Stanley Fish, Flopping Around
Posted on August 10th, 2010 in Uncategorized | 33 Comments »
In the Times, Stanley Fish argues that plagiarism is not a moral or philosophical issue, just a professional one.
Plagiarism is…an insider’s obsession. If you’re a professional journalist, or an academic historian, or a philosopher, or a social scientist or a scientist, the game you play for a living is underwritten by the assumed value of originality and failure properly to credit the work of others is a big and obvious no-no. But if you’re a musician or a novelist, the boundary lines are less clear…
And if you’re a student, plagiarism will seem to be an annoying guild imposition without a persuasive rationale (who cares?); for students, learning the rules of plagiarism is worse than learning the irregular conjugations of a foreign language. It takes years, and while a knowledge of irregular verbs might conceivably come in handy if you travel, knowledge of what is and is not plagiarism in this or that professional practice is not something that will be of very much use to you unless you end up becoming a member of the profession yourself. …
This strikes me as morally reductionist and downright silly. It doesn’t take years to learn the rules of plagiarism; it takes about as long as it takes to learn that it’s wrong to steal or lie, both of which are inherent in the act of plagiarism.
Fish patronizes today’s students: Though they may have more and easier access to materials that could be appropriated, they know what they’re doing; they’re cheating.
Now, they may figure everyone does it, so…so what? Or they may figure that their chances of getting caught are so low, the rewards justify the risk.
But they know that cutting and pasting another person’s work and presenting it as their own is wrong—both morally and professionally.
Moreover, the principles underlying plagiarism are closely related to intellectual property, and that body of theory and law applies across many different industries—indeed, it’s arguably the foundation of capitalism—beyond academia and other forms of media.
Even in the examples Fish cites, he’s wrong; plagiarism in music is a hotly debated issue that comes up a lot. So do intellectual property debates; the Beach Boys, for example, are currently threatening to sue Katy Perry for including the line, “I wish they all could be California Girls,” in her song “California Gurls.”
(Actually, Snoop Dogg rapps it.)
As usual, Fish writes at such length and with such a lack of clarity that he winds up confusing an issue that is really not that complicated….
33 Responses
8/10/2024 10:06 am
Well, Richard, we’ve been down this road before. I agree Fish is silly or worse on the student issue, which should be identical with that for journalists, academic writers., etc.
In music (particularly folk and blues traditions), or art in general, it really is a different matter. I and others have quoted Eliot on this:
“Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal” What you generally don’t see quoted is what follows in this 1920 essay:
“. . . The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it is torn . . . A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.”
Which makes Katy Perry’s theft not even that, it’s almost a fair use quote, since nobody fails to recognize the theft, which is therefore barely a theft (there’s a good commentary piece on fair use and quoting by Jonathan Bate in this week’s TLS).
But fair use quotes don’t usually end up in art, simply as quotes-Panini’s “Picture Gallery” would be an example, though there the arrangement of the recognizable paintings is original, fanciful, and not borrowed.
As for Eliot’s good and successful theft, I just wrote about this for TODO Austin a cultural mag. down there. Dylan was kicking off a tour there last week, and I went down for it. Charlie Sexton is back with him, and he and Dylan are really clicking. Crowded House, btw, were playing there the same night
http://issuu.com/todo_austin/docs/vol_2_issue4/9?zoomed=true&zoomPercent=100&zoomX=0.02586206896551735&zoomY=0.2047244094488189¬eText=¬eX=¬eY=&viewMode=magazine
8/10/2024 10:09 am
Actually, Richard, we’re pretty much on the same page; As Tom Petty said regarding the Chili Peppers song, it’s 3-chord rock and nobody owns that.
I would love to see Katy Perry make your argument, particularly because it’d be absurd for the Beach Boys to try to establish damages—if anything, the reverse is true. the shout-out has probably sparked a few sales of “California Girls.” This is what happens when lawyers get in the mix.
8/10/2024 10:11 am
By the way-sounds like you’re having a good summer! As they say in your former hemisphere, good on ya.
