Kagan, Obama, and the Harvard Legacy of Literary Fraud

American Thinker ^ | May 13, 2010 | Jack Cashill

[neverdem]

When Barack Obama’s two faculty mentors at Harvard Law got in trouble for plagiarism, they were rescued by Dean Elena Kagan.

In 1989, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe hired first-year Harvard law student Barack Obama as his research assistant.  After Obama was elected president, Tribe would gush, "His stunning combination of analytical brilliance and personal charisma, openness and maturity, vision and pragmatism, was unmistakable from my very first encounter."

Obama had one other prominent mentor among the Harvard faculty, Professor Charles Ogletree, an African American.  In the run-up to the election, Ogletree would enthuse, "I'm so excited about this candidacy that I just can't tell you. I'm just overfull with joy."

In 2004, Tribe and Ogletree both made the news in ways they might wish they had not. And now in 2010, that news has come back to haunt their Law School dean at that time, Elana Kagan, and, if there is any justice in the world, it should eventually suck in Obama himself.

In September 2004, as Obama was cruising to victory in his U.S. Senate race, Tribe was publicly apologizing for plagiarizing -- though, of course, he would not use that term -- Henry J. Abraham's 1974 book, Justices and Presidents, to write his own 1985 book, God Save This Honorable Court.

Tribe's transgression had come to light only after he had publicly defended his colleague Ogletree, who just three weeks earlier had publicly apologized for the unauthorized heist of verbiage from Yale scholar Jack Balkin's book, What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said, and the stashing of it, nearly word-for-word, in his own book, All Deliberate Speed. 

Appalled by Tribe's hypocrisy, an anonymous tipster alerted conservative scholar Joseph Bottum, who penned a damning 5,000 word article for The Weekly Standard, which revealed the extent of Tribe's theft and resulted in Tribe's half-hearted mea culpa.

In reviewing the case, Kagan and then Harvard President Larry Summers faced an obvious challenge: Ogletree was a black star on a faculty often criticized for being overly white; even more problematic, Tribe was the superstar of the judicial left.

Had they been a couple of untenured white guys, Summers and Kagan would have promptly ground them into hamburger, but these two were sacred cows.  So they duly appointed a three-person committee of Harvard insiders, headed by former and future (replacing Summers after his resignation) Harvard president Derek Bok. After several months of reluctant inquiry, Summers and Kagan chose not to see the obvious and let the miscreants go essentially unpunished. 

Given the politics of Ogletree and Tribe, the media had no interest in pursuing the case or pointing out the injustice of their non-punishment.

Kudos here to the one person who did pursue the case, Lawrence Velvel, dean of the University of Massachusetts Law School, an honest liberal who knew academic legerdemain when he saw it.  In April 2005, Velvel posted a nearly 10,000-word analysis on his blog that not only explores the extent of the fraud and the depth of Kagan's complicity, but that also suggests -- without intending to -- the inspiration for Obama's own chicanery.

In the way of background, in 2004, after Ogletree's sins had become public knowledge, Velvel had criticized him on line, and Tribe had come to Ogletrees's defense.  Tribe conceded that the problem of prominent people, "office seekers" among them, "passing off the work of others as their own" had become "a phenomenon of some significance."  In the next sentence, however, Tribe chastised Velvel for going public on issues "about which your knowledge is necessarily limited."

Velvel responded to Tribe that if decency prevented outsiders from challenging a story already in the public sphere, "wouldn't we have to depend for criticisms on those who are closest to the situation, who have the most reason not to discuss it lest they or their institution be harmed, and who are least likely to publicly discuss or criticize?"

Comparably, my understanding that Bill Ayers helped Obama write Dreams From My Father is "limited," but how could it not be? In my own challenge of Obama's authorship, I have faced the same response Velvel got from Tribe and responded much as Velvel did: "What do you expect Obama's editor and publisher to say, let alone Obama himself?"

Velvel's fears were fully grounded.  Summers and Kagan let months pass before even announcing that they had appointed a committee composed of Bok and two other Harvard honchos.  In April 2005, the committee reported its findings to the pair, although the report itself, if even written, was not released.

Not surprisingly, Summers and Kagan concluded of Tribe's transgression that it had happened twenty years earlier, that it was the "product of inadvertence," and they now "consider the matter closed." Writes Velvel of their conclusion, "it is a travesty. Its language is misleading, its logic miserable, and its spirit corrupt."

What troubled Velvel most is this: Ogletree and Tribe could claim "inadvertence" because they both almost assuredly allowed their research assistants to write major stretches of the book for them. Writes Velvel, "Ghostwriting, horribly enough, has become all too prevalent in academia as a general matter." 

