Regional Ethic Bowl Position Paper

A Question of Words:Plagiarism and the Curious Case of Matthew Whitaker

Christopher Bates

17 November 2012

Honors Case Studies in Ethics, IDH 3600H, Final Draft

Dr. Michael Strawser

B a t e s A Q u e s t i o n o f W o r d s P a g e | 1

Introduction:

The Regional Ethics Bowl Case Plagiarism or Inspiration raises multiple questions that

must be addressed, each in turn, for a coherent explanation to be offered and a cogent position

taken. These questions include plagiarism as related to print publications (both in reference to

other published works and in reference to so-called “open source” resources such as Wikipedia),

plagiarism in oration, as well as the differences and similarities between student and professional

codes of conduct and enforcement. This paper seeks to consider all the relevant arguments and

provide an ethical framework for further discussion.

Position:

We believe that it is unethical to use the original ideas or distinctive research of another

to promotes one's own academic standing, receive financial gain, or better one's social standing

without crediting the originating source(s).

Based on the information available, we do not find that Whitaker stepped over this ethical

boundary.

Background:

These are the facts that have led us to this conclusion:

While during the process of professional review, pending a promotion at his university,

ASU Professor Matthew Whitaker was accused by ten of his fellow ASU professionals of the

unethical use of the work of other scholars in six of his fifty-seven publications (books, book

reviews, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries), as well as within a number of his eighty-nine


recorded speeches and interviews (Whitaker CV). Under ASU’s guidelines, the accusation

prompted the formation of a tribunal who narrowed the questionable materials to two books and

one speech.

Race Works: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West is a historical exploration of a

single family in Phoenix, described by reviewers as "...an important and valuable contribution to

the growing body of literature that focuses on the experiences of African Americans in the

western United States" (Leonard 462). In writing the book, Whitaker was accused of lifting

material from the work of his mentor and graduate advisor Bradford Luckingham’s book

Minorities in Phoenix. The section of the book the tribunal found most troubling (along with the

corresponding section from Minorities) is found in Table 1. The charge against Whitaker was

plagiarism of published work.

In the young adult book African American Icons of Sport: Triumph, Courage, and

Excellence, a collection of articles by various authors, Whitaker was accused of plagiarizing

from Wikipedia within the two essays he wrote for the book: one on Mohammed Ali and a

second on Venus and Serena Williams. While there is confusion on the nature of Wikipedia as

being a so-called “open source” information site, and the resulting material as being therefore

“common knowledge,” the charge that Whitaker had copy-and-pasted his essays was a troubling

one.

Likewise, his speeches were carefully inspected and he was found to have used material

from multiple sources without citing all of the originating authors. One speech drew the attention

of the tribunal in particular. Whitaker spoke at a rally against the Arizona anti-immigration

movement, and the speech was found to have adopted liberally from the Washington Post story

"U.S. Immigration Debate is a Road Well Traveled."


The accusations would normally

have remained private and

behind closed doors, however, it

was brought to national attention

due to Whitaker's claim to a

local paper that he was being

targeted because of racial bias.

He later retracted that claim, and

this paper finds the question of

motivation of the challengers to

be inconsequential to the ethical

concerns at hand.

Despite being acquitted of wrong-doing, the ways in which Whitaker made use of sources

in his publications and speeches - ways that at the very least walk a narrow line of academic

integrity – led many among his colleagues to feel the tribunal’s judgment was in error. Even

among the tribunal, there was agreement that something was amiss; in their statement to the

public, they wrote that while there was little evidence of "…systematic or substantial

plagiarism," there were "…reasons for concern about occasional carelessness in the use of

materials and sources and some less than optimal detail in attribution” (Ryman).

Table 1: Comparison of Texts (Basu)

Minorities in Phoenix by Bradford Luckingham

Race Work by Matthew Whitaker

For example, off-duty black soldiers from the 364th Infantry Regiment stationed at Papago Park frequented the Phoenix ‘colored neighborhood.’ On the night of November 26, 1942, ina café at Thirteenth Street and Washington, one of them struck a black female over the head with a bottle following an argument. A black military policeman tried to arrest the soldier, but he resisted with a knife. When the military policeman shot and wounded the soldier, black servicemen protested

On one such occasion, off-duty African American soldiers from the 364th Infantry Regiment stationed at Papago Park in Phoenix were involved in a violent incident in a ‘colored neighborhood’ they often visited. On Thanksgiving night 1942, one of the black soldiers struck a black woman over the head with a bottle following an argument in a Phoenix café. An MP attempted to arrest the soldier, but he resisted with a knife. When the MP shot and wounded the soldier, black servicemen protested.* * Footnotes in this paragraph credit the Arizona Republic


Inside HigherEd contributor Kaustuv Basu explains that the reason that Whitaker was found

innocent is three-fold:

(1) His speeches were not pre-written and read (in which case citing the sources would have

been expected), but rather delivered extemporaneously. The nature of extemporaneous

speech wars against the type of careful source citation that written communication

usually requires. Oration is an art form, intended primarily to inspire (and only

secondarily to educate).

