Ronny Koch
2020-01-20 06:14:45 UTC
Excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr. (& L.H De Wolff)
Allegations: Plagiarism in college and graduate school papers,
including his doctoral dissertation on "A Comparison of the
Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry
Nelson Wieman"; Verbatim thefts also discovered in political
speeches including the famous "I Have a Dream" speech (see
Pappas' Plagiarism and the Culture War, Hallberg revised and
expanded version, p. 133)
...
It was the British press which first broke the news with regard
to King's plagiarism, an indication of just how sensitive an
issue this was for American newspapers. An article in the
December 3rd (1989) edition of the Sunday Telegraph by Frank
Johnson asked, "Martin Luther King--Was He a Plagiarist?"
But it was not until November 9, 1990 that a major U.S. media
outlet released the story on King's plagiarism--even though this
story had been known for over a year in the newsrooms of major
newspapers. In the U.S., The Wall Street Journal was the first
to go public with a front page article entitled, "To Their
Dismay, King Scholars Find a Troubling Pattern--Civil Rights
Leader was Lax in Attributing Some Parts of His Academic Papers".
This story was definitely a hot potato--too hot to handle for
the same institutions which had "lionized" and deified a mere
mortal.
The response of academia was particularly appalling:
"They lied, they told half-truths, they made up fables, they did
everything they could but address facts. In the face of their
own university's rules against plagiarism, Boston University's
academic authorities and professors somehow found excuses for
King's plagiarism. They found extenuating circumstances . . .
they compromised their own university's integrity . . . [and]
called into question the very standing of the university as a
place where cheating is penalized and misrepresentation
condemned" (Jacob Neusner, in the Foreward to Theodore Pappas'
The Martin Luther King, Jr., Plagiarism Story).
There were scores of responses written after these discoveries
of verbatim theft by King, basically in defense of plagiarism.
As Neusner notes, "To defend King's plagiarism, plagiarism finds
itself cleaned up and made a virtue of blacks". Authors such as
Keith Miller used the black preaching tradition and "oral
culture" as an excuse for King's somehow having been held to a
lower academic standard than what might have been expected of
whites at a place such as Boston University in the 1950s.
Critics such as Barry Gross delivered a scathing indictment of
the scholarly incompetence at Boston University which led to
King's receiving a PhD awarded for a dissertation containing
extensive amounts of plagiarism. Compounding the incompetence,
the plagiarism in King's dissertation on "A Comparison of the
Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry
Nelson Wieman" was from another theology student (Jack Boozer)
who had had the same advisor as King just three years
previously, namely Professor L. Harald De Wolff.
Gross delivers some pretty damning speculations as to why De
Wolff never noticed or responded to King's plagiarism of Boozer:
"So how did King's plagiarism get by? Well, there are three
possibilities: Professor De Wolff neglected to read either or
both theses, in which case he was incompetent, or Professor De
Wolff read them both and failed to notice the plagiarism, in
which case, also, he was incompetent, or Professor De Wolff
noticed the plagiarism but did not think it serious enough to
mention, in which case, too, he was incompetent. There is a
fourth hypothesis that is possibly even more damning: that
Professor De Wolff noticed the plagiarism but did not think it
mattered for a black man destined to be a preacher to be held to
a rigorous scholarly standard" (From Gross's review of The
Martin Luther King, Jr. Plagiarism Story).
The final hypothesis mentioned by Gross seems to be quite
plausible since Theodore Pappas alludes in his work to rumours
suggesting that King had, in fact, been advised by his
dissertation committee to cite his sources according to academic
convention. Quite unfortunately, he did not do this, and his
dissertation committee never followed up to see if their advice
had been heeded, if, in fact, such advice had ever been given.
Shortly after the stonewalling and coverup attempted by those
overseeing the King Papers Project (Clayborne Carson of Stanford
University, and Ralph Luker of Emory University), two important
books were published by Theodore Pappas: The Martin Luther King,
Jr. Plagiarism Story and Plagiarism and the Culture War. In the
years since the discovery of King's plagiaries, a number of
other excellent research projects have resulted in dissertations
and reports on different aspects of the plagiaries of Martin
Luther King, Jr.
What this ongoing research seems to most clearly portray is not
just the shortcomings of Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, but
the failures of academia in confronting intellectual fraud and
in holding scholars to high standards of academic integrity
whatever their racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.
