Volume CXXXIII, Number 19 March 29, 2002 f

On Kearns Goodwin and plagiarism
PATRICK ROCKEFELLER

Last year, I was writing two papers for different classes simultaneously. One teacher required parenthetical references, because footnotes were "too distracting to the reader." The other mandated, with threats of death as punishment- I'm not kidding, though I hope he was- that we use footnotes, because parenthetical references were "too distracting to the reader." And after spending hours writing a paper, I often (unwisely) do the citations last, and at 4:00 a.m., they're easy to rush.

The importance of citations cannot be, and rarely is, understated. The J-Board sends out messages to our S.U. boxes reminding us of the severity of plagiarism, and how the punishment is usually suspension or expulsion.

But every year, someone gets in trouble for it anyway. I am not convinced that many people actually try to pass off the work as their own; I think they merely forget to cite, or cite improperly, or not extensively enough. Regardless, the punishment is stiff.

Clearly, academic dishonesty is a very serious matter. But an interesting question then emerges from it: How does it apply to non-students? Specifically, how does it apply to professors? When our professors publish, are they held to the same standards set forth in the Bowdoin College student handbook? Does anyone check?

Two prominent authors have recently been accused of plagiarism. One was Stephen Ambrose, the author of works like Band of Brothers. The other was Pulitzer Prize-winner Doris Kearns Goodwin, who spoke at Bowdoin in November. She has recently admitted that many phrases from many of her books have been taken from others, although she claims that they were accidents. Most of my criticisms will be directed at Goodwin, because she is intimately involved with an institute of higher learning, and also because she recently visited Bowdoin.

The copied passages are especially present in her new work, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. Specifically, and most blatantly, The Weekly Standard's Bo Crader has reported that Goodwin has included exact, or nearly exact, lines from Lynne McTaggart's 1983 book Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times.

McTaggart wrote, "her [Kathleen's] closest friends assumed that she and Billy were 'semiengaged.' On the day of the party reports of a secret engagement were published in the Boston papers. . . . The truth was that the young couple had reached no such agreement" (p. 65).

Goodwin wrote, "her [Kathleen's] closest friends assumed she and Billy were semi-engaged. On the day of the party, reports of a secret engagement were published in the Boston papers. . . . The truth was that the young couple had reached no such agreement" (p. 586).

Other examples follow, and if you'd like to see the whole article, click here.
Crader also reported that McTaggart and Goodwin came to an agreement in which Goodwin paid a significant sum of money and added footnotes in future editions for the copied material.

Bowdoin's student handbook says that "plagiarism involves the use, by paraphrase or direct quotation, of the published or unpublished work of another person without full and clear acknowledgement in all such scholarly work" (49).

So, hypothetically speaking, what would happen to Goodwin if she were a student and The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys was a 25-page independent honors project? She was a Harvard professor for 10 years, and is currently on the Board of Overseers at Harvard. She should know better. Shouldn't rules regarding plagiarism apply to both student and professor, if it is as serious as it is made out to be?

In fact, the Harvard Crimson, Harvard's student newspaper, wrote in an editorial on March 11, that "As a leader, she should recognize that her action is unbecoming for an Overseer and resign her post immediately, sending the clear message to the campus that she understands the gravity of the offense she has committed."

Here's another hypothetical situation. What if Goodwin decided (after graduating from Colby) that she wanted to be a professor at Bowdoin, and then proceeded to do her writing as a paid member of the Bowdoin faculty. Would the College punish her in any way for her academic dishonesty? Does the school have a policy on this? If so, I would be very interested to know about it.

The irony, of course, is that Goodwin has been critical of others that have 'borrowed' heavily from her work. The same Weekly Standard article quotes the Boston Globe issue in which she criticized Joe McGinniss for his use of her work. She says, "He just uses it flat out, without saying that it came from my work. You expect that another writer would acknowledge that. It's inexplicable why it wasn't done."

Indeed it is.

In the professional world, are their consequences for plagiarism? Are they as steep as suspension? Or, is it just considered bad form, without real punishment? If plagiarism is a serious academic crime, it should be enforced on both ends of academia.