(2) While in his writing Whitaker didn’t observe a strict adherence to standard citation

methods, he does indeed credit his sources. Table 1 may seem like damning evidence on

first glance, but further investigation was required. In Race Work: The Rise of Civil

Rights in the Urban West, Whitaker credits Bradford Luckingham’s Minorities in

Phoenix on the first page, in the first paragraph, writing that Race Works was “a

collaborative process not possible without the assistance” of “outstanding historians” like

Luckingham. Whitaker mentions Minorities in Phoenix an additional forty-two times in

the text and in seventy-eight of the footnotes.

(3) His contribution to African American Icons of Sport: Triumph, Courage, and Excellence

is more problematic: Whitaker claims that editor Elizabeth Demens was charged with

putting the final polish on the Young Adult book and that she copied material from

Wikipedia without his consent. The instance was murky enough – the editor has not been

available for explanation or comment – that the review board dismissed the issue as

moot.

ASU’s final verdict? Professor Whitaker was exonerated fully and promoted to full tenure.

Afterwards the tribunal released an official statement saying that:"There are some concerns

Table 2: Comparison of Obama and Deval Speeches (Kane)


about Professor Whitaker's use of the language of other scholars, yet we find that his intellectual

debts are made clear, his sources are referenced, and that there is no compelling evidence of

intent to deceive in any case" (Ryan).

So what is the basis of the ongoing controversy? Monica Green, the chair of ASU’s history

department tenure and promotion committee, resigned in protest after the charge against

Whitaker was dropped. She believes (as do many) that the plagiarism standards that guide a

university student through their academic career should apply equally to university professors.

Green suggests that if Whitaker had submitted Race Works to a plagiarism-detection program

like SafeAssign, he would have received at the very least a failing grade. Green claims that she

plans to use the information found in Table 1 as a case-in-point within her classes… as an

example of what to avoid. For Green and those who think as she does, plagiarism is plagiarism...

it is a clear issue that suffers no shades of gray.

Plagiarism in Oration:

Whitaker was accused of plagiarizing his speeches, specifically an oratory call to action

at a rally against the proposed Arizona anti-immigration policy, where he quoted entire sections

of the Washington Post story "U.S. Immigration Debate is a Road Well Traveled." His speech

was rousing, given

almost completely

from memory, and

was designed to

inspire the audience

to action.

Obama, 2008 Presidential Campaign

Deval Patrick, 2006 Gubernatorial Campaign, Massachusetts

"Don't tell me words don't matter! 'I have a dream.' Just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' Just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words, just speeches,"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal'-just words. Just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself'-just words. 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country'-just words. 'I have a dream'-just words,"


It is clear that Whitaker did not credit the author. How is this not plagiarism?

The question is answered by considering the difference between oratory and

informational speech. The rules of a professor giving a lecture or presenting research at a

conference and a speaker rousing an audience to take action are not the same.

Most are not surprised to learn that few politicians write their own speeches; are they

plagiarizing their speech writers? In point of fact, politicians frequently use one another’s lines.

In 2008, then-candidate Barak Obama was accused of plagiarizing lines from his stump speech

from friend and fellow democrat Deval Patrick. The comparison chart (Table 2) makes it clear

that there is little doubt that Obama used the same lines that Patrick coined; how is this not

plagiarism?

When asked to comment on the ethics of the situation, Richard A. Posner weighed in.

Posner, a judge with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals “and author of The Little Book of

Plagiarism, suggested that... having the blessing of the source doesn’t necessarily render

uncredited use benign. Those potentially hurt include not just the originator of the words but the

audience. 'It seems to me the focus should be on the audience — is the audience hurt, is the

audience deceived?'"(Greenburg).

In questioning citation of sources in public speeches, the question is on intent: is the

speaker attempting to deceive the audience into believing that the speaker is the source of

information, or is the intent to utilize an effective rhetorical device?

