Vice President Kamala Harris is facing backlash over allegations of plagiarism in her 2009 book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer. Christopher F. Rufo published a detailed report on Monday highlighting instances where Harris allegedly borrowed material from various sources without proper attribution. While some initially dismissed these claims as exaggerated, they have been under scrutiny, with even liberal outlets now acknowledging the seriousness of the allegations.
One of the most troubling examples cited in Rufo’s report involves Harris’s description of a drug prevention strategy in High Point, North Carolina. The text was allegedly copied from a press release issued by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, with entire sections appearing in Harris’s book without any attribution. Furthermore, Harris reportedly lifted language from an NBC News report discussing high school graduation rates. Despite the gravity of these accusations, the mainstream media’s response has been mixed. The New York Times initially downplayed the severity, suggesting that the plagiarized material consisted of public data and statistical descriptions, which are considered less serious forms of plagiarism compared to the theft of ideas or creative works.
In its review, The New York Times concluded that the book does not plagiarize the core ideas or thoughts of another writer, which is typically viewed as the most serious type of plagiarism. Instead, it noted that the text duplicates descriptions of programs and statistical data found in other sources. Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism consultant based in New Orleans and publisher of Plagiarism Today, commented on Monday that his first reaction to Rufo’s accusations was to downplay the seriousness of the errors, given the length of the document. “This amount of plagiarism amounts to an error and not an intent to defraud,” he stated, noting that Mr. Rufo exaggerated the significance of relatively minor citation errors in a substantial document to “make a big deal of it.”
Now, even the Harris-friendly New York Times has had to acknowledge that the situation is more serious than originally reported, following a comprehensive analysis by Bailey, their plagiarism consultant. Bailey, who had previously characterized the plagiarism as indicative of “sloppy writing habits” rather than malicious intent, now concedes that the issue is more significant than he initially suggested. He conducted a thorough review of Stefan Weber’s 40-page report, which included nearly 30 allegations of plagiarism. While Bailey dismissed some of the self-plagiarism claims, he recognized that the pattern of uncredited borrowing—particularly from government reports and news articles—constitutes a significant failure in citation practices for someone in Harris’s position.
“Today, I reviewed the complete dossier prepared by Dr. Stefan Weber, whom I have covered before. I also performed a peer review of one of his papers in 2018,” Bailey wrote. “With this new information, while I believe the case is more serious than I commented to the New York Times, the overarching points remain.”
The Harris campaign has defended the Vice President by asserting that sources and statistics were clearly cited in the book’s footnotes and endnotes. However, public scrutiny intensified after a leaked internal email from Chronicle Books, Harris’s publisher, was accidentally sent to Rufo. The email instructed staff not to comment on the plagiarism allegations and described the issue as “very sensitive.” The message, from Lauren Hoffman, Chronicle Books’ Vice President and Executive Director of Marketing and Publicity, directed all inquiries to be forwarded to higher-ups.
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