Click here to continue
************
All the more reason to question: Martin Luther King Day?
Allegations: Plagiarism in college and graduate school papers,
including his doctoral dissertation on "A Comparison of the
Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry
Nelson Wieman"; Verbatim thefts also discovered in political
speeches including the famous "I Have a Dream" speech (see
Pappas' Plagiarism and the Culture War, Hallberg revised and
expanded version, p. 133)
...
It was the British press which first broke the news with regard
to King's plagiarism, an indication of just how sensitive an
issue this was for American newspapers. An article in the
December 3rd (1989) edition of the Sunday Telegraph by Frank
Johnson asked, "Martin Luther King--Was He a Plagiarist?"
But it was not until November 9, 1990 that a major U.S. media
outlet released the story on King's plagiarism--even though this
story had been known for over a year in the newsrooms of major
newspapers. In the U.S., The Wall Street Journal was the first
to go public with a front page article entitled, "To Their
Dismay, King Scholars Find a Troubling Pattern--Civil Rights
Leader was Lax in Attributing Some Parts of His Academic Papers".
This story was definitely a hot potato--too hot to handle for
the same institutions which had "lionized" and deified a mere
mortal.
The response of academia was particularly appalling:
"They lied, they told half-truths, they made up fables, they did
everything they could but address facts. In the face of their
own university's rules against plagiarism, Boston University's
academic authorities and professors somehow found excuses for
King's plagiarism. They found extenuating circumstances . . .
they compromised their own university's integrity . . . [and]
called into question the very standing of the university as a
place where cheating is penalized and misrepresentation
condemned" (Jacob Neusner, in the Foreward to Theodore Pappas'
The Martin Luther King, Jr., Plagiarism Story).
There were scores of responses written after these discoveries
of verbatim theft by King, basically in defense of plagiarism.
As Neusner notes, "To defend King's plagiarism, plagiarism finds
itself cleaned up and made a virtue of blacks". Authors such as
Keith Miller used the black preaching tradition and "oral
culture" as an excuse for King's somehow having been held to a
lower academic standard than what might have been expected of
whites at a place such as Boston University in the 1950s.
Critics such as Barry Gross delivered a scathing indictment of
the scholarly incompetence at Boston University which led to
King's receiving a PhD awarded for a dissertation containing
extensive amounts of plagiarism. Compounding the incompetence,
the plagiarism in King's dissertation on "A Comparison of the
Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry
Nelson Wieman" was from another theology student (Jack Boozer)
who had had the same advisor as King just three years
previously, namely Professor L. Harald De Wolff.
Gross delivers some pretty damning speculations as to why De
Wolff never noticed or responded to King's plagiarism of Boozer:
"So how did King's plagiarism get by? Well, there are three
possibilities: Professor De Wolff neglected to read either or
both theses, in which case he was incompetent, or Professor De
Wolff read them both and failed to notice the plagiarism, in
which case, also, he was incompetent, or Professor De Wolff
noticed the plagiarism but did not think it serious enough to
mention, in which case, too, he was incompetent. There is a
fourth hypothesis that is possibly even more damning: that
Professor De Wolff noticed the plagiarism but did not think it
mattered for a black man destined to be a preacher to be held to
a rigorous scholarly standard" (From Gross's review of The
Martin Luther King, Jr. Plagiarism Story).
The final hypothesis mentioned by Gross seems to be quite
plausible since Theodore Pappas alludes in his work to rumours
suggesting that King had, in fact, been advised by his
dissertation committee to cite his sources according to academic
convention. Quite unfortunately, he did not do this, and his
dissertation committee never followed up to see if their advice
had been heeded, if, in fact, such advice had ever been given.
Shortly after the stonewalling and coverup attempted by those
overseeing the King Papers Project (Clayborne Carson of Stanford
University, and Ralph Luker of Emory University), two important
books were published by Theodore Pappas: The Martin Luther King,
Jr. Plagiarism Story and Plagiarism and the Culture War. In the
years since the discovery of King's plagiaries, a number of
other excellent research projects have resulted in dissertations
and reports on different aspects of the plagiaries of Martin
Luther King, Jr.
What this ongoing research seems to most clearly portray is not
just the shortcomings of Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, but
the failures of academia in confronting intellectual fraud and
in holding scholars to high standards of academic integrity
whatever their racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.
Click here to continue
************
All the more reason to question: Martin Luther King Day?