8/10/2024 10:23 am
Make that good on ya, mate
8/10/2024 10:44 am
I’m surprised RB is missing a chance to get in a dig at Harvard. They just made it easier for college students to plagiarize by formally easing sanctions for doing it. They say that the formerly standard suspension was inhibiting faculty from reporting plagiarism so they had to do something. Well, if RT and company care so much about plagiarism among students, then why not stick to their guns and say that Harvard students should know what to cite and when to cite (even if they’re a little uncertain about the format of how to cite)? I expect HL and SE have thoughts on this.
8/10/2024 11:03 am
What about this one RB:
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/08/10/author_on_leave_after_harvard_inquiry/?p1=Local_Links
8/10/2024 11:20 am
Who says I don’t stick to my guns on that, Big Papi? What would you know about that? I alert students to the various sites on academic dishonesty, talk about the how, when and what to cite throughout courses, and turn students in when they infringe, painful as that is. I also talk about the difference between academic and artistic plagiarism, which is an interesting topic
8/10/2024 11:40 am
Sorry for being unclear. “RT and company” was a proxy for the entire FAS, which accepted the weaker standards. I certainly wouldn’t know RT’s own classroom practices; I’m sure he is one of the few who do things right. That said, questions arise if RT is willing to share: How many times in the internet era (say, the 2000’s) have you turned in a student for infringement? And, how many times have you dealt with infringement on your own because of the ignorance/confusion plea?
I think students would be well-served by an orientation or course about the differences between plagiarism(s), homage, and standing on others’ shoulders. A classicist could do it as easily as a modernist. Any administrative or faculty appetite for that?
8/10/2024 11:46 am
I would certainly have the appetite, given the incidence. On your question I’ll take the 5th.
8/10/2024 2:44 pm
I fought the change in the plagiarism policy when it came before the Faculty Council. Like the change in the default on final exams (courses how have no exam unless the professor explicitly requests that one be scheduled), this decision was presented as an enhancement of faculty autonomy, which few faculty oppose, especially when coming from the deans. I believe the change is wrong because the accuser in a plagiarism case shouldn’t be the judge; if faculty weren’t reporting cases because they didn’t trust the Ad Board to take appropriate action, the solution is not to put the judgments back in the hands of individual instructors, where various inequities may arise. The proposal, at least as it exists on paper (as we used to say), was altered after my complaints; it will take a long time to know how it works in practice, if we ever do.
The Hauser story is disturbing and saddening. I wish I knew what was going on there, but this is not the first time where I have thought that Harvard would be better served by reporting on serious faculty disciplinary cases than by maintaining complete secrecy.
8/10/2024 2:45 pm
“when” I have thought, not “where”!
8/11/2024 3:53 am
one plagiarism case I remember very well was a student whose paper was a patchwork quilt of passages taken from various study guides. The student was a graduating senior, and the Ad Board’s punishment was to withhold the student’s diploma for one year. I hope the new rules will produce more satisfactory solutions to such cases.
Naturally, students who consult online study guides don’t acknowledge these sources, though SparkNotes, for example, actually tell you how to cite them if you wish. For example, here’s the MLA citation format for the SparkNote on Flaubert’s *Madame Bovary*, as given at the end of the online “Note”:
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Madame Bovary.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 10 Aug. 2010.
It would be so much fun if a student were to write: “The SparkNotes editors say such-and-such about *Madame Bovary*, but there are passages in the novel that do not support this claim. For example…”
Sigh.
8/11/2024 8:09 am
More on Hauser:
“Gallup says that he was worried about Hauser’s over-enthusiastic interpretation of his results. But according to other scientists in the field, Harvard decided to investigate his lab only after students who had worked there came forward with allegations of data falsification – a much more serious charge.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19293-misconduct-found-in-harvard-animal-morality-profs-lab.html
8/11/2024 12:55 pm
Can someone post a link to the new rules? I hadn’t heard about this and am moderately dismayed. In any case it’s the end of a slippery slope that we got onto as soon as Dick took over the Board: a failure to articulate principles in our discussions, leading to a softening of response concomitant with the softening of hearts.
