Prominent historians recently accused of plagiarism should be held to the same standard of culpability as college students, several Boston University history professors said.
Historian Stephen Ambrose’s 1999 best-selling book, “Nothing Like It in the World,” is said to “contain numerous passages similar to passages in David Lavender’s ‘The Great Persuader,'” according to the Associated Press. Other books by Ambrose have also come under fire for containing similar passages from other works.
The Boston Globe reported last Tuesday that historian Doris Kearns Goodwin “reached a private settlement several years ago” with author Lynne McTaggart. Goodwin allegedly took several passages from McTaggart without sufficiently crediting her.
BU Chair of the Department of Classical Studies Jefrrey Henderson said students and professors are held accountable at BU.
“[If students commit plagiarism] they are usually sent away for a semester or two,” he said.
Henderson said Ambrose couldn’t legitimately make excuses by blaming the mistakes on one of his assistants.
“That’s not an acceptable excuse,” Henderson said. “It certainly would be plagiarism at BU.”
BU History professor Thomas Glick said Ambrose was more concerned with his image than the validity of his findings.
“Ambrose is a scholar who has promoted a public image that equates himself with wholesome, patriotic American values,” Glick said. “So ultimately his self-promotion and hubris became primary, the accuracy of his research secondary.
“His stonewalling makes a mockery of his self-serving high moral tone,” Glick said.
However, Glick said Goodwin was different because she atoned for her mistakes.
“Doris Goodwin is another case because she admitted her error and corrected it,” he said.
History professor Jon Roberts said Ambrose’s selections bore too strongly a resemblance to the original.
“Clearly the scholar has [the] duty to say … it’s been lifted verbatim,” Roberts said. “If an idea is not common knowledge, then citation is important; it’s theft not to credit people that you borrow from.”
Henderson said that such occurrences of plagiarism are “not very common but [are more so] in scientific research.”
Roberts dissented, saying that with these recent cases of plagiarism, the offense has probably not been a one-time occurrence for each individual.
“My inclination is to say these things never happen just once — that, to me, sends up a red flag,” he said.
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