Here, too, it is wise to consider that a well-read speaker may inadvertently quote works

that they are familiar with, never realizing that they are quoting, but instead believe that the

words are their own. The phenomenon is called cryptomnesia. Russ Juskalian, in his article “You

Didn’t Plagiarize, Your Unconscious Did,” writes that: “Richard L. Marsh, a professor of


cognitive psychology at the University of Georgia and a leading cryptomnesia researcher

[believes that] ‘when people engage in creative activity, they are so involved in generating or

coming up with something new or novel that they fail to protect against what they previously

experienced" (Juskalian). Marsh goes on to explain that it is the nature of creative processes in

the brain to conflate that which has been previously experienced with that which is being

currently developed.

For these reasons we find the question of citing work within oration to be of style and

etiquette, not morality: the nature of oration, the intent of the speaker, and the complex manner

in which the human mind engages in the creative process mitigate against taking a hard-line

approach to spoken citation.

Plagiarism of Wikipedia:

There is an unfortunate misunderstanding about Wikipedia that is reflected in the case

study description: open source means general knowledge. This paper responds by claiming that it

is never ethical to plagiarize licensed work.

Every school child learns early on that certain facts are general knowledge and do not

need to be cited. An example? In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It is important to note

that Wikipedia is not a compendium of general knowledge. Open source refers to the fact that

any contributor, having passed Wikipedia’s fairly rigorous test of reliability, may add to articles

within their realm of expertise. The fact that the addition is anonymous does not preclude their

right to the work… only to its distribution. All Wikipedia articles are licensed for distribution

utilizing a Creative Commons license. Cameron Chapman, in his article “A Short Guide to

Open-Source and Similar Licenses,” explains that: “open source licenses make it easy for others

to contribute to a project without having to seek special permission… protects you as the original


creator, making sure that you at least get some credit for your contributions… [and] prevents

others from claiming your work as their own.” No writer may ethically take a copy-and-paste

approach with Wikipedia or indeed, with any open source writing. It is the licensed possession of

the original author.

There are several instances of authors caught plagiarizing from Wikipedia and the moral

question is always one of intellectual property theft, not merely academic or professional

honesty. Motoko Rich, in her article in the New York Times “Wired Editor Apologizes for

Copying From Wikipedia in New Book,” writes that “Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired

Magazine, copied portions of his coming book, Free: The Future of Radical Price, from

Wikipedia without attribution.” Anderson replied by apologizing for what he claimed was an

“oversight,” explaining that it was a mistake and would be corrected in the e-book version.

However, the fact that plagiarism of Wikipedia is not only considered a question of

academic honesty, does not mean that utilizing Wikipedia as a source is never a question of

academic honesty. With near universality, academics, journalists, and professional writers

believe that Wikipedia is a not authoritative. Why? In considering the question, it is helpful to

note that Wikipedia may contain many instances of plagiarism itself. Anick Jesdanum, in his

Seattle Times article “Critic Reports Plagiarism on Wikipedia,” reports that hundreds of

Wikipedia articles include unattributed material from other sources. For this reason, along with

the anonymity of the contributions and the lack of peer review, most academics eschew the use

of Wikipedia as anything other than a general “jumping-off” place for research. Donna Shaw of

The American Jounalism Review reports that while few editors and news managers have a formal

written policy on utilizing Wikipedia, it is universally frowned on as a source.


Whitaker claims that he did not plagiarize Wikipedia himself nor direct editor Elizabeth

Demens to do so. Considering the number of his publications, and the lack of any other evidence,

it is reasonable to accept his explanation. If it were proven that he had, however, it would

constitute an unethical act that was both intellectual theft and a lack of intellectual and academic

honesty.

Plagiarism in Authorship: crediting resources v. citing sources

We find that there is daylight between the student standard of citing resources and an

author’s responsibility for crediting resources.

In order to explain how we came to this understanding, it is necessary to first consider

plagiarism from the student’s perspective.

The Council of Writing Program Administrators describe themselves as “a national

association of college and university faculty with professional responsibilities for (or interests in)

directing writing programs.” In their publication Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA

Statement on Best Practices, they define plagiarism as follows:

In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone

else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without

acknowledging its source.

