leaders.

But more than that, American culture has personified the virtues of the Civil Rights movement - tolerance, nonviolence, and insistence on the integrity of the individual - in Martin Luther King Jr. That mythic King bears little resemblance to the real, the historical Martin Luther King Jr.

It would be safe and easy for UNL to play along with this comfortable myth.

But we shouldn't.

Plagiarism isn't a mere peccadillo. It is a direct threat to our academic integrity. When a student plagiarizes, he undermines academic standards by receiving a grade for ideas or expression that are not his own, and he cheats other students who have earned their grades honestly.

When a scholar plagiarizes, he defrauds other scholars of due credit for their work, and he contaminates scholarship by making it difficult or impossible to trace the evolution of ideas.

Remember how major-league baseball banned Pete Rose? Rose gambled on games, a minor transgression to most, but one that baseball felt undermined its the very integrity. In the same way, plagiarism subverts our integrity. Surely UNL can at least aspire to the same standards as organized baseball?

More than this, as scholars we have a responsibility to separate myth from truth. For example, we insist on making a distinction between creation myths and the scientific truth of evolution. Even though some of our students adhere to the biblical story of creation - and when we teach evolution we may cause offense and do violence to their beliefs - we can't fail to teach and research the truth out of a misplaced 'sensitivity.'

In the same way, we have a responsibility to confront Martin Luther King Jr. as the man he was, not the icon some of us revere.

Our chancellor insists we can diversify UNL without compromising academic standards. But if so, how can we, in the name of diversity, declare an academic holiday to honor a man whose entire career was marred by the most blatant academic dishonesty?

I personally have had one student expelled, and flunked several others, for turning in plagiarized papers. Can we really look those students in the face, insist that what they did was seriously wrong, and then in good conscience vote for a King holiday?

I don't think so.

jimmmarks Wrote:Happy hypocritical holiday to you too

Winston?Smith Wrote:Thanks, Jim. Let's celebrate with cheap tennis shoes and crank pills. Know where I can get some?

Yancy?Derringer Wrote:Hope everyone is enjoying this wonderful holiday, where one of America's most notorious plagiarists is honored as a hero.

Quote:By E. J. DIONNE Jr., Special to the New York Times
Published: September 17, 1987

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16— Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Democratic Presidential candidate, was accused of plagiarism while in his first year at Syracuse University Law School, academic officials familiar with Mr. Biden's record said today.

Mr. Biden, who as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is presiding over the hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork, has called a news conference for 9 A.M. Thursday to discuss this charge and reports that he has lifted material from speeches by other politicians to use in his public addresses.

A Biden aide, who asked not to be identified, declined to comment on the plagiarism charge, saying Mr. Biden wanted to discuss it himself. ''It's his life,'' the aide said.

According to the people familiar with the record of the 44-year-old Senator from Delaware, he was called before the disciplinary body at the law school during his first year because of charges that he had committed plagiarism on a paper. Mr. Biden entered the school in 1965 and graduated in 1968.

CBS News tonight quoted an aide to Mr. Biden as saying he had been exonerated. However, an academic official said Mr. Biden had been found guilty, ''threw himself on the mercy of the board'' and promised not to repeat the offense. This, according to the official, persuaded the board to drop the matter and allow Mr. Biden to remain in law school. Mr. Biden's office declined to clarify the circumstances surrounding the case, saying the Senator had insisted on handling the matter himself at the news conference.

One academic official said Mr. Biden asked for and obtained his law school records several weeks ago and requested then that the school not distribute them until he had had a chance to examine their contents. Biden and Aides Meet

Mr. Biden and his aides were meeting late tonight to discuss the apparent crisis confronting him.

For a time this afternoon, on the second day of hearings on the Bork nomination, Mr. Biden left the hearing room. It was not immediately clear whether his departure was precipitated by reports swirling around the Capitol about his record at Syracuse.

However, Dan Forbush, vice president for public relations at the university, said Mr. Biden was ''in touch with the law school today.''

Mr. Forbush said he could not discuss the nature of the call. Nor would he confirm or deny the reports of plagiarism charges, saying it was not ''possible to release information on it without the permission of Senator Biden.''

Travis Lewin, the interim dean of the law school, also declined comment. Recollections of Professors

But two of Mr. Biden's law school professors, reached tonight, said they had no recollection of any such charges. Asked about Mr. Biden's record as a student, one of the professors, Robert M. Anderson, said, ''He wasn't setting the law school on fire, but he was a competent student and a nice young man.''

The other professor, Samuel J. Donnelly, said Mr. Biden had been one of his ''more favorite students'' because he was ''bright'' and ''broad intellectually.''

The controversy surrounding Mr. Biden began after The New York Times reported last Saturday that he had appropriated, without attribution, the language of Neil Kinnock, the British Labor Party leader, to close a debate in Iowa last month.

In a television commercial during the British election campaign last spring, Mr. Kinnock asked, ''Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?'' Pointing to his wife, he asked, ''Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?''

