Plagiarism serious matter to be dealt with in academia

By: Lawrence Souder

Posted: 4/16/04

As a writer, I love words, even some of my own. In fact, when I write for profit, my love can be possessive. So F. Scott Fitzgerald's advice for writing concisely feels harsh to me; you must "murder your darlings." My love of words also provokes my feelings over a related writing issue - plagiarism. This word derives from the Latin word plagiarius or kidnapper. The etymology seems so apt to me; if my words are my darlings, then shouldn't I regard stolen words as hostages? When my students plagiarize the words of others, should I see their act as tantamount to kidnapping? As a matter of fact, in my more mean-spirited moments, I would like to elevate plagiarism to a federal offense. Of course, when I calm down, I'm more charitable towards my students who fall off the academic honesty wagon, but I remain troubled over the spread of plagiarism in the academy.

I routinely encounter four or five cases of documented plagiarism every term. During my counseling interviews with the offending students, I try to explain that their misappropriation of intellectual property has consequences not just for themselves but also for our social practices of ethical decision making and for the remaining relationship they may have with me, their teacher. But frankly, I myself do not find all of these reasons compelling.

It's not easy to argue convincingly that students who plagiarize will pay a price. After all, it's no secret that university professors have no incentive to detect and then confront plagiarists; such policing takes much time and psychic energy that could otherwise go toward research. Besides, does anyone outside the walls of the university care about plagiarism? It's tempting to offer the high profile examples of writers brought down for plagiarism to suggest that the answer is yes.

In 1987 The New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline, "Biden's Debate Finale: An Echo from Abroad." The U.S. Senator from Delaware, Joseph Biden, it seems, borrowed the opening paragraph of his speech from a speech delivered five months earlier by Neil Kinnock, a Labour party leader in Great Britain. Biden has since never rekindled his presidential aspirations.

In 2002, Doris Kearns Goodwin admitted plagiarizing from other authors in writing her 1987 best seller The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. As a consequence she was forced to withdraw from the Pulitzer Prize board, leave her role as commentator on the PBS NewsHour and forfeit two invitations to speak at U.S. universities.

In 2003, Jayson Blair became perhaps the most publicized plagiarist when he resigned from his post at the New York Times. Among other misdeeds, he was accused of plagiarizing a story from the San Antonio Express-News.

The public exposure of these acts of misappropriating intellectual property damaged the personal reputations and prospects of these three otherwise successful and competent people. Most public figures, however, seem to have landed on their feet, if not benefited from their new notoriety. Biden is still a U.S. Senator, Goodwin is still writing for the New York Times and Time magazine, and Blair's advance on his book Burning Down My Master's House is reputed to be in the six-figure range.

Perhaps a more compelling case can be made for plagiarists' effects of their ethical lapses on the wider society. When otherwise good people do bad things, we might argue, our experience of the resulting dissonance may force us to revise our ethical principles and moral standards rather than our judgment of the ethically questionable behavior. Such was the case with Martin Luther King Jr. What else can we do when we discover that someone so venerated as King had been less than saintly in his formative years? The ethically weary resignation in Michael Dyson's book I May Not Get There with You is understandable, when he says: "King's plagiarism at school is perhaps a sad symptom of his response to the racial times in which he matured." To object that Dyson is soft on plagiarism, however, wobbles in the face of challenges based in cultural diversity. Not all cultures share the Western, neoliberal obsession with intellectual property rights that makes us academics so indignant over plagiarism.

Ultimately, it's not the harm that plagiarists bring on themselves or our society that troubles me about their acts. These effects seem too uncertain and for that reason probably do not deter students from misappropriating the words of others. Rather it's the effects of plagiarism on me the teacher that I find predictable, painful and lasting. I regard writing, even business and technical writing, as another form of communication. The content and form are specific to the discipline, but the creative process of assembling one's thoughts and putting them in a tangible form is general. Technical writers must grapple with a creative process that confronts them with the same senses of vulnerability, frustration and pride that challenge poets or novelists. For this reason the teaching of writing requires a safe environment - one that offers students patience, encouragement and trust. The trust that I try to create in the classroom is mutual between students and teacher. I want them to feel they can make mistakes in grammar and construct awkward locutions without the fear of ridicule. At the same time, I want to trust that the locutions they show me are their own. Their acts of plagiarism are a violation of my trust. When I counsel students who have plagiarized, I see in their faces resentment, anger and fear that they've been caught. I hope in my face they can see sadness that I have caught them. The unfortunate consequence for both of us is as Hazlitt has said, "If an author is once detected in borrowing, he will be suspected of plagiarism ever after" (1820 Lect. Dram. Lit. 257 as quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary Online). Once I've discovered students who've plagiarized an assignment, I will struggle to ignore this question about all of their subsequent papers: "Have you written these words, or did you kidnap them?"

Lawrence Souder is a professor of communications.