Students are in an instructional setting, and in an ideal instructional setting, every grade would

reflect the student's mastery of material being studied. Achieving a high grade for an assignment

- such that the grade does not reflect mastery - short-circuits that ideal instructional setting. In

schools where grades are competitive, plagiarism is not only taking the work of another and


short-circuiting education, it is cheating: gaining an unfair advantage over other, more honest

students. Therefore, plagiarism by students is unethical on teleological grounds: it prohibits the

primary aim of education; wrong on utilitarian grounds: it compromises the happiness of the

many (the honest) for the few (the cheaters); it is wrong on deontological grounds: the duty of

the student is to learn.

But this case is not about a student, but rather an author who is also a professor. It does

not ask about a student caught purchasing a paper on an essay resource site nor about a graduate

student attempting to draft a thesis caught passing off the work of another as her own. After

counting forty-two direct references in the text and an additional seventy-eight references in the

footnotes, it would be hard, indeed, to come up with a valid reason to claim that Whitaker did not

attempt to credit Luckingham with being an important source. The most that could be said is that

in one paragraph of the book, for eighty-one words, Whitaker was sloppy. Or, in the words of the

tribunal, exercised “less than optimal attribution.”

Here the Council of Writing Professionals has more to add to the conversation:

Most current discussions of plagiarism fail to distinguish between:

submitting someone else’s text as one’s own or attempting to blur the line

between one’s own ideas or words and those borrowed from another source,

[and]

carelessly or inadequately citing ideas and words borrowed from another

source.

Such discussions conflate plagiarism with the misuse of sources. (Defining)


Monica Green and those like her are falling into the trap of conflation that the WPA identifies:

confusing plagiarism with the misuse of sources.

Further, we would claim that few of the ethical reasons against plagiarism that apply to

students equally apply to the professional academic author. Taking the research of another and

reporting it without citation is not diminishing knowledge (hence not impacting education), nor

is it cheating (the expansion of knowledge is not a competition). We do agree with Monica

Green on one point: a professor (or any author) who plagiarizes the work of another is

committing theft. Taking the labor of another - weeks of research and analysis - and profiting

from that work is not significantly different from skimming an employee’s paycheck. It is

stealing. For the professional author, plagiarism entails taking the work of another – the fruit of

their labor – and profiting from it; profiting in terms of financial gain, career advancement, or

social standing. As the review board found, Whitaker did not.

Exonerating Whitaker:

Few institutionally-endorsed writing guides provide leeway for accidental occurrence of

plagiarism. Indeed, these guides warn the student writer to be very cautious to avoid instances

where a quotation mark may be forgotten, a paraphrased text not cited, an in-text citation left out.

Institutions who hold this attitude towards cases of accidental plagiarism fail to account for

motive and intent. These institutions stress the perception of plagiarism. The assumption seems

to be that if the student writer is not perfect in citing their sources according to whatever system

the institution prefers, the writer is stealing.


We agree that students should learn to cite materials used in the formation of academic

work and that such standards should be enforced to such an extent that the ethical violations

noted previously do not occur.

While he did act carelessly in reference to the passage cited in Table 1, that carelessness

is more accurately seen as a single mistake. Aristotelian virtue ethics, while looking to the

establishment of good character, admits to those situations where mistakes might happen. Indeed

Aristotle was uniquely concerned with how – in opposition to Socrates – right knowledge does

not necessarily and universally lead to right action. Aristotle, in explaining the circumstances

whereby a morally upstanding individual might make an error, wrote in Nicomachean Ethics that

actions taken out of ignorance are ethically neutral; Kant later echoes this sentiment with his

claim that intent is central to determining moral rectitude. If carelessness is the cause of the

apparent plagiarism, and that carelessness is brought about not by intent to deceive but rather

from the challenge of presenting research from hundreds of sources and accidentally missing

one, neither Aristotle nor Kant would find the single instance to be ethically troubling.

However, for the sake of argument, let us assume that Whitaker had intentionally

plagiarized from Luckingham. On what ethical grounds would he be censured?

First, John Locke’s concept of property within the confines of social contract theory

requires that when a member of a society invests time and effort into a task, the rewards of that

task belong to him. This he explains in chapter five of the Second Treatise on Civil Government

when writing that:

From all which it is evident, that though the things of nature are given in

common, yet man, by being master of himself, and proprietor of his own person,


and the actions or labour of it, had still in himself the great foundation of

property; and that, which made up the great part of what he applied to the support

or comfort of his being, when invention and arts had improved the conveniencies

of life, was perfectly his own, and did not belong in common to others.

