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PLAGIARISM AND INTELLECTUALFREEDOM
Prepared for the New Mexico Library Association Mini Conference, New Mexico Junior College Training & Outreach Facility, Hobbs, NM, October 22-23, 2009.
By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
Scholar in Residence and Chair, Department of Chicana/Chicano and HemisphericStudies, Western New Mexico University. Professor Emeritus of English, Texas StateUniversity System—Sul Ross. Co-Chair, New Mexico Library Association IntellectualFreedom Committee. Editor, Greenwood Encyclopedia of Latino Issues Today.
ABSTRACT:
This presentation discusses the relationship between plagiarism andintellectual freedom. While plagiarism is a discourse issue in language, intellectualfreedom impinges on information content and its sources. Oftentimes hints of plagiarism in a text may inhibit intellectual freedom.lainly, plagiarism is “unacknowledged copying.” If I put my name on a copyof 
Hamlet 
and (try) to tell people that I wrote it, that’s “theft,” certainlymisrepresentation. In its various forms, plagiarism is one of the modern“deadly sins” with a host of grand inquisitors ready to expose its sinfulness to theworld as they stoke the fires of salvation. In Academia this inquisition has taken onthe trappings of ritual, the “plagiarism patrol” lurking everywhere in its groves,ready to pounce on undergraduate trespassers.
P
Fraught with ambiguity and ambivalence, the term
 plagiarism
comes from the Latinword
 plagiarius
which means
kidnapper 
. “thief of someone else’s brainchild”(Lipson, 10). A postmodern interpretation of plagiarism rejects the idea that anyonecan own ideas (Grossberg 1336). While at times difficult to define, in the mainplagiarism is the act of using someone else’s words without attribution ordocumentation, paraphrasing someone else’s words without attribution ordocumentation, or using someone else’s work with intent to deceive others that it’sone’s own work (Burt, 2004).Less penitent sinners of plagiarism refer to the act as “recycling.” This was the casein Shakespeare’s time when—in the absence of laws of plagiarism—he allegedlypurloined most of his plots and, in the case of 
 Antony and Cleopatra
, lifted almostverbatim an entire passage from Plutarch; not to mention what he took from ArthurBrooke’s narrative poem (
The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet 
, 1562) for hisown
Romeo and Juliet 
(Mabillard). Or in Chaucer’s time when he borrowed freelyfrom French authors (Ortego, 1970). With these two “gold standard” authors, whatthey plagiarized (unacknowledged copying) has sometimes been excused as“creative genius” or an improvement on the original. Historically, well into the 18
th
century, writers regularly embellished the works of well-known figures much the1
 
way Dryden “improved” Shakespeare. No matter the circumstances, plagiarism is atrope with a long philosophical history (Ortego, 2006).“Great figures” of history who have been caught in the skein of “unacknowledgedcopying” include the astronomer Tycho Brahe who in 1597 accused NicolasRaimanus Ursus, another astronomer, of stealing his geoheliocentric world systemtheory, drawing Johannes Kepler into the fray. Even Thomas Malthus, the populationtheorist was charged with plagiarism. In Malthus’ case, sociologist William Petersennotes that by putting the ideas of previous population theorists “into a largerframework and examining in detail the relation of population growth to economic,social and political development, Malthus did more than any of his predecessors orall of them together” (Dupaquier, 1980). This is characterizing plagiarism as“creative genius.”In 1892 when she was only 12, Helen Keller was accused of plagiarizing substantialportions of “The Frost King,” a story by 19
th
century author Margaret T. Canby(Gilmore, 1). In 1916, a plagiarism dispute arose over whether Albert Einstein orDavid Hilbert discovered the general theory of relativity. Like Malthus, Einstein wasconsidered by many of his peers as an “incorrigible plagiarist” and charged withcopying the theories of others without attribution or documentation (Bjerknes,2003).In 1993, Stephen B. Oates, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts atAmherst, was charged with plagiarism by what he called a cabal of ”fraud busters”bent on exposing plagiarism not only in
With Malice Toward None
, his book onLincoln, but also in most of his previous works (Oates, 2002). Having taken theircase to the American Historical Association, the verdict rendered by the AHAsupported “the cabal,” stating that “Mr. Oates relied too much and too consistently,
even with attribution
[emphasis mine], on ‘the structure, distinctive language, andrhetorical strategies’ of other authors.”Imagine that—looking too much like other people. Would copying a fashion style beconsidered a form of fashion plagiarism? Oates denied the charges and not being amember of the AHA refused to submit to the jurisdiction of the organization (
Ibid 
.).After a year and a half, the professional division and council of the AHA absolvedOates of plagiarism. The Oates case raises the question of how a charge of plagiarism affects anauthor’s reputation. When cleared of such a charge, how does an author go aboutrestoring his or her reputation? More importantly, though, what effect does a chargeof plagiarism have on the intellectual freedom of the writer? How is the after work of an author charged with plagiarism viewed or received by readers and the literati?After almost 16 years since Oates was first charged with plagiarism, he is stillregarded as a plagiarist pariah and his work still suspect. Is this not an inhibition of intellectual freedom?2
 
 The crucial issue here is about the difficulty of proving plagiarism. Some cases areeasy; others are not. The fraud busters in the Oates case, concede that “it is notpossible to be certain that plagiarism is the explanation for every instance of copying without adequate attribution” (Famous Plagiarists.com). Plagiarismmachines of the kind used in the Oates case to ferret out dishonest scholarship arenot foolproof. And if there are other explanations for what appears to be“unacknowledged copying,” then cannot coincidence be one of them, though thefraud busters are loath to think so.In 2002, the historian Stephen Ambrose ran afoul of “fraud busters” with chargesthat passages of 
The Wild Blue
, his best-seller about World War II B-24 bombercrews, were taken from Thomas Childers’ book
Wings of Morning: The Story of theLast American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II.
Like Oates,Ambrose’s previous works have become suspects of plagiarism. A number of prominent writers, especially historians, have been charged with plagiarism, notableamong them Doris Kearns Godwin and her 1987 book
The Fitzgeralds and theKennedys
with passages similar to those in other works, including LynneMcTaggert’s
Kathleen Kennedy 
. The most scathing rebuke of Ambrose and Godwin’s literary pecadillos appeared inan editorial of 
The New York Observer 
(“New Publishing Mantra,” 2006) whichexcoriated not the authors but their publishers, saying “it’s clear Mr. Ambrose andMs. Godwin’s editors were too cowed by the authors’ fame to bring up any doubtsthey might have had” about possible plagiarism. It appears, then, that plagiarism isa blood sport. No halfway measures. One way or another, sinners must pay.In the groves of academe, specters of plagiarist bounty hunters or fraud bustersacting as lexical vigilantes undertake the role of keeping student papers free of plagiarism, seemingly oblivious that language is a shared commodity, that we learnour language from the “modeling” of others. In other words, all our utterances havetheir genesis in others. The aim of instruction is to have our students becomefamiliar with the thoughts and ideas of others. That’s why we teach the ideas of others to our students. That’s how one generation transmits its values to the next(Ortego, 1978). Until fairly modern times, learning reflected the accumulated ideasof past generations. The mark of erudition was the ability to incorporate the ideas of previous sages into one’s own articulations. This is not to say we do not hope for original thoughts or ideas from our students.But there is a storehouse of thoughts and ideas that are common currency,available to all, so much that there is little if any need for attribution.n science, breakthroughs are almost always predicated on previous work.Attribution is taken for granted. In the realm of ideas, I’m reminded of Stephen Jay Gould’s acknowledgment in
Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle
(1988):
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