Fwd: Re: Weekly Standard on Laurence Tribe

[Mae Kuykendall]

In writing something this summer that incorporated a thesis about Ralph
Waldo Emerson, I found the task of giving a simple statement for a
foreign audience to explain Emerson's life and work a challenge, because
the basic statement necessarily echoed simple encyclopaedia entries. 
Yet citation seemed a little silly, too, as did any effort to write
freehand without even a glance at sources.  I gave citations to be
cautious, but I agree that some basic propositions tend to assume a
relatively standard form and to create dilemmas, hazards, and bad
moments for writers, high and low.

Mae Kuykendall

>>> Frank Cross <crossf at mail.utexas.edu> 9/28/2004 5:03:21 PM >>>

This whole issue looks awfully overheated to me, given the evidence. 
Tribe 
has elegantly apologized, as he reasonably might, but the plagiarism is

pretty skimpy.  The longest "plagiarized" clip is nineteen words, long,

right?  Ok, it should have had quotes and could be called plagiarism
but 
it's pretty modest.  Hardly reaching the point of stealing another's
ideas 
in a fairly lengthy book.  And some of the Weekly Standard's examples
are 
meaningless.  As something of a Trumanophile, who has reads dozens of
books 
on the man, I would venture that every single one of them has referred
to 
his "crony appointments" of "buddies" in those words.  By this
standard, 
Abraham would be the plagiarist.

The article looks like a partisan hack job.  There is, I think, a
problem 
of professors relying unduly on the writings of research assistants 
sometimes.  But I suspect this is one of the weaker instances of that
problem.  

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