Therefore, Locke writes: "Everyone has property in his own person. This nobody has any right to

but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his."

There are differences in reward because: “Different degrees of industry were apt to give men

possessions in different proportions" (Locke).

The university system is based on a schedule of differing rewards (proportions) for the

advancement of knowledge, based in part on differing degrees of effort (industry). These rewards

come in the form of pay raises, tenure, and recognition.

If Whitaker had taken the work of Luckingham without referencing the source and

enjoyed the escalation to tenured professor, he would have been claiming rewards that he had not

earned, and as such, would have been violating the standard that we have outlined.

A second concern comes from rule-utilitarianism. Similar to the Kantian categorical

imperative, Mill’s conception of moral behavior that focuses on universability as a standard of

rightness is of special interest in the case of Whitaker. In Utilitarianism, Mill wrote that:

In the case of abstinences indeed -- of things which people forbear to do from

moral considerations, though the consequences in the particular case might be

beneficial -- it would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously

aware that the action is of a class which, if practiced generally, would be

generally injurious, and that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it.


The amount of regard for the public interest implied in this recognition is no

greater than is demanded by every system of morals, for they all enjoin to abstain

from whatever is manifestly pernicious to society. (Mill 25)

If Mill were to be present for the discussion of plagiarism, he would suggest that if rewards for

effort are given to those who did nothing to earn them, the academic system of pay raises, tenure,

and recognition would collapse because no one would be willing to work hard for a reward that

was at best uncertain. Even though little question of happiness is directly impacted by the

decision to lay claim to work that is not your own, it is in the interests of the community to foster

and encourage the expansion of knowledge. Rule utilitarianism is here understood in a New

Testament “golden rule” aspect; “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Mill

would call that a simplification, however, and would prefer a more accurate “don’t do those

things that, though beneficial to you in the short term, would be harmful to the community at

large if universally practiced.” By these lights, we claim that plagiarism is therefore prohibited.

If Whitaker had done what he was accused of, then he would have been taking the work

of another and intentionally presenting it as his own with the hope of securing rewards through

the university system. It would be theft. And theft is still wrong.


Works Cited:

Basu, Kaustuv. "Arizona State Faculty Members Question Handling of Plagiarism Allegations."

Inside Higher Ed. InsideHigherEd.com. 11 May 2012. Web.

Chapman, Cameron. “A Short Guide to Open-Source and Similar Licenses.” Smashing

Magazine. 24 Mar. 2010. Web

Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices. Council of Writing

Program Administrators. Jan. 2003. Web.

Greenburg, David. "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Speech." New York Times. 24

Feb. 2008.

Jesdanum, Anick. “Critic Reports Plagiarism on Wikipedia.”Seattle Times. 5 Nov. 2008. Web.

Juskalian, Russ. “You Didn’t Plagiarize, Your Unconscious Did.” The Daily Beast. 6 Jul. 2009.

Web.

Kane, Sally. "Obama Accused of Plagiarism in Speech." The Daily Cardinal. Uwire. Dist. CBS

News. 11 Feb. 2009. Web.

Leonard, Kevin Allen. "Review of Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West."

Peace and Change. 2007 (32.3). 435-463. Web.

Locke, John. Second Treatise on Civil Government. Constitution.org. Constitution Society. Ed.

Jon Roland. 7 Aug.2012. Web.

Mandeville, Kharli. "Professor Resigns Committee Position, Questions Plagiarism Decision."

The Arizona Republic. 16 April 16 2012. Web.

Martin, Brian. "Plagiarism: A Misplaced Emphasis." Journal of Information Ethics. 1994 (3.

2)Fall pgs. 36-47. Bmartin.cc. Web.

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism: Easy Read Edition. Google Ebook.Web.


Rich, Motoko. “Wired Editor Apologizes For Copying From Wikipedia in New Book.” New

York Times. 24 Jun. 2008. Web.

Ryman, Anne. "ASU History Professor at Center of Plagiarism Debate." The Arizona Republic. 6

May 2012. Web.

Powell, Michael. “U.S. Immigration Debate Is a Road Well Traveled.” Washington Post. 8 May

2006. Web.

Shaw, Donna. “Citing Wikipedia.” American Journalism Review. Feb/Mar. 2008. Web.

Whitaker, Mathew. Curriculum Vitae. Personal Website. Revised, 2012. Web.

Whitaker, Matthew. Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West. 2005: Lincoln.

Univ. of Nebraska Press. Print.

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