More Plagiarizing Historians

Nick Gillespie | June 24, 2003

The Chronicle of Higher Education has this interesting piece on prolific and influential Marxist historian Philip Foner. Here's a snippet:

The question remains: Why did his colleagues put up with it [plagiarism]?

Younger labor historians in the 1970s and '80s "tended to be people with left sympathies, who felt the man had suffered enough," says Mr. Dubofsky. "So even the people whose work he had borrowed from freely did not want to say anything."

[Link courtesy Arts & Letters Daily]

A few months back in Reason, historian Joyce Malcolm looked at the recent rash of improper behavior among academics, especially gun scholar Michael Bellesiles. Her story is here.

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|6.24.03 @ 2:50AM|#

A Marxist didn't respect the (intellectual) property rights of another. That was consistent with his beliefs, in a sick sort of way.

Ms.McKillicuddy|6.24.03 @ 5:51AM|#

Iggy, next time, just take a minute more and click the PREVIEW button first. It'll save you from future "oopsies."

Vilkovsky|6.24.03 @ 6:00AM|#

For marxists, asset forfeitures, taxation, hijacking glowing pacifiers, plagiarism, etc., are normal courses of events and perfectly acceptable forms of behavior. So they are quite consistent in their beliefs when they don't respect the intellectual property rights of others.

Ig|6.24.03 @ 12:23PM|#

Perhaps the tolerance for plagiarism is based on pragmatism. If the plagiarist is seen as promoting a cause or viewpoint dear to the actual author or a sympathetic compatriot as is getting better "traction" with the words than their original author, why tip the apple cart?

Ig|6.24.03 @ 12:24PM|#

Oops..."and is getting better traction"

Sorry
Ig

Vilkovsky|6.25.03 @ 5:29AM|#

Oh, by all means! Let's be absolutely precise in our analysis of that noble system of thought called "Marxism." Let's dot every one of its "i's" and cross every one of it's "t's" -- especially if our aim is to impress others with our studies and to show them that we have read Marx and thoroughly evaluated his ideas.

Whatever we do, let's not look at THE MAIN OVERRIDING PRINCIPLE embodied within Marxism. Noooo! We must dissect it; perhaps even justify its noble "motives." Only then are we allowed to refute this piece of crap thinking.

Kevin Carson|6.25.03 @ 9:53AM|#

Nick:

Thanks for the heads-up on Foner. It's a shame; I've got his history of the American labor movement on my shelf, but now it's worthless to me because of "notoriously unreliable footnotes." I was just as disappointed to hear of Lott's loss of credibility, although as far as I know it didn't extend to fabricating actual research. I like the Wobblies AND gun rights--go figure. What Bellesiles did sounds a lot closer to what Foner is accused of. Lott just fabricated some people to blow his own horn. It goes more to make him look silly personally than to invalidate his research.

Kevin Robinson:

Plagiarism is far different from violating the so-called "intellectual property" involved in copyright. I disapprove of the latter as a form of faux property, really just a state-enforced monopoly. Publishing someone else's work and selling it under their name, without permission, is completely different for putting YOUR name on their work. I despise anyone who knowingly takes credit for someone else's work.

digamma|6.25.03 @ 11:21AM|#

Just a heads-up: let's not confuse this guy with the also-leftist but much-more-respectable Eric Foner.

Croesus|6.25.03 @ 12:58PM|#

I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but as a rule IP is not an issue for Marxists. It certainly wasn't an official issue in the USSR at least. Marxists treat IP (at least theoretically) as they would personal property. Why people cannot differentiate between types of property is beyond me.

BTW, the so-called analysis above fails completely to explain the likes of, let's see, the behavior of Stephen Ambrose. Long before the story broke over the plagiarism in _The Wild Blue_ (a shitty piece of scholarship to begin with) it was known amongst historians that Ambrose lifted from other's works w/o proper acknowledgement. In fact, I have had conservations about his plagiarism w/historians at conferences, in my old department, etc. going back at least to 1997.

No, I think Foner's behavior, and Ambrose's too, is far more likely to be found in a source we tend to call "human nature," rather than ideology. BTW, I am not a Marxist, nor am I defending Marxists, I simply cannot stomache the ignorance I've seen displayed here so far.