[Discussion] In Wake of Controversies, Historians Debate Causes and Prevalence of

[Paksoy, Hb]

Monday, January 6, 2003

 

  In Wake of Controversies, Historians Debate Causes and Prevalence of
Plagiarism
By DANNY POSTEL

Chicago

There were more historians than seats available at a round-table discussion
on plagiarism on Saturday afternoon at the annual conference of the American
Historical Association here. 

The panel -- titled "Plagiarism: What's So Bad About It, Anyway?" -- was
sponsored by the association's Professional Division, the body responsible
for overseeing standards and ethics in the profession. William J. Cronon, a
professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and an AHA
vice president who heads the division, led the session, which one panelist
called an "extraordinary exercise" at the association's principal
professional meeting. 

The past two years have seen the historical profession embroiled in a series
of high-profile controversies, including cases of plagiarism. Saturday's
panel was organized against the backdrop of this controversy and, Mr. Cronon
noted, at a moment when the Professional Division was "rethinking its
mission." 

The panel's participants were Carla Rahn Phillips, a professor of history at
the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Donald Lamm, a literary agent and
former president of W.W. Norton & Co.; James Fallows, an editor at large at
The Atlantic Monthly; Richard Posner, a federal judge and professor of law
at the University of Chicago; and Alan Brinkley, a professor of history at
Columbia University. 

Ms. Rahn Phillips, a past leader of the Professional Division who, in that
role, oversaw several plagiarism cases, called the offense "identity theft
of the most egregious sort." She described the scholarly community's natural
reaction to plagiarism as a "visceral horror" of the sort "usually reserved
for cannibalism." 

Universities and the American Association of University Presses have opted
not to adjudicate plagiarism cases, she said. The history association --
which she called "the guild" of the profession -- is therefore the only body
that can take meaningful action. Financial recourse -- awarding damages to
plagiarized scholars -- is not in order, she said, as academic books
generally make little, if any, profit. She thus favors punishing wrongdoers
through public disapproval, which she referred to as the "old-fashioned
virtue of shaming." 

Mr. Lamm agreed, saying that the "court of public opinion" is the only
effective forum in which plagiarism cases can be tried. Plagiarism is
"easier to decry than prevent, easier to detect than to litigate," he said.
It is "only when widely read authors" are found to have committed plagiarism
that much of a case is made, he said, noting that book sales in even those
cases seem not to have been affected. (Doris Kearns Goodwin and the late
Stephen Ambrose, both best-selling historians, were found to have committed
plagiarism in two highly publicized cases.) 

As for possible solutions to the problem, Mr. Lamm suggested that book
publishers should offer "more than a sub-minimum wage" to the outside
reviewers of manuscripts, as an incentive to do things like checking
sources, which would increase the chances of plagiarism being spotted before
a book is published. 

The journalism profession is tougher than academe in punishing plagiarism,
said Mr. Fallows, who recounted two instances in which his own work has been
plagiarized -- in one case by a journalist, in the other by a scholar. 

While the journalist was fired immediately, he said, the professor enjoyed
relative impunity, and the professor's publisher kept the case unresolved
for years in the courts. "We wish you were as tough as we are when
violations occur," he said to the historians in the audience. 

Mr. Posner offered something of a skeptical perspective on the plagiarism
question, emphasizing the "relativity" of the concept. Insofar as plagiarism
is understood as failing to give proper credit, he said, it is widespread in
academic life. "Everyone exaggerates his own originality," he said. 

During the Renaissance, he said, creativity was seen as vitally involving
"creative imitation." Practitioners of plagiarism include William
Shakespeare, he said. 

Mr. Posner described what he called his own "relatively benign view" of the
Ambrose and Kearns Goodwin cases, insisting on a distinction between
popularizers and academic scholars. Historians writing principally for a
popular readership, he said, don't claim to be presenting original research,
while scholars writing principally for other experts do. When popularizers
lift from the work of others without proper attribution, the damage is thus
less serious than when academic scholars do the same, he said. 

Arguing that the dissemination of ideas is "as important as their creation,"
Mr. Posner asked what damage is done to society when a popular historian
fails to properly attribute a source. Popularizers, he said, are not
competing with academics; their books are read by distinct audiences. 

If the information contained in a popular work is new to its readers, he
asked, why should it matter what the book's scholarly sources are? But when
professors engage in plagiarism, Mr. Posner said, it can threaten the
reputation of the universities that employ them. 

The relationship of professors to their universities, he said, resembles an
"ancient system of patronage: We pay you to write." 

But one needs to distinguish between lack of originality and lack of
honesty, Columbia's Mr. Brinkley said. "God knows academia is filled with
people who've never had an original thought," he said. But there are "few
things more abhorred" in academe, he said, than plagiarism. 

Mr. Posner's popularizer/scholar distinction is tricky, Mr. Brinkley said.
Many historians fear, he said, that the plagiarism scandals involving
popular historians could "stain the practice of history as a whole." 

Mr. Cronon agreed. He said that when popular historians appear on
television, they are identified simply as historians, leaving the public
with the impression that they represent the historical profession. Although
popularizers and academics do not compete for the same readerships, the
controversies surrounding the former affect the public reputation of the
latter, he said. It is therefore "important for the historical profession to
address the public scandals," he said. 

The intellectual legitimacy of historians has become precarious, said Mr.
Brinkley. "The wider world is skeptical of what we do," he said. 

He speculated that the recent plagiarism scandals might stem from the
"increasing commodification" of history -- the "breaking out" of some
historians into the wider culture of the news media and commercialism. There
is a difference, he said, between "making our work accessible to the
public," which he supports, and opening the doors to "the intrusion of the
market into the scholarly enterprise," which he opposes. 

But Mr. Posner objected that this argument of Mr. Brinkley's contradicted an
observation the Columbia historian himself made -- namely, that there is no
evidence that plagiarism in the historical profession has become more
widespread over the last 10 years. (Mr. Cronon said there is no reason to
believe that plagiarism has increased over the last several decades.) If
there has been no rise in plagiarism in recent years, Mr. Posner asked, then
Mr. Brinkley's argument about the commodification trend is of little
explanatory value. 

"You're not giving me an accurate picture," he admonished the historians on
the panel. 

There is a paradox in the history association's handling of the plagiarism
issue, Mr. Cronon observed. While the association has resolved to
"aggressively pursue" the problem, he said, the Professional Division has
been all but silent on specific cases. This is necessary, he said, because
as a matter of policy, the body's findings are confidential. Yet, he said,
the division plans to hold a series of public discussions on the plagiarism
question, of which Saturday's panel was the first. 

"The most effective shaming is public debate," he said. 


A statement on plagiarism adopted by the AHA last year is available online
at the association's Web site. 




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