regional ethic bowl position paper
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A Question of Words:Plagiarism and the Curious Case of Matthew WhitakerTRANSCRIPT
A Question of Words:Plagiarism and the Curious Case of Matthew Whitaker
Christopher Bates
17 November 2012
Honors Case Studies in Ethics, IDH 3600H, Final Draft
Dr. Michael Strawser
B a t e s A Q u e s t i o n o f W o r d s P a g e | 1
Introduction:
The Regional Ethics Bowl Case Plagiarism or Inspiration raises multiple questions that
must be addressed, each in turn, for a coherent explanation to be offered and a cogent position
taken. These questions include plagiarism as related to print publications (both in reference to
other published works and in reference to so-called “open source” resources such as Wikipedia),
plagiarism in oration, as well as the differences and similarities between student and professional
codes of conduct and enforcement. This paper seeks to consider all the relevant arguments and
provide an ethical framework for further discussion.
Position:
We believe that it is unethical to use the original ideas or distinctive research of another
to promotes one's own academic standing, receive financial gain, or better one's social standing
without crediting the originating source(s).
Based on the information available, we do not find that Whitaker stepped over this ethical
boundary.
Background:
These are the facts that have led us to this conclusion:
While during the process of professional review, pending a promotion at his university,
ASU Professor Matthew Whitaker was accused by ten of his fellow ASU professionals of the
unethical use of the work of other scholars in six of his fifty-seven publications (books, book
reviews, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries), as well as within a number of his eighty-nine
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recorded speeches and interviews (Whitaker CV). Under ASU’s guidelines, the accusation
prompted the formation of a tribunal who narrowed the questionable materials to two books and
one speech.
Race Works: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West is a historical exploration of a
single family in Phoenix, described by reviewers as "...an important and valuable contribution to
the growing body of literature that focuses on the experiences of African Americans in the
western United States" (Leonard 462). In writing the book, Whitaker was accused of lifting
material from the work of his mentor and graduate advisor Bradford Luckingham’s book
Minorities in Phoenix. The section of the book the tribunal found most troubling (along with the
corresponding section from Minorities) is found in Table 1. The charge against Whitaker was
plagiarism of published work.
In the young adult book African American Icons of Sport: Triumph, Courage, and
Excellence, a collection of articles by various authors, Whitaker was accused of plagiarizing
from Wikipedia within the two essays he wrote for the book: one on Mohammed Ali and a
second on Venus and Serena Williams. While there is confusion on the nature of Wikipedia as
being a so-called “open source” information site, and the resulting material as being therefore
“common knowledge,” the charge that Whitaker had copy-and-pasted his essays was a troubling
one.
Likewise, his speeches were carefully inspected and he was found to have used material
from multiple sources without citing all of the originating authors. One speech drew the attention
of the tribunal in particular. Whitaker spoke at a rally against the Arizona anti-immigration
movement, and the speech was found to have adopted liberally from the Washington Post story
"U.S. Immigration Debate is a Road Well Traveled."
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The accusations would normally
have remained private and
behind closed doors, however, it
was brought to national attention
due to Whitaker's claim to a
local paper that he was being
targeted because of racial bias.
He later retracted that claim, and
this paper finds the question of
motivation of the challengers to
be inconsequential to the ethical
concerns at hand.
Despite being acquitted of wrong-doing, the ways in which Whitaker made use of sources
in his publications and speeches - ways that at the very least walk a narrow line of academic
integrity – led many among his colleagues to feel the tribunal’s judgment was in error. Even
among the tribunal, there was agreement that something was amiss; in their statement to the
public, they wrote that while there was little evidence of "…systematic or substantial
plagiarism," there were "…reasons for concern about occasional carelessness in the use of
materials and sources and some less than optimal detail in attribution” (Ryman).