In closing remarks at a debate at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 23, Mr. Biden asked,''Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?'' Further, he asked, ''Why is it that my wife, who is sitting out there in the audience, is the first in her family to ever go to college?'' Quotations From Kennedys

This week politicians from both parties - some of them partisans of other candidates in the Democvratic Presidential race - told members of the press of additional instances in which Mr. Biden had used the language and syntax of others, including John F. and Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey. The information provided to The New York Times today about Mr. Biden's academic record, however, did not come from any rival Presidential campaign.

Some of the similarities in speeches were noted by The San Jose Mercury News and by The Des Moines Register in their Tuesday editions, and by The New York Times today. CBS News and ABC News broadcast reports on the subject this evening.

Mr. Biden and his aides have argued that the charges concerning his speeches are unfair, saying he used Mr. Kinnock's remarks often and usually attributed them to the British leader. The instance in which he did not, his aides said, was a lapse. Mr. Biden's campaign also argues that public officials frequently use material from the speeches of politicians of earlier generations. Division Over Impact

Political professionals, including those working for rival Democratic campaigns, were divided over the impact of the reports of speech-lifting.

Some said it would be particularly damaging because Mr. Biden's campaign had emphasized his oratorical skills and capacity for ''inspirational leadership.''

''He, in one sense, created the standard by which he was to be judged,'' said Harrison Hickman, a Democratic poll taker. ''He has said consistently that the next President must be the one who can motivate the American public. And if you're going to make that argument, it seems a fair test to ask whether Joe Biden is a visionary or is Joe Biden a good speaker.''

Geoffrey Garin, another poll taker, said, ''This controversy plays into the case his opponents would like to make against him: that he is a person of style rather than substance.''

Other professionals said that in a campaign in which character was already an issue, dating from Gary Hart's withdrawal in May, incidents like those that have dogged Mr. Biden in recent days were certain to be damaging.

As for the latest charge, that of plagiarism, one Democratic political consultant not associated with any of the campaigns said one factor in the way Mr. Biden would be judged was to what extent, if any, he had been exonerated by the law school.

''There are exonerations and there are exonerations,'' this consultant said, noting that Mr. Biden might have been spared punishment without actually being cleared of the charge. Announced on June 9

Mr. Biden, a passionate orator, entered the Presidential race on June 9. He cast himself as the candidate who understood the aspirations of the generation of Americans from the post-war baby boom, and also as a political leader who understood the anxieties and aspirations of the American middle class. Mr. Biden's aides have said that it was Mr. Kinnock's evocation of the struggles of working people that drew Mr. Biden to the British leader's speech.

Although he has gained considerable ground in the polls in Iowa, whose caucuses are only five months away, Mr. Biden has not succeeded in sparking the broad enthusiasm that he thought his candidacy would provoke.

Mr. Biden and his aides hoped that the Bork hearings would raise his visibility and stature, casting him as an intelligent and articulate critic of Judge Bork's conservative judicial philosophy. Instead, the weekend before the hearings was dominated by stories of Mr. Biden's lifting of Mr. Kinnock's rhetoric.

Quote:CBS News tonight quoted an aide to Mr. Biden as saying he had been exonerated. However, an academic official said Mr. Biden had been found guilty, ''threw himself on the mercy of the board'' and promised not to repeat the offense. This, according to the official, persuaded the board to drop the matter and allow Mr. Biden to remain in law school. Mr. Biden's office declined to clarify the circumstances surrounding the case, saying the Senator had insisted on handling the matter himself at the news conference.

Quote:Brian Moore did read this essay aloud at a meeting of Christian athletes, and he did claim to his parents that he'd written it as an assignment for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes approximately two months before his death. The 17-year-old Teay's Valley High School student (not "Teary Valley," as claimed in the e-mail) did die on 27 May 1997 in the manner described. All that is true.

However, it's the little known story behind the story that proves most worthy of comment. You see, it turns out the deceased was a plagiarist. The piece he'd claimed authorship was actually the work of Joshua Harris, and it appeared in a book Harris published before Moore died. It had debuted two years earlier, in the Spring 1995 issue of New Attitude magazine, which was then edited by Harris.

Moore's parents had no reason to suspect the work in question was not their son's, and it was read at the boy's funeral. They and other relatives and friends subsequently broadcast the essay as his work, sincerely believing that it was. Only after the piece was published in The Columbus Dispatch on the anniversary of Moore's death did the truth about its authorship become known, when readers responded with corrections that pointed the newspaper to Harris and his book.

It's ironic that an essay describing the author's sense of shame over his personal accumulation of sins would be used by another to add a few file cards to his own stash. The dead boy not only stole someone else's work but also presented it as his own before a Christian fellowship he was part of and lied to his parents about it. That's three of the ten commandments right there (stealing, not honoring parents, and bearing false witness).

Quote:He was driving home from a friend's house when his car went off Bulen-Pierce Road in Pickaway County and struck a utility pole. He emerged from the wreck unharmed but stepped on a downed power line and was electrocuted.

Winston?Smith Wrote:Who was this guy...Janko?