The Kamala Harris Plagiarism Scandal

Yesterday, Christopher Rufo published an article accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of plagiarizing her 2009 book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer. In his article, he cited five passages in the book that bore strong similarities to earlier works.

That day, the New York Times called me and asked me to examine those five publicly available passages. I studied the passages and found that they were indicators of poor writing processes but did not make up a large portion of the work. As such, while I agree that the passages represent plagiarism and are issues that need to be addressed, they are relatively minor as far as plagiarism goes.

At the time, I was unaware of a full dossier with additional allegations, which led some to accuse the New York Times of withholding that information from me. However, the article clearly stated that it was my “initial reaction” to those allegations, not a complete analysis.

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.

With this new information, while I believe the case is more serious than I commented to the New York Times, the overarching points remain. While there are problems with this work, the pattern points to sloppy writing habits, not a malicious intent to defraud.

Is it problematic? Yes. But it’s also not the wholesale fraud that many have claimed it to be. It sits somewhere between what the two sides want it to be.

Analyzing the Full Report

The 40-page document contains approximately 29 accusations (depending on how you count them). Eighteen of the allegations focus on the book, and another 11 focus on alleged self-plagiarisms that came later.

To that end, I have to dismiss the self-plagiarism allegations out of hand. Politicians repeat themselves, and it’s not surprising to see them reuse words and passages. As I talked about in March, there are times when being original with your word choice can be harmful to your message. This is one of those times.

Furthermore, the report also treats these as less serious, calling them “maybe benign” examples of plagiarism. That makes sense as politicians, in general, have little, if any, expectation of originality.

Much of these allegations came from one interview about the book. While there’s a debate about whether the interview was scripted when it was promoted as live, this is a separate question outside my area of expertise.

Of the remaining 18, the first was discussed in January 2021 and was largely dismissed then. Another deals with self-plagiarism in the book itself. Once again, that is not surprising.

From there, the allegations do get more serious.

The most serious allegation concerns Wikipedia. Harris’ book contained roughly two paragraphs copied from Wikipedia without citation. To be clear, that is plagiarism. It’s compounded by the fact that Wikipedia is typically not seen as a reliable source, and, according to Weber, there was an error in the information.

The section quotes and cites a passage from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance but does not indicate that Wikipedia was used.

Most of the remaining passages are in situations where text was used verbatim but not quoted. The sources were largely cited and, in some cases, were quoted, though not all verbatim text was included.

We’ve seen this problem repeatedly, especially with works from this period. Poor writing techniques and the lack of accessible plagiarism detection tools made this a common problem, especially before the 2010s. While that doesn’t make it acceptable, it makes it more about sloppy writing habits than an intent to defraud.

Trying to Find a Deeper Understanding

When reviewing allegations in a work, I try to understand how it was written. The idea is to determine whether it was an example of an honest mistake, sloppy work/writing or deliberate plagiarism.

This case has a pattern that is similar to the second category. Though some of the passages, such as the Wikipedia one, are sloppy to the point of negligence, when you look at the portion of the book involved, the nature of the issues, and the citations provided, negligence remains more likely than malice in my eyes.

The pattern fits what is, unfortunately, a common practice for many writers. It involves pasting in outside work to edit it later to make it “original.” To be clear, this is not how paraphrasing works. I tout my cleanroom writing system specifically to avoid this kind of plagiarism.

I was also a victim of this kind of plagiarism. In May 2022, I discovered my site plagiarized in a plagiarism apology essay. The author in question, Jumi Bello, copied and pasted passages from one of my articles and failed to quote the text or indicate the source.

There are differences between these cases; most notably, my site is not being cited at all. Still, I’ve seen firsthand many writers engaging in this practice and worked hard to educate against it.

Ultimately, I have to ask myself one simple question: What would I recommend if this were any other author?

That is a tough decision. First, I would recommend another check of the book to ensure that these are the only problems. Then, I would recommend correcting those issues immediately. Any subsequent prints should not have these problems.

Finally, I would encourage extra scrutiny of the authors and additional training for them.

That said, this isn’t the kind of plagiarism I would expect to blow up a career single-handedly. Many others have been forgiven for much greater plagiarism sins. Likewise, similar cases have been dismissed outright in academia.

Though outright dismissal, in my eye, isn’t warranted. Neither is a more drastic response.

Bottom Line

While I was glad to be able to review the complete dossier and adjust my position at least somewhat, I still have some lingering questions.

The first is the role of the co-author. To my knowledge, there is no information about her contributions, the writing relationship, etc. With works by two authors, it’s not uncommon for one author to introduce problematic text without the other’s knowing it.

To be clear, this doesn’t absolve Harris of responsibility. Her name is still at the top of the book. Just like Dr. David Agus and many others, primary authors are still responsible for contributions by coauthors and ghostwriters. But it’s still an unknown component of the story.

Second is whether the publisher was very involved. We don’t know much about their editing process. Kaavya Viswanathan, for example, put much of the blame for her plagiarism on a book packager in 2006.

Ultimately, I recognize that this view will make absolutely no one happy. I don’t feel that the book is a product of wholesale malicious plagiarism, nor do I think it’s free from problems. No matter your side, this will be an unsatisfactory answer.

However, it’s an excellent example of why I dislike politically motivated plagiarism allegations. I am a staunch believer in examining and discussing plagiarism with nuance, and political cases don’t lend themselves to that.

Everyone wants quick and decisive answers. However, with plagiarism, those answers rarely exist.