Table 1: Comparison of Texts (Basu)
Minorities in Phoenix by Bradford Luckingham
Race Work by Matthew Whitaker
For example, off-duty black soldiers from the 364th Infantry Regiment stationed at Papago Park frequented the Phoenix ‘colored neighborhood.’ On the night of November 26, 1942, ina café at Thirteenth Street and Washington, one of them struck a black female over the head with a bottle following an argument. A black military policeman tried to arrest the soldier, but he resisted with a knife. When the military policeman shot and wounded the soldier, black servicemen protested
On one such occasion, off-duty African American soldiers from the 364th Infantry Regiment stationed at Papago Park in Phoenix were involved in a violent incident in a ‘colored neighborhood’ they often visited. On Thanksgiving night 1942, one of the black soldiers struck a black woman over the head with a bottle following an argument in a Phoenix café. An MP attempted to arrest the soldier, but he resisted with a knife. When the MP shot and wounded the soldier, black servicemen protested.* * Footnotes in this paragraph credit the Arizona Republic
B a t e s A Q u e s t i o n o f W o r d s P a g e | 4
Inside HigherEd contributor Kaustuv Basu explains that the reason that Whitaker was found
innocent is three-fold:
(1) His speeches were not pre-written and read (in which case citing the sources would have
been expected), but rather delivered extemporaneously. The nature of extemporaneous
speech wars against the type of careful source citation that written communication
usually requires. Oration is an art form, intended primarily to inspire (and only
secondarily to educate).
(2) While in his writing Whitaker didn’t observe a strict adherence to standard citation
methods, he does indeed credit his sources. Table 1 may seem like damning evidence on
first glance, but further investigation was required. In Race Work: The Rise of Civil
Rights in the Urban West, Whitaker credits Bradford Luckingham’s Minorities in
Phoenix on the first page, in the first paragraph, writing that Race Works was “a
collaborative process not possible without the assistance” of “outstanding historians” like
Luckingham. Whitaker mentions Minorities in Phoenix an additional forty-two times in
the text and in seventy-eight of the footnotes.
(3) His contribution to African American Icons of Sport: Triumph, Courage, and Excellence
is more problematic: Whitaker claims that editor Elizabeth Demens was charged with
putting the final polish on the Young Adult book and that she copied material from
Wikipedia without his consent. The instance was murky enough – the editor has not been
available for explanation or comment – that the review board dismissed the issue as
moot.
ASU’s final verdict? Professor Whitaker was exonerated fully and promoted to full tenure.
Afterwards the tribunal released an official statement saying that:"There are some concerns
Table 2: Comparison of Obama and Deval Speeches (Kane)
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about Professor Whitaker's use of the language of other scholars, yet we find that his intellectual
debts are made clear, his sources are referenced, and that there is no compelling evidence of
intent to deceive in any case" (Ryan).
So what is the basis of the ongoing controversy? Monica Green, the chair of ASU’s history
department tenure and promotion committee, resigned in protest after the charge against
Whitaker was dropped. She believes (as do many) that the plagiarism standards that guide a
university student through their academic career should apply equally to university professors.
Green suggests that if Whitaker had submitted Race Works to a plagiarism-detection program
like SafeAssign, he would have received at the very least a failing grade. Green claims that she
plans to use the information found in Table 1 as a case-in-point within her classes… as an
example of what to avoid. For Green and those who think as she does, plagiarism is plagiarism...
it is a clear issue that suffers no shades of gray.
Plagiarism in Oration:
Whitaker was accused of plagiarizing his speeches, specifically an oratory call to action
at a rally against the proposed Arizona anti-immigration policy, where he quoted entire sections
of the Washington Post story "U.S. Immigration Debate is a Road Well Traveled." His speech
was rousing, given
almost completely
from memory, and
was designed to
inspire the audience
to action.
Obama, 2008 Presidential Campaign
Deval Patrick, 2006 Gubernatorial Campaign, Massachusetts
"Don't tell me words don't matter! 'I have a dream.' Just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' Just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words, just speeches,"
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal'-just words. Just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself'-just words. 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country'-just words. 'I have a dream'-just words,"
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It is clear that Whitaker did not credit the author. How is this not plagiarism?
The question is answered by considering the difference between oratory and
informational speech. The rules of a professor giving a lecture or presenting research at a
conference and a speaker rousing an audience to take action are not the same.
Most are not surprised to learn that few politicians write their own speeches; are they
plagiarizing their speech writers? In point of fact, politicians frequently use one another’s lines.
In 2008, then-candidate Barak Obama was accused of plagiarizing lines from his stump speech
from friend and fellow democrat Deval Patrick. The comparison chart (Table 2) makes it clear
that there is little doubt that Obama used the same lines that Patrick coined; how is this not
plagiarism?
When asked to comment on the ethics of the situation, Richard A. Posner weighed in.
Posner, a judge with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals “and author of The Little Book of
Plagiarism, suggested that... having the blessing of the source doesn’t necessarily render
uncredited use benign. Those potentially hurt include not just the originator of the words but the
audience. 'It seems to me the focus should be on the audience — is the audience hurt, is the
audience deceived?'"(Greenburg).
