XPost: mn.politics, alt.los-angeles, alt.politics.democrats.d   
   XPost: alt.disney   
   From: rkoch@banmlkday.com   
      
   By ANTHONY De PALMA   
   Published: November 10, 1990   
      
   Torn between loyalty to his subject and to his discipline, the   
   editor of the papers of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.   
   reluctantly acknowledged yesterday that substantial parts of Dr.   
   King's doctoral dissertation and other academic papers from his   
   student years appeared to have been plagiarized.   
      
   The historian, Clayborne Carson, a professor of history at   
   Stanford University who was chosen in 1985 by Dr. King's widow,   
   Coretta Scott King, to head the King Papers Project, said that   
   analysis of the papers by researchers working on the project had   
   uncovered concepts, sentences and longer passages taken from   
   other sources without attribution throughout Dr. King's writings   
   as a theology student.   
      
   "We found that there was a pattern of appropriation, of textual   
   appropriation," said the 46-year-old historian, who was active   
   in the civil rights movement and has written extensively on   
   black history. He spoke at a news conference at Stanford, called   
   after an article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday disclosed   
   details of the project's findings. "By the strictest definition   
   of plagiarism -- that is, any appropriation of words or ideas --   
   there are instances of plagiarism in these papers." A Lack of   
   Answers   
      
   Although he said that he believed Dr. King had acted   
   unintentionally, Mr. Carson said that Dr. King had been   
   sufficiently well acquainted with academic principles and   
   procedures to have understood the need for extensive footnotes,   
   and he was at a loss to explain why Dr. King had not used them.   
      
   Mr. Carson and other scholars who have seen the papers declined   
   to say how great a percentage of the material had been   
   plagiarized, but they said it was enough to indicate a serious   
   violation of academic principles.   
      
   Officials at Boston University, which awarded Dr. King his   
   doctorate in 1955, announced yesterday that a committee of four   
   scholars had been formed to investigate the dissertation. But it   
   is not likely, even if plagiarism is proved, that the Ph.D.   
   degree in theology would be revoked, because neither Dr. King   
   nor his dissertation adviser is alive to defend the work.   
      
   The controversy comes after a series of allegations over the   
   past year and a half about Mr. King's extramarital sexual habits   
   and conflicts within his family. While not detracting from his   
   accomplishments as a leader in the civil rights movement and   
   winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the controversies may   
   tarnish the myth of the man. Dr. King as Role Model   
      
   "It really in some ways is not at all connected to his public   
   greatness," said David J. Garrow, a professor of political   
   