Judith, could you elaborate on how you would have punished that senior? Everyone should keep in mind that most plagiarism the Board sees is INDEED a patchwork quilt of sloppily cut-and-pasted text from the Web. This is because plagiarism among Harvard students does not result from laziness per se; rather, it is a cry for help from someone who is struggling personally and intellectually. Most of the time Requirement to Withdraw turns out to be precisely what the doctor (figurative, sometimes) ordered. I don’t however see how that senior would have benefited educationally from a ninth term; and his diploma was surely only granted after he presented himself again with a statement and a fulfillment of the work requirement.
I have strong memories of a remarkably fetching young student who came before the Board full of contrition after plagiarizing a smallish assignment. If she’d been less charming, or someone had been leading the discussion, she’d have been RWD. Instead she returned and continued to struggle, half-consciously cheating on an exam the next year that was never reported. We had some good conversations, thank God. But if the Faculty doesn’t understand what very serious problems usually UNDERLIE plagiarism, they should get up to speed and take it seriously again.
As always, I am arguing for a more holistic understanding of education that responds to the intellectual and personal underpinnings of policy violations. I am afraid, however, that in other schools and perhaps to an increasing extent at Harvard too, student-services majors are increasingly running the show, and ‘consistency’ and automation are the desiderata. In other words, ‘dean of students’ as an intellectual profession may simply be dying.
I have no opinion on the Hauser thing.
Speaking of the Ad Board: Has anyone seen the trailer for the Mark Zuckerberg movie? In it he makes a defiant statement in person before the Board. Hilarious! for any number of reasons that you can probably guess (the outcome of his process is in the public record; I will go so far as to say he was not as charming as the student mentioned above).
I encourage my students to cite SparkNotes, if they’re using them. I have no problem with that.
SE
8/11/2024 12:55 pm
Judith,
I don’t think I know anything about the case you mention, and often the Ad Board learns a good many more details than the professor knows (another reason not to confuse the roles). But I wonder what your preferred sanction would have been — to expel the student permanently perhaps? I tend to be tough, but that doesn’t sound right on the face of it (though if I knew more, it might — for example if the student had a prior record). I hope you let the dean know your unhappiness (and if you did, I hope that dean wasn’t me!). In any case, though we don’t really know, it sounds like what was done to the student is comparable to, or even harsher than, what gets done to our own wayward faculty, doesn’t it?
8/11/2024 1:15 pm
SE, the new faculty handbook seems not to have been posted yet, but here is part of the cover memo when this went to the Faculty in May. The “committee” referred to is the Ad Board review committee. (By the way, I wrote my last post before reading yours.)
The first seeks to address that committee’s concern that members of the faculty do not always refer suspected infractions of our policies relating to academic honesty to the Ad Board because they see the Board’s response as too harsh. They either deal with it “locally” or, perhaps, turn a blind eye altogether. Either way, there is real concern that A. academic dishonesty cases are not always treated in an equitable manner, and B. much of that may be due to the limited, and sometimes overly harsh, range of institutional responses. We therefore seek to allow for a broader range of institutional responses, including Exclusion from a course, or local sanctions, as enumerated.. This change in the Student Handbook will be accompanied by procedural changes that will be noted in the Faculty Handbook, as follows:
The faculty member in consultation with the Secretary of the Administrative Board, the Department Chair or his/her designee(s), will determine whether a “local sanction” is appropriate; if so, the Secretary of the Board will be available to provide advice to the faculty member as to how similar offenses have been treated in the past. Any local sanction imposed by the faculty member will be reported to the Administrative Board by the Secretary. In all instances in which it is determined that a local sanction is not appropriate the case will be referred to the Board.
Together, we believe these changes will greatly increase the likelihood that all suspected cases of academic dishonesty are reported to the Ad Board, providing a more complete picture of the issues we face, and greater flexibility and equity to our handling of academic dishonesty cases.
8/11/2024 1:23 pm
I wonder if others would comment on this statement from SE:
Standing Eagle would know far better than I, but…come on? A cry for help? It’s no secret to anyone that Harvard is easier to stay in than it is to get into; it’s hard to see how one can qualify for acceptance to Harvard but not be intellectually capable of the work required. Or are there instances—and is this what SE is implying—where standards are lowered in order to jigger with the composition of the student body?