In questioning citation of sources in public speeches, the question is on intent: is the
speaker attempting to deceive the audience into believing that the speaker is the source of
information, or is the intent to utilize an effective rhetorical device?
Here, too, it is wise to consider that a well-read speaker may inadvertently quote works
that they are familiar with, never realizing that they are quoting, but instead believe that the
words are their own. The phenomenon is called cryptomnesia. Russ Juskalian, in his article “You
Didn’t Plagiarize, Your Unconscious Did,” writes that: “Richard L. Marsh, a professor of
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cognitive psychology at the University of Georgia and a leading cryptomnesia researcher
[believes that] ‘when people engage in creative activity, they are so involved in generating or
coming up with something new or novel that they fail to protect against what they previously
experienced" (Juskalian). Marsh goes on to explain that it is the nature of creative processes in
the brain to conflate that which has been previously experienced with that which is being
currently developed.
For these reasons we find the question of citing work within oration to be of style and
etiquette, not morality: the nature of oration, the intent of the speaker, and the complex manner
in which the human mind engages in the creative process mitigate against taking a hard-line
approach to spoken citation.
Plagiarism of Wikipedia:
There is an unfortunate misunderstanding about Wikipedia that is reflected in the case
study description: open source means general knowledge. This paper responds by claiming that it
is never ethical to plagiarize licensed work.
Every school child learns early on that certain facts are general knowledge and do not
need to be cited. An example? In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It is important to note
that Wikipedia is not a compendium of general knowledge. Open source refers to the fact that
any contributor, having passed Wikipedia’s fairly rigorous test of reliability, may add to articles
within their realm of expertise. The fact that the addition is anonymous does not preclude their
right to the work… only to its distribution. All Wikipedia articles are licensed for distribution
utilizing a Creative Commons license. Cameron Chapman, in his article “A Short Guide to
Open-Source and Similar Licenses,” explains that: “open source licenses make it easy for others
to contribute to a project without having to seek special permission… protects you as the original
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creator, making sure that you at least get some credit for your contributions… [and] prevents
others from claiming your work as their own.” No writer may ethically take a copy-and-paste
approach with Wikipedia or indeed, with any open source writing. It is the licensed possession of
the original author.
There are several instances of authors caught plagiarizing from Wikipedia and the moral
question is always one of intellectual property theft, not merely academic or professional
honesty. Motoko Rich, in her article in the New York Times “Wired Editor Apologizes for
Copying From Wikipedia in New Book,” writes that “Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired
Magazine, copied portions of his coming book, Free: The Future of Radical Price, from
Wikipedia without attribution.” Anderson replied by apologizing for what he claimed was an
“oversight,” explaining that it was a mistake and would be corrected in the e-book version.
However, the fact that plagiarism of Wikipedia is not only considered a question of
academic honesty, does not mean that utilizing Wikipedia as a source is never a question of
academic honesty. With near universality, academics, journalists, and professional writers
believe that Wikipedia is a not authoritative. Why? In considering the question, it is helpful to
note that Wikipedia may contain many instances of plagiarism itself. Anick Jesdanum, in his
Seattle Times article “Critic Reports Plagiarism on Wikipedia,” reports that hundreds of
Wikipedia articles include unattributed material from other sources. For this reason, along with
the anonymity of the contributions and the lack of peer review, most academics eschew the use
of Wikipedia as anything other than a general “jumping-off” place for research. Donna Shaw of
The American Jounalism Review reports that while few editors and news managers have a formal
written policy on utilizing Wikipedia, it is universally frowned on as a source.
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Whitaker claims that he did not plagiarize Wikipedia himself nor direct editor Elizabeth
Demens to do so. Considering the number of his publications, and the lack of any other evidence,
it is reasonable to accept his explanation. If it were proven that he had, however, it would
constitute an unethical act that was both intellectual theft and a lack of intellectual and academic
honesty.
Plagiarism in Authorship: crediting resources v. citing sources
We find that there is daylight between the student standard of citing resources and an
author’s responsibility for crediting resources.
In order to explain how we came to this understanding, it is necessary to first consider
plagiarism from the student’s perspective.
The Council of Writing Program Administrators describe themselves as “a national
association of college and university faculty with professional responsibilities for (or interests in)
directing writing programs.” In their publication Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA
Statement on Best Practices, they define plagiarism as follows:
In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone
else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without
acknowledging its source.