The fact that Ogletree used ghostwriters, says Velvel, is "widely accepted." The case against Tribe is nearly as strong.  The instances of "copycatting," including one identical 19-word pilfering, "seem to be more like what one would expect of a student than of a Tribe."  What is more, as Velvel points out, a 1993 article in a Washington law newspaper, called Legal Times, addressed the claim of a former Tribe assistant, Ron Klain, that he had written large sections of Tribe's God Save This Honorable Court.

"That Harvard is setting a very bad example, with all too much of the bad stuff centered in its law school, is all too evident," writes Velvel.  One unfortunate consequence of this phenomenon is that the young are watching and learning from the masters. Here is how Velvel imagines their thought process might go.

On balance, it is well worth it, for on the one side lies fame and fortune, and on the other lies only a slap on the wrist. And, especially if I can hide my misdeeds for years (as seems usually to occur), and in the meanwhile have become a big deal, I am virtually assured of suffering nothing other than a minor slap on the wrist if and when I am finally caught.

Did Obama take his cue from Tribe and/or Ogletree.  When pressed by his contractual demands, and unable to finish his book, did one or the other of his academic mentors whisper in his ear, "Have someone else write it.  We do this all the time."  If so, his appointment of Kagan makes sense.  She has a history of whitewashing the sins of those more powerful than she.

Velvel wanted to see Kagan fired.  "So, in my view, Kagan too should go," he writes.  The result of her complicity with a corrupt faculty leads Velvel to an inescapable conclusion:

Since it is now known that Harvard professors have plagiarized, copycatted, and pretty certainly have had stuff ghostwritten for them, the bona fides and reputations of nearly everyone at Harvard is called into question, especially people in the law school.

I could not agree more.

Jack Cashill's latest book is Popes and Bankers.

[GeronL]

bump for morning reading

[freedumb2003]

B & B!!!!

[ETL]

From David Horowitz's
FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org
PROFILE: ELENA KAGAN

• Served as President Bill Clinton's Associate White House Counsel
• Former dean of Harvard Law School
• Sought to overturn the Solomon Amendment, a law that denies federal funding to any university that bars military recruiters from its campus
• Believes that the military should open its ranks and barracks to homosexuals, without restriction
• Was appointed U.S. Solicitor General by President Barack Obama in January 2009

As an undergraduate at Princeton, Kagan wrote a senior thesis titled

"To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933."

In the "Acknowledgments" section of her work, she specifically thanked her brother Marc, “whose involvement in radical causes led me to explore the history of American radicalism in the hope of clarifying my own political ideas.” In the body of the thesis, Kagan wrote:

"In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?...

"Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP [Socialist Party] exhausted itself forever and further reduced labor radicalism in New York to the position of marginality and insignificance from which it has never recovered. The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one’s fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope."

Lots more on Kagan here:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2398

[ROTB]

1) “Sycacuse”

[Slyfox]

BO tells us that Kagan is worth supporting because she was once nice to some conservatives.

Yeah, that's the best reason to vote for her.

[cricket]

Works for all the 'elite', no? Fortunately, Obama got himself not only a good writer; but he was a friend as well. Bill Ayers did a great job for Obama; what is amazing is that Obama, STILL getting credit for his 'auto'biography, 'Dreams'. . .(Dreams from My Father).

Am wondering if Bill ever collected the royalties. (Given that he now openly claims authorship, he probably did not, for very long.) What price this friendship, I wonder. . .

[screaminsunshine]

Harverd no longer gives grades to students in the Law School. It is pass/fail. Wonder if it had anything to do with that.

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

Poor Elena plaintively asks,

"Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?...

A) 'Cause you are all assholes?
B) Because socialism is not a path to perfection?
C) Because most Americans recognize that socialism is 'just Marxism sold by the glass'? (quoting PJ O'Rourke)
D) Because the Roosevelt administration was socialist enough for most socialists.

The correct answer of course is ALL OF THE ABOVE.

[Rennes Templar]

I’ve read your Home Page. All I can say is God help us.

[bronxville]

And Larry Summers got the shaft because he said something that hurt some womens feelings.

[Son House]

Democrats should get smart and block this nomination, it’s an obvious political agenda, she hasn’t got no experience, and we’re talking the Supreme Court, jesters...

[Canedawg]

I despise the progressives and their agenda, and I loathe Ozero and his henchmen, but I’ll give credit where it is due: Tribe wrote an amazing treatise on American Constitutional Law a few decades ago that was a great read.

[Lilpug15]

BUMP

[rhema]

[GeronL]

lol

A 60 is probably passing.

haha

The Citizens United case is enough reason alone to NOT put her on SCOTUS if you ask me

[screaminsunshine]

Hahvahd just ain’t what it used to be.

[ichabod1]

Oh, my God. She’s dirty! How in the HELL can we hold these people responsible? Harvard needs to be taken apart brick by brick and thrown into the river.

[ichabod1]

How about because if she goes down you get Diane Wood or one of the others?

[ichabod1]

How in the world can you know he wrote it? Maybe he just signed his name to it? It seems to be all the left is about - faking.