My hunch would be that Harvard students plagiarize because academic work is not their priority; they’re too busy with extracurriculars. And also because they’ve often gamed the system to get into Harvard, figured out what it takes to get ahead/get in, and they suspect that being able to say you’ve done something matters more to a certain kind of success than actually having done it.
I realize that sounds cynical, and I hope that I’m wrong.
8/11/2024 1:25 pm
Apologies, don’t know why that screwed up.
SE’s statement to which I was trying to refer read: “Plagiarism among Harvard students does not result from laziness per se; rather, it is a cry for help from someone who is struggling personally and intellectually.”
8/11/2024 2:31 pm
To Harry: Basically, I guess I just kept hoping that the student would write an essay for me that showed the ability to do what I had assigned. There were reasons why the sanction of withholding the diploma for a year may not have been the most effective solution (it was an international student, and I just can’t judge how this sanction would have played in the student’s home country).
But you’re right, I didn’t tell the then Dean that I wasn’t entirely happy with the outcome. That was my mistake, obviously.
8/11/2024 2:34 pm
P.S. I think failure in my course might have been a good solution. I certainly don’t think that the student should have been expelled.
8/11/2024 2:34 pm
I’m with SE and HL: does JR think the delayed diploma was too harsh or too gentle? What’s a Harvard degree worth if a senior is too dumb, too sloppy, too busy, too dishonest, too inebriated, too uneducated, or some combination thereof to write a simple term paper? If they’re truly too mentally ill but have made it to the finish line, then all Harvard asks that student to do is fulfill the requirement of holding down a job for a period of time.
PS-Let me guess: JR’s course was a core requirement for graduation.
PPS-Let me also guess: JR passed the student, hence the completion of degree requirements.
8/11/2024 2:37 pm
Whoops! More simultaneous postings.
JR: why didn’t you just fail the student? And, if the course was a degree requirement, did that influence the decision? (Feel free to answer that last question more generally-that is, as if it’s hypothetical.)
8/11/2024 3:31 pm
You ask two questions, Big Papi. One is why I didn’t just fail the student in my course. That was because the College rules enjoined instructors to report such matters rather than take them into their own hands. It’s precisely because of this issue that the rules have subsequently been changed. I personally would have given the student an F on that piece of work or an F in the entire course. I had hoped that the Ad Board would provide guidance on that question and ensured that my student was treated on par with other students in the same situation. Perhaps that is what happened.
You’re wrong when you suggest that I passed the student in the course. Once I handed the matter over to the Ad Board, the grade was out of my hands. I had no say in the matter any more.
But with respect to your other question, whether I thought the Ad Board was too harsh or too lenient, my answer is the latter. It seemed to me that the Ad Board’s decision had very little effect on the student’s “life after college” (to use a current phrase).
Yes, it was a Core course. But Core courses are not the only ones that are required for graduation. In any event, many a graduating senior has failed a Core course and had to make up the requirement at Summer School or in the Fall. That’s not really an insuperable problem.
8/11/2024 3:53 pm
Thanks to JR for replying. I’ll let HL or SE explain why this reveals just how broken the system is at Harvard. Even the most engaged teaching professors are confused about what the Administrative Board can and can’t do (control faculty assignment of grades when dishonesty happens) and how degree requirements work (Board delaying degree conferral vs. student needing to complete requirements in summer school).
8/11/2024 3:56 pm
All in all, though, it wouldn’t be very sensible of me to make a cause célèbre out of a single case. I still have little idea how this case stacked up against comparable cases at the time. And certainly, neither I nor the student’s TF were called before the Ad Board. The end effect, from my perspective, was a certain degree of mystification.
8/11/2024 4:11 pm
The problem with an instructor’s failing a student for plagiarism is in large part legal, evidentiary and the like. Obviously your centoist, Judith, could not deny. I had one once, MANY years ago and before the blessed reign of King Harry where the student handed in a published article, with an original closing sentence “I enjoyed this paper” (summer school it was).
These are unusual, however, and often the traces are harder to find, or at least harder to prove. So in those cases it is tough for an instructor to make the charge and follow through on his/her own. This is particularly the case with a major, with whom the teacher-student relationship will likely be renewed post-rustication.
So some sort of independent board is necessary much of the time.