Students are in an instructional setting, and in an ideal instructional setting, every grade would
reflect the student's mastery of material being studied. Achieving a high grade for an assignment
- such that the grade does not reflect mastery - short-circuits that ideal instructional setting. In
schools where grades are competitive, plagiarism is not only taking the work of another and
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short-circuiting education, it is cheating: gaining an unfair advantage over other, more honest
students. Therefore, plagiarism by students is unethical on teleological grounds: it prohibits the
primary aim of education; wrong on utilitarian grounds: it compromises the happiness of the
many (the honest) for the few (the cheaters); it is wrong on deontological grounds: the duty of
the student is to learn.
But this case is not about a student, but rather an author who is also a professor. It does
not ask about a student caught purchasing a paper on an essay resource site nor about a graduate
student attempting to draft a thesis caught passing off the work of another as her own. After
counting forty-two direct references in the text and an additional seventy-eight references in the
footnotes, it would be hard, indeed, to come up with a valid reason to claim that Whitaker did not
attempt to credit Luckingham with being an important source. The most that could be said is that
in one paragraph of the book, for eighty-one words, Whitaker was sloppy. Or, in the words of the
tribunal, exercised “less than optimal attribution.”
Here the Council of Writing Professionals has more to add to the conversation:
Most current discussions of plagiarism fail to distinguish between:
submitting someone else’s text as one’s own or attempting to blur the line
between one’s own ideas or words and those borrowed from another source,
[and]
carelessly or inadequately citing ideas and words borrowed from another
source.
Such discussions conflate plagiarism with the misuse of sources. (Defining)
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Monica Green and those like her are falling into the trap of conflation that the WPA identifies:
confusing plagiarism with the misuse of sources.
Further, we would claim that few of the ethical reasons against plagiarism that apply to
students equally apply to the professional academic author. Taking the research of another and
reporting it without citation is not diminishing knowledge (hence not impacting education), nor
is it cheating (the expansion of knowledge is not a competition). We do agree with Monica
Green on one point: a professor (or any author) who plagiarizes the work of another is
committing theft. Taking the labor of another - weeks of research and analysis - and profiting
from that work is not significantly different from skimming an employee’s paycheck. It is
stealing. For the professional author, plagiarism entails taking the work of another – the fruit of
their labor – and profiting from it; profiting in terms of financial gain, career advancement, or
social standing. As the review board found, Whitaker did not.
Exonerating Whitaker:
Few institutionally-endorsed writing guides provide leeway for accidental occurrence of
plagiarism. Indeed, these guides warn the student writer to be very cautious to avoid instances
where a quotation mark may be forgotten, a paraphrased text not cited, an in-text citation left out.
Institutions who hold this attitude towards cases of accidental plagiarism fail to account for
motive and intent. These institutions stress the perception of plagiarism. The assumption seems
to be that if the student writer is not perfect in citing their sources according to whatever system
the institution prefers, the writer is stealing.
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We agree that students should learn to cite materials used in the formation of academic
work and that such standards should be enforced to such an extent that the ethical violations
noted previously do not occur.
While he did act carelessly in reference to the passage cited in Table 1, that carelessness
is more accurately seen as a single mistake. Aristotelian virtue ethics, while looking to the
establishment of good character, admits to those situations where mistakes might happen. Indeed
Aristotle was uniquely concerned with how – in opposition to Socrates – right knowledge does
not necessarily and universally lead to right action. Aristotle, in explaining the circumstances
whereby a morally upstanding individual might make an error, wrote in Nicomachean Ethics that
actions taken out of ignorance are ethically neutral; Kant later echoes this sentiment with his
claim that intent is central to determining moral rectitude. If carelessness is the cause of the
apparent plagiarism, and that carelessness is brought about not by intent to deceive but rather
from the challenge of presenting research from hundreds of sources and accidentally missing
one, neither Aristotle nor Kant would find the single instance to be ethically troubling.
However, for the sake of argument, let us assume that Whitaker had intentionally
plagiarized from Luckingham. On what ethical grounds would he be censured?
First, John Locke’s concept of property within the confines of social contract theory
requires that when a member of a society invests time and effort into a task, the rewards of that
task belong to him. This he explains in chapter five of the Second Treatise on Civil Government
when writing that:
From all which it is evident, that though the things of nature are given in
common, yet man, by being master of himself, and proprietor of his own person,
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and the actions or labour of it, had still in himself the great foundation of
property; and that, which made up the great part of what he applied to the support
or comfort of his being, when invention and arts had improved the conveniencies
of life, was perfectly his own, and did not belong in common to others.
Therefore, Locke writes: "Everyone has property in his own person. This nobody has any right to
but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his."
There are differences in reward because: “Different degrees of industry were apt to give men
possessions in different proportions" (Locke).
The university system is based on a schedule of differing rewards (proportions) for the
advancement of knowledge, based in part on differing degrees of effort (industry). These rewards
come in the form of pay raises, tenure, and recognition.
If Whitaker had taken the work of Luckingham without referencing the source and
enjoyed the escalation to tenured professor, he would have been claiming rewards that he had not
earned, and as such, would have been violating the standard that we have outlined.
A second concern comes from rule-utilitarianism. Similar to the Kantian categorical
imperative, Mill’s conception of moral behavior that focuses on universability as a standard of
rightness is of special interest in the case of Whitaker. In Utilitarianism, Mill wrote that:
In the case of abstinences indeed -- of things which people forbear to do from
moral considerations, though the consequences in the particular case might be
beneficial -- it would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously
aware that the action is of a class which, if practiced generally, would be
generally injurious, and that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it.
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The amount of regard for the public interest implied in this recognition is no
greater than is demanded by every system of morals, for they all enjoin to abstain
from whatever is manifestly pernicious to society. (Mill 25)
If Mill were to be present for the discussion of plagiarism, he would suggest that if rewards for
effort are given to those who did nothing to earn them, the academic system of pay raises, tenure,
and recognition would collapse because no one would be willing to work hard for a reward that
was at best uncertain. Even though little question of happiness is directly impacted by the
decision to lay claim to work that is not your own, it is in the interests of the community to foster
and encourage the expansion of knowledge. Rule utilitarianism is here understood in a New
Testament “golden rule” aspect; “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Mill
would call that a simplification, however, and would prefer a more accurate “don’t do those
things that, though beneficial to you in the short term, would be harmful to the community at
large if universally practiced.” By these lights, we claim that plagiarism is therefore prohibited.
If Whitaker had done what he was accused of, then he would have been taking the work
of another and intentionally presenting it as his own with the hope of securing rewards through
the university system. It would be theft. And theft is still wrong.
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Works Cited:
Basu, Kaustuv. "Arizona State Faculty Members Question Handling of Plagiarism Allegations."
Inside Higher Ed. InsideHigherEd.com. 11 May 2012. Web.
Chapman, Cameron. “A Short Guide to Open-Source and Similar Licenses.” Smashing
Magazine. 24 Mar. 2010. Web
Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices. Council of Writing
Program Administrators. Jan. 2003. Web.
Greenburg, David. "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Speech." New York Times. 24
Feb. 2008.
Jesdanum, Anick. “Critic Reports Plagiarism on Wikipedia.”Seattle Times. 5 Nov. 2008. Web.
Juskalian, Russ. “You Didn’t Plagiarize, Your Unconscious Did.” The Daily Beast. 6 Jul. 2009.
Web.
Kane, Sally. "Obama Accused of Plagiarism in Speech." The Daily Cardinal. Uwire. Dist. CBS
News. 11 Feb. 2009. Web.
Leonard, Kevin Allen. "Review of Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West."
Peace and Change. 2007 (32.3). 435-463. Web.
Locke, John. Second Treatise on Civil Government. Constitution.org. Constitution Society. Ed.
Jon Roland. 7 Aug.2012. Web.
Mandeville, Kharli. "Professor Resigns Committee Position, Questions Plagiarism Decision."
The Arizona Republic. 16 April 16 2012. Web.
Martin, Brian. "Plagiarism: A Misplaced Emphasis." Journal of Information Ethics. 1994 (3.
2)Fall pgs. 36-47. Bmartin.cc. Web.
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism: Easy Read Edition. Google Ebook.Web.
B a t e s A Q u e s t i o n o f W o r d s P a g e | 16
Rich, Motoko. “Wired Editor Apologizes For Copying From Wikipedia in New Book.” New
York Times. 24 Jun. 2008. Web.
Ryman, Anne. "ASU History Professor at Center of Plagiarism Debate." The Arizona Republic. 6
May 2012. Web.
Powell, Michael. “U.S. Immigration Debate Is a Road Well Traveled.” Washington Post. 8 May
2006. Web.
Shaw, Donna. “Citing Wikipedia.” American Journalism Review. Feb/Mar. 2008. Web.
Whitaker, Mathew. Curriculum Vitae. Personal Website. Revised, 2012. Web.
Whitaker, Matthew. Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West. 2005: Lincoln.
Univ. of Nebraska Press. Print.