An activist from the political right wing put forth allegations against Vice President Kamala Harris on a recent Monday, accusing her of the academic crime of plagiarism. The allegations pertained to a book Harris co-authored more than ten years ago. The activist, Christopher Rufo, represents the Manhattan Institute think tank as a senior fellow, and voiced his accusations via a blog post. Rufo argued Harris had lifted ‘verbatim language’ from uncatalogued sources in some excerpts of the book titled ‘Smart on Crime’ which she co-authored alongside writer Joan O’C. Hamilton in the year 2009.
In Rufo’s words, ‘There isn’t anything clever about plagiarism, it equates to a crime in the academic world’. He urged both the publisher and Vice President Harris, who holds a special place of responsibility, to publicly retract the plagiarised extracts and to publish a correction. He underlined his sentiment stating that ‘Kamala Harris isn’t living up to a necessary consistent standard’.
The aforementioned book was published around the time Harris was on the brink of becoming the Attorney General for California. ‘Smart on Crime’ suggests various policy actions reflective of Harris’ experience as a prosecutor. The book was scrutinized specifically by Rufo for six paragraphs out of the overall two hundred pages.
CNN, an esteemed news corporation, reportedly carried out a review of the contentious book. According to their findings, it was suggested that Harris, in consultation with her co-writer, may have at times been unsuccessful in correctly attributing their sourced content.
On the other hand, a distinct review by the esteemed New York Times unearthed that none of the contentious passages seemed to steal thoughts or concepts of any other authors — a form of plagiarism considered most grave. Yet, it found that some passages outlined by Rufo were seen to have somewhat directly referenced previously published works, without the inclusion of proper quotation marks.
In the face of these serious allegations, Harris’ campaign swiftly retorted, arguing that their candidate had in fact ‘referenced sources and statistics with meticulousness in footnotes and endnotes throughout the whole text’. They highlighted a clear acknowledgment of the references sourced.
‘Rightwing orchestrators appear desperate witnessing the growing bipartisan support Vice President Harris is garnering as she races towards election victory’, counter-argued the campaigners. They painted an image of Trump in retreat, hiding in a conservative sanctuary, and avoiding questions about his deceitful conduct.
This isn’t the first instance Christopher Rufo initiated plagiarism accusations that made waves in this election cycle. His similar accusations last year had significant repercussions during the electoral process. Notably, the plagiarism claims targeted then Harvard President Claudine Gay, and played a key role in the uproar which eventually culminated in her resignation in the January of the same year.
To add another twist in the tale, in the same month, billionaire supporter of Donald Trump, Bill Ackman was compelled to retract his criticism of Claudine Gay related to the plagiarism claims. This sudden change in stance was occassioned by the revelation that his spouse, Neri Oxman had also extensively sourced from the works of other scholars, and in addition, references from Wikipedia in her doctoral dissertation while at MIT.
Right-Wing Activist Accuses VP Harris of Plagiarism in 2009 Book appeared first on Real News Now.
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