There might be a case where the infringement is much more minor, and an instructor might judge he or she could teach the right lesson by treating the case without recourse to the Board. But that again allows for denial and a subsequent escalation, so there is good reason for referring.
8/11/2024 4:24 pm
In the case of my centoist, RT, we provided the Ad Board with a set of materials from the study guides that had been plagiarized. The relevant passages in the student’s essay were highlighted in yellow, and so were the equivalent passages (word for word the same) in the study guides. I honestly don’t know what more we could have done to show what had happened in this case. There were very few sentences in the essay that had not been copied from online or (in a few cases) print study guides My guess is that the student’s claim that others had done similar things and not been charged with plagiarism was the argument that caused the Ad Board’s mild response. But I and my TF had no knowledge of any other infractions in my course.
8/11/2024 5:25 pm
In response to Richard’s cynicism about SE’s “cry for help” hypothesis, I wouldn’t want to say that’s the predominant reason for plagiarism at Harvard, but it certainly happens frequently. I hate it when people misuse the term “tragic,” but that is the right word here. I remember vividly a young woman who turned in an obviously plagiarized paper her senior spring, in a Core course, after she had accumulated a very high GPA all the way through and had been admitted to a top medical school. (I wonder if this was Judith’s student!) Digging through the layers of personal and family psychology that came out during the disciplinary process, it became clear that she just couldn’t tell her parents that she didn’t want to be a doctor. She made us make that decision for her.
By the way, Judith, just a reminder — one year (rarely two) requirement to withdraw for plagiarism isn’t an Ad Board rule. It’s a Faculty rule. It also wasn’t an Ad Board rule that you couldn’t be excluded from a single course. That was the way the Faculty rules worked. The Administrative Board just, well, administers the Faculty rules. The Faculty can change them any time it wants.
8/11/2024 6:54 pm
RB,
I didn’t say plagiarism was a cry for ACADEMIC help; quite the contrary. It’s the sign of a student who has lost track of his reason for being in a learning environment.
There are literally NO students at Harvard incapable of getting a C+ in any course they can get into. The issue is how well they hold themselves together as human beings. The College is their partner in that challenge, and if they fail the College owes them honesty and a fresh start.
Clearer?
I’d go further than Harry and say that personal crisis, acknowledged or not, is indeed the predominant cause of plagiarism cases that reach the Board.
Judith, weren’t you invited to write a statement presenting your interpretation of the academic dishonesty in question? Surely there was no need to appear in person if so.
SE
SE
8/11/2024 6:57 pm
Judith,
it simply can’t be the case that the Board took away your prerogative to grade the student’s work. Say more?
8/12/2023 1:06 am
I’d need to look at my old grade book to see what grade I actually gave (I keep my grade books the old-fashioned way, and they’re not where I am right now). I probably counted the paper as an F and calculated it into the rest of the grade using the percentages on my syllabus.
I don’t know if it was the case you cite, Harry. But certainly you and SE are right that there may have been much more than met my eye, and that the Ad Board was the appropriate body to find that out. Yes, I did write a statement about the case and submit it to the Ad Board.
But let’s not go overboard on this one instance. In terms of the sanctions, I may be overreacting.
8/12/2023 1:30 pm
SE-I take the point. Thanks for clarifying.
8/12/2023 2:33 pm
Reading through this entire thread, I realize that I was wrong to have claimed at the beginning that I remembered the plagiarism case in my course very well. The questions other posters have asked have clarified my recollections, and some of that is reflected in what I wrote in subsequent posts.
Importantly, I do think it may well have been the case that this student was the person Harry mentions, the one who didn’t have the courage to tell her parents that she didn’t want to go to medical school. I don’t know this for sure, of course.
But it would have helped me and my TF a great deal at the time if we had received some kind of hint about this aspect of the case (assuming that’s what it was). The way things were left was that I and the TF felt somehow hurt by what seemed to us like a very cavalier attitude on the student’s part. We had worked hard to help the student do her best work, and then suddenly we were confronted with her patchwork-quilt essay. We felt very distressed and let down by that. Thinking about the case from the new perspective Harry has opened up makes me feel a lot better about what happened. (But maybe my student was not the same person Harry is remembering. Who knows?)