The United States’ Vice President, Kamala Harris, currently finds herself in a quagmire of accusations, pinned to alleged instances of content appropriation from several sources in her 2009 work, ‘Smart On Crime’. Serving as the district attorney of San Francisco at the time, she created this book to advocate for a paradigm shift in crime prosecution. The emergence of these claims is owed to the investigative feats of conservative strategist Christopher Rufo, in collaboration with Stefan Weber, a self-proclaimed ‘plagiarism hunter’ from Austria. Rufo disseminated several examples where the linguistic structure in her work bears remarkable similarity to content in preceding materials.
According to the gathered findings, there are a variety of sources that may have been subtly borrowed from, all of which precede the release date of Harris’ publication. Notorious among these gathered examples is a parallel between language used in an Associated Press dispatch from 2008, a drafted Wikipedia entry from that same year, a report from the Bureau of Justice Assistance in 2000, another report from the Urban Institute in 2004, and verbiage used in a press announcement from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in relation to an award from 2007.
In what some may argue highlights a grey area of intellectual honesty, two out of the five flagged instances of similarities apparently provide due recognition to the original sources, as footnotes. However, it seems a tad concerning that no quotation marks were used to bind the reproduced words together, a recognized convention in academic referencing to denote quotes directly lifted.
Further amplified are accusations that sections of text were used verbatim, minus any form of full attribution. There appears to be a missing degree of academic honesty, with notable instances where passages, suspectingly identical to source materials, aren’t credibly referenced, resulting in a vacuum of acknowledgement for the benefiting party.
Weber’s elaborate dissection of the work also turned up other potential red flags that touch upon the aspects of citation integrity. Among the more troubling findings is an assertion that a cited page number was entirely fabricated and that content was duplicated without due reference to its origin, suggesting a lack of thoroughness in the citation process.
In certain sections of the analysis, it is not just the non-usage of quotation marks in clearly copied text that raises eyebrows. What is equally discomforting is the subtle mutation of specific details when copying from a source, thereby indicating a potential shift from acceptable paraphrasing to dishonest appropriation of content.
In the wake of these unsettling allegations, a representative of the vice president has ventured to maintain that throughout the course of her literary work, any incorporated information, data, or intellectual output has been punctiliously referenced, using footnotes and endnotes to credit original creators.
Regardless of the nature of the written material – be it academic, journalistic, or otherwise – such a lack of transparency and honesty does not stand to reason. A culture of plagiarism directly undermines the sanctity of intellectual property, a cornerstone of any progressive society. It rightfully raises questions of authenticity and respect for others’ work.
In the grand scheme of things, allegations of plagiarism raise serious questions about transparency and upholdment of intellectual property, irrespective of the domain, academic or non-academic. While these are early days, Weber’s findings appear to shed light on some pivotal aspects of the Vice President’s writing approach, which thus far, seem to lack credibility.
The implications of such actions can prove to be severe and even detrimental for many in the public eye. For academia and journalism, a proven allegation of plagiarism can often be an untimely end to a career, enforcing a grim retirement into obscurity as the accused grapples with the consequential damage.
However, a glimmer of hope for the political sphere is found in the annals of historical discourse. It seems that unlike academia and journalism, the realm of politics has seen several personalities navigate the choppy waters of similar controversies, managing to secure their standing despite such damaging claims.
All these allegations, if substantiated, expose a disconcerting absence of academic and intellectual rigour at best, and a possible erosion of trust at worst. The use of someone else’s work without proper attribution can mar the integrity of the creator, raising serious concerns about authenticity.
In the current climate, both the accused and her team vehemently stand their ground, with an air of insistence that every detail has been meticulously taken care of. As is the nature of such claims, these arguments are largely a matter of perception and hinge on the inherently subjective nature of ‘intellectual theft’. In reality, the future trajectory of this dialogue will undoubtedly be determined by the veracity of these damning claims and the public’s response to them.
In another section of the book, Harris, without proper attribution, reproduced extensive sections from a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release. She and her co-author passed off the language as their own, copying multiple paragraphs virtually verbatim. Here is the… pic.twitter.com/9FpsxQE8Sz
— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2024