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Plagiarism at Harvard, again?

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

According to NewsBusters, Al Franken prepared the book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, while at Harvard. Also according to NewsBusters, there is plagiarism within Franken's book. One example given:

In "The Most Biased Name in News," FAIR's Seth Ackerman wrote in 2001:

Even Fox's "left-right" debate show, Hannity & Colmes--whose Crossfire-style format virtually imposes numerical equality between conservatives and "liberals"--can't shake the impression of resembling a Harlem Globetrotters game ...

Now check this out. Two years later, Al Franken published a bestselling book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. On page 63 (first edition, hardcover), Franken wrote,

For those of you unfamiliar with the Hannity and Colmes dynamic, it's a conservative-versus-liberal talking head show, kind of a combination between Crossfire and a Harlem Globetrotters game.

NewsBusters invokes Harvard's policy of academic honesty (cited at Harvard's Department of Continuing Education). To define plagiarism, Harvard released WRITING WITH SOURCES: A Guide for Harvard Students in 1995. It says:

Plagiarism is passing off a source's information, ideas, or words as your own by omitting to cite them, an act of lying, cheating, and stealing.

IPBiz notes that NewsBusters did not mention the Laurence Tribe affair at Harvard. Plagiarism at Harvard has become "custom and practice." Refer also to
Harvard plagiarism 2008: live and let live

Full post as published by IPBiz on September 25, 2008 (boomark / email).