Vice President Kamala Harris has been 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 lifted material from various sources without proper attribution. The claims, initially dismissed by some as overblown, have continued to be analyzed ever since, and even liberal outlets are now admitting that the allegations are severe.
One of the most egregious examples, according to 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. Entire sections from the press release appear in Harris’s book without attribution. Additionally, Harris reportedly copied language from an NBC News report discussing high school graduation rates. Despite the serious nature of the accusations, the mainstream media’s response was mixed. The New York Times initially downplayed the severity of the situation. In their coverage, the paper argued that the plagiarized material involved public data and statistical descriptions, which are seen as less severe forms of plagiarism than the theft of ideas or creative works.
The New York Times concluded in its review that the book does not plagiarize the core ideas or thoughts of another writer, which represents the gravest type of plagiarism. Rather, the text duplicates descriptions of programs and statistical data found in other works. Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism consultant based in New Orleans and the publisher of Plagiarism Today, originally commented on Monday that his initial response to Rufo’s accusations was to downplay the seriousness of the errors, considering 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 Times had to admit that the situation was more serious than originally reported after a full analysis by Bailey, who is their plagiarism consultant. Bailey, who had previously commented that the plagiarism was indicative of “sloppy writing habits” rather than malicious intent, now concedes that the issue is more significant than he initially stated. He conducted a full review of Stefan Weber’s 40-page report, which contained nearly 30 allegations of plagiarism. Bailey dismissed some of the self-plagiarism claims but acknowledged that the pattern of uncredited borrowing, especially from government reports and news articles, represents a notable failure in proper 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, stating that sources and statistics were clearly cited in the book’s footnotes and endnotes. However, the public scrutiny intensified following a leaked internal email from Chronicle Books, Harris’s publisher. The email, accidentally sent to Rufo, instructed staff not to comment on the plagiarism allegations and referred to the topic 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.
Austrian professor and plagiarism expert Stefan Weber told Fox News on Tuesday that Harris, along with her co-author Joan O’C Hamilton, committed plagiarism 27 times throughout the book. Weber, known for his role as a “plagiarism hunter,” analyzed the book alongside Rufo’s findings. According to Weber, the instances of plagiarism ranged from borrowing material from government reports to lifting entire paragraphs from news articles without credit.
While the Harris campaign and its supporters attempt to minimize the damage by framing the plagiarism as a technical oversight, the scandal has taken on a life of its own in the media. For now, Harris’s book, Smart on Crime, remains under the microscope. The Vice President’s team is undoubtedly hoping that voters will see the scandal as a non-issue, but the controversy could prove to be a persistent challenge in the final weeks of the campaign.
