What Even Is “Plagiarism”?

Kevin M. Kruse

My first hands-on experience with plagiarism happened in 2004. I’d recently reviewed T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain glowingly on Amazon. A complete stranger emailed, offering me $40 cash to write his five-paragraph essay on that novel. A quick-n-dirty Google search discovered that this writer was a Southern California honors student with multiple STEM awards. I emailed his high school, notifying them of this attempted academic dishonesty, and never heard back.

Last week, Princeton historian and minor Twitter celebrity Kevin M. Kruse was accused, with some credibility, of plagiarism. Several passages from Kruse’s 2000 doctoral dissertation too closely resemble books by Ronald H. Bayor and Thomas Sugrue. Kruse’s public positions are broadly Leftist; his accuser, Phillip W. Magness, has right-wing think-tank ties and frequently publishes in conservative magazines like National Review. The accusation appears in the right-Libertarian magazine Reason.

Not surprisingly, the cross-talk surrounding this accusation breaks along partisan lines. Left-liberal defenders claim the accusations are overinflated. Right-wing accusers claim this evidence not only undermines Kruse, but higher education overall. Both sides assign intent, not only to Kruse himself, but to the other side of the argument. Within minutes, every argument comes unmoored from Kruse’s work, and becomes about wider moral concerns in educated society.

Five years after being solicited to write somebody’s five-paragraph essay, I was working as a graduate teaching assistant. Two students turned in “annotated bibliography” assignments that were virtually identical. Google revealed both students copied their one-page assignments, with minor amendments, directly from the New York Times. Admittedly, I didn’t handle it well; I commenced a high-handed rant about the morality of originality, and the evils of plagiarism.

T.C. Boyle

One thing appears clear: Kruse definitely plagiarized. The sentences from Bayor and Sugrue which Magness finds in Kruse’s dissertation are too numerous, too close together, and too verbatim to be coincidental. Kruse’s most prominent defender, L.D. Burnett, tries to construct a viewpoint wherein Kruse’s copying might be merely coincidental. But actually placing Kruse’s words and his sources side-by-side, as Magness does, makes this defense look anemic.

Understand, Magness never challenges Kruse’s conclusions, only his prose. And the sentences Kruse plagiarized, if removed from his books, wouldn’t change his overall message. Magness only challenges Kruse’s academic rigor, a standard Kruse himself has used to undermine others. He catches Kruse committing the kind of errors he regularly denounces in others, knowing Kruse’s Left-liberal audience prizes consistency as part of their definition of fairness.

The more I encountered plagiarism in student work, the more forgiving I became. When students filched from Wikipedia, Reddit, and other ubiquitous sources, I realized they weren’t malicious. They were busy. I expected them to reach unique conclusions, and arrange entirely new sentences, around topics they knew little about, and cared even less. Plagiarism became a classic teachable moment, not a crime; I started clamping down only on habitual offenders.

Watching the Kruse controversy unfold, I’m reminded of Jonah Lehrer's public collapse. Rather than plagiarism, Lehrer fabricated evidence. Like Kruse, he told an eager audience what it already wanted to know, and the publishing world rewarded him richly. Like Kruse, Lehrer’s fabrications didn’t contradict the evidence, and Lehrer’s scholarship largely holds up. But, like Kruse, Lehrer’s disregard for industry standards sidelined his career at the peak of his popularity.

Jonah Lehrer

Since leaving academia and becoming a professional technical writer, I’ve spent countless hours hunched over my computer, repurposing my own and others’ words for new uses. Complete originality is important for authors and academics, who need to own their writings to get paid. But other kinds of writers—technical writers like me, ad copywriters, attorneys drafting legal briefs—regularly recycle words and sentences, in ways I once reprimanded students for.

I gave Kruse’s 2015 book One Nation Under God a glowing review, and I wasn’t alone. But like my students, Kruse is busy. As Jerry Z. Muller writes, lucrative rankings from US News and Princeton Review tally faculty members’ publications as part of their algorithms. Thus scholars like Kruse must publish prolifically, not only to receive tenure, but to keep top-tier students coming through the doors. Quantity beats quality.

This isn’t to forgive Kruse. He got caught committing the very transgression he’s spent two decades excoriating conservatives for, as Magness writes. He’ll need to spend time outside the limelight, and muster some persuasive apology, at minimum. (Kruse’s Twitter feed has been silent since Magness’s story dropped.) But maybe it’s time for academia to find some yardstick other than originality. In today’s media-saturated world, original words are hard to find.