Stefan Weber has been an Austrian academic and one of the stars in this area of plagiarism detection. Because he has otherwise sparingly investigated apparent cases of academic fraud, he has attained notoriety as a “plagiarism hunter.” His work has usually entailed checking texts against uncredited borrowing from other authors, especially in political and academic circles. Of late, he has been focusing his attention on U.S. politics, including charging Vice President Kamala Harris with plagiarism of material lifted from his 2009 book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer.
Background and methodology
Weber has combined this work of plagiarism detection with profound insight into citation practices. He does everything from comparing texts side by side using various tools that show verbatim passages or closely paraphrased content without proper attribution. Weber has done similar investigations of politicians in German-speaking countries.
In the case of Kamala Harris, Weber did the research with aid from conservative activist Christopher Rufo. They uncovered evidence of at least 27 plagiarism cases committed by the soon-to-be Vice President along with her co-author, Joan O’C Hamilton: 24 from other authors and three instances of self-plagiarism. The findings fueled significant media attention and political backlash.
The allegations against Kamala Harris
The various accusations against Kamala Harris involve plagiarism issues in her 2009 book when she was the District Attorney of San Francisco. The critics had said that she had copied swathes of text from different sources without citing them appropriately.
Key findings
- Outright textual borrowing: Harris, the report goes on to state, lifted language verbatim, word for word, from a host of sources including press releases, news reports, even Wikipedia entries. Example sentences from an NBC News report from last year were lifted, sans quotation marks or proper citation.
- Deceptive citations: Even when Harris inserted footnotes indicating the origin, the text was verbatim. This is what has been variously called “pawn sacrifice plagiarism” where the citation does not really reflect the credit of work lifted from the source.
- Fabricated references: Weber also noted Harris making up references to sources, with fabricated page numbers for citations that did not match any real texts.
- Specific examples: One example is that text was copied from a press release regarding crime reduction strategies that the John Jay College of Criminal Justice issued. Harris’s book is said to have matched very similar language without proper attribution given.
Implications for Kamala Harris
All these allegations could not have come at a more sensitive time, as they came forth just before the 2024 presidential election. The accused claims have quickly been latched onto by political opponents to suggest deceit and inauthenticity both in Harris’s writing and her public persona. Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has seized on the allegations and attempted to characterize them as part of broader problems with Harris being truthful.
Political fallout
There have been swift consequences:
- Criticism by opponents: The critics have taken their zeal even to the social media platforms, with some claiming that Harris did not even write her book.
- Media attention: Major news outlets covered the story, digging into both the content of the allegations and the implications for Harris’s political future.
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