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Doris Kearns Goodwin, LiarFirst she plagiarized. Then she claimed it wasn't plagiarism.

By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2002, at 4:43 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker

Did Doris Kearns Goodwin commit plagiarism? "Absolutely not," she tells Boston Globe reporter Thomas C. Palmer Jr. "There were extensive footnotes.'' Chatterbox has had it with brand-name historians who pretend that the rules allow you to steal someone else's sentences (for examples of Goodwin's theft, click here) provided that you supply a footnote. This is not a gray area. Here is how Harvard University, where Goodwin received her Ph.D. and was previously a professor of government, addresses the matter in a handbook for a freshman composition course that all undergraduates are required to take:

Most often, however, the plagiarist has started out with good intentions but hasn't left enough time to do the reading and thinking that the assignment requires, has become desperate, and just wants the whole thing done with. At this point, in one common scenario, the student gets careless while taking notes on a source or incorporating notes into a draft, so the source's words and ideas blur into those of the student, who has neither the time nor the inclination to resist the blurring. … If, in your essay on plagiarism, after reading the [previous sentence] you observe that "at a certain point in the writing process the student has neither the time nor the inclination to resist the blurring of his source's words into his own" but don't use quotation marks at least for the words in the middle of the sentence, you are plagiarizing even if you do cite [this] booklet. [Italics Chatterbox's.]

Please note that in this example the plagiarism doesn't even consist of an entire sentence. Here's what happens if a Harvard undergraduate gets caught committing plagiarism, according to the booklet:

Harvard policy requires instructors to report all suspected cases to the Dean of the College, and most such cases are ultimately adjudicated by the Administrative Board. If the majority of Board members believe, after considering the evidence and your own account of the events, that you misused sources, they will likely vote that you be required to withdraw from the College for at least two semesters.

Since a vote of requirement to withdraw is effective immediately, you lose all coursework you have done that semester (unless it's virtually over), along with the money you have paid for it. You must leave Cambridge; any return to campus will violate the terms of your withdrawal. You must find a full-time job, stay in it for at least six months, and have your supervisor send a satisfactory report of your performance in order to be readmitted. … Finally, any letter of recommendation written for you on behalf of Harvard College—including letters to graduate schools, law schools, and medical schools—will report that you were required to withdraw for academic dishonesty. [Italics in the original.] If you are required to withdraw for a second time, you will not, ordinarily, be readmitted.

Goodwin no longer teaches at Harvard, but last year the Ann Radcliffe Trust gave her a Women's Professional Achievement Award, which is granted to someone who shows "exceptional leadership in his or her professional field, and has used this leadership position to have a meaningful impact on women and to benefit his or her community." In 1996 Goodwin was awarded the Radcliffe Medal, which honors individuals "whose lives and work have had a significant impact on society." Now that Goodwin has not only committed plagiarism, but lied about whether it was plagiarism (and, incidentally, paid hush money to one of the people she plagiarized), Harvard's Board of Overseers (i.e., its board of directors) might ordinarily be expected to revoke these awards. Except—whoops!—Goodwin is also a Harvard Overseer!

Please don't tell the freshmen.

[Update, Jan. 25: The author Goodwin paid off, Lynne McTaggart, now tells the Weekly Standard's Bo Crader (who broke this story) that the plagiarism was more extensive than has been reported. She also says that she received "a substantial monetary settlement" from Goodwin, not "a token sum."]

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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Notes from The Fray Editor:

The issues get a good going-over in a thread starting with a post from The Bell here: several different views represented. Andrew K. Weathers brings his academic experience to bear on the topic here. Deak Nabers says "it's not just brand-name historians" and has some passages to compare here. Rachel's post, below, was short and to the point, and we enjoyed Riccaric's dramatic denunciation.


Reader Comments From The Fray:


This recent exposure of plagiarism by both Steven Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin is disturbing for two reasons:

1) They are supposed to be experts and experts should certainly know better than to steal from another's work, and

2) Their reactions and excuses are pathetic and sound more like that of an undergraduate freshman rather than distinguished professors.

--Rachel

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


The Harvard policy cited by Noah is little short of amazing. At Harvard, you can occupy the president's office and win nothing but praise from the faculty and support from the other students. You can sleep with a different woman each night, lying to all of them, but that's not the university's business. But copy a half a sentence, footnote it, but fail to put it in quotation marks, and you will suffer banishment (excluded from the entire city of Cambridge!) and moral re-education (forced to take a full-time job!). Of course plagiarism is wrong, but where's the sense of proportion? The excerpt from the handbook shows that Harvard hasn't lost its sense of moral outrage, it's simply misplaced it.

--Scott

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


Chatterbox should just give up. So many brand-name historians are liars because so much brand-name popular history is a lie. When historians like Ellis, MacCullough, and the presidential historians who appear on PBS write about the America of great men, great adventures, and great accomplishments, they distort what the United States has been and what it becomes. Brand name historians take Great Men and Great Accomplishments as emblems for American virtue while ignoring the vast majority of Americans and the vast majority of what shaped American society. It's a bogus exercise from beginning to end--a bright, shining lie (to paraphrase the title of a book on Vietnam). It's little wonder that the historians themselves turn out to be compulsively dishonest.

--Riccaric

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

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