Shots In The Dark: Alex Beam and I Agree/World to End

Wednesday, April 26, 2024

Alex Beam and I Agree/World to End

In the Globe today, Alex Beam agrees with me that Kaavya Viswanathan may not even have committed the acts of plagiarism for which she is not really taking responsibility.

Beam writes: Here is my cautious prediction: If and when the lawyers get through devouring one another, it will emerge that a staffer at Alloy, ''the creative think tank," introduced the plagiarism.

Yup. Beam and I cautiously agree. (I suggested the same thing yesterday.) I do wonder if Viswanathan has actually read the author, Megan McCafferty, from whom she claims to have plagiarized.

In other plagiarism news, Steve Ross, publisher of McCafferty's house, Crown Books, completely rejected Viswanathan's pseudo-apology.

According to the Globe, the Crimson, and the Times, Ross said: ''We find both the responses of Little, Brown and their author . . . deeply troubling and disingenuous. ...Based on the scope and character of the similarities, it is inconceivable that this was a display of youthful innocence or an unconscious or unintentional act."

Acording to the Times, Ross claims that there are "more than 40 passages in Ms. Viswanathan's book 'that contain identical language and/or common scene or dialogue structure from Megan McCafferty's first two books.'"

40 passages? Viswanathan really is a good internalizer.....

¶ 10:30 AM

Comments:

Did anyone see her on the Today show this morning? Katie Couric pressed her pretty hard, even asking at the end of the interview why she had come on the show, suggesting that "some people" might be unconvinced by her innocence after the appearance. Ouch.

# posted by Anonymous : 10:46 AM

Richard, why don't you think K.V. read McCafferty's novels? She admitted as much in her "confession".

# posted by Anonymous : 11:37 AM

I just have this feeling that most of the book was written by a ghostwriter, and I suspect that the ghostwriter(s) committed the plagiarism.

# posted by richard : 11:41 AM

I've been waiting all week to read some praise for the role the Crimson took in breaking this story. In fact, the Crimson should get credit here not only for the K.V. story, but for taking the initiative to report that economist and Summers friend Andrei Shleifer will be returning to teaching Harvard udnergrads next fall--an amazing story, even if it hasn't been covered by any of the mainstream news.

# posted by Anonymous : 3:06 PM

Oh boy, 2006 is really not turning out great for the boys and gals from NJ - churning out rapists at Duke and plaigarists at Harvard. Damn, they must have some fine college "counsellors" down there!

# posted by Anonymous : 3:12 PM

In fact, apparently one of the alleged rapists was offered admission to Harvard but chose Duke instead. Which should suggest something about judgment...

# posted by Anonymous : 3:15 PM

Gotta love the very subtle reminder to your devoted fans that you're calling the mean street of Harlem home these days...what a tough guy. Though I would argue that your old place in Cambridge had a way higher incidence of random crime...

Also, did you see The Onion's take today on the Harvard Plagiarism Adventure?

# posted by DLH in the ATL : 3:29 PM

Well, it wasn't really supposed to be subtle. Usually when you say "the Harlem neighborhood where I live," that's supposed to tell people that you live in Harlem. The beauty of the English language.

Haven't seen the Onion, no, but I'll look.

# posted by richard : 3:33 PM

Oh my God, DLH, is that you? Why didn't you say so? I wouldn't have been nearly so snarky; I thought you were some random poster. Call me sometime, okay?

# posted by richard : 3:38 PM

Did you ever actually see the old place in Cambridge? It was a little dodgy.

# posted by richard : 3:39 PM

Viswanathan should be kicked out of Harvard and sent back to India, a nation where plagiarism, copyright violations, rampant theft and utter disregard of intellectual property rights of this nature are pandemic.

# posted by Anonymous : 4:08 PM

That seems unfair. (After all, wasn't she born in the US?) And it's not as if we don't have plenty of plagiarism and piracy right here in the good ol' USA....

# posted by richard : 5:27 PM

Richard,
"Just askin"
Getting away from K.V. for the moment (and I know that is hard to do), I was surprised that you didn't start threads on two Crimson articles: Few Perks For Faculty With Kids; Carol Thompson to review U.H. academic administration.
The former has a quote (inappropriate ?) from the current "first lady" and the later brings up all sorts of conflicts.

# posted by Anonymous : 5:29 PM

KV wasn't born in the US, but the previous anonymous poster's comment is still unfair--to India, particularly in light of our earlier discussion of Dershowitz, Ogletree, Tribe, Kearns Goodwin, Jayson Blair, Ben Domenech, Blair Hornstine, etc.

I wouldn't mind seeing Harvard make an example of a plagiarist, but I don't know how they would--to my knowledge the only student papers that are systematically collected and stored by the university are honors theses. If they wanted to go to the trouble of reviewing the work she did for her courses over the past several semesters, they'd have to hunt down her TFs & profs and see if they still happened to have electronic versions of the papers on their hard drives or in their email accounts. That's assuming that electronic versions were submitted in the first place.

# posted by Anonymous : 6:24 PM

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# posted by Anonymous : 6:46 PM

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# posted by Anonymous : 6:48 PM

Just what the honest kids at Harvard needed, more bad publicity reflecting on them and their school! Opal Oops needs to do more than apologize. And Richard, she did claim credit for this book, as well as $500K.

# posted by Anonymous : 10:47 PM

Oh Richard, whatever happened to that Crimson Snooze?

# posted by Anonymous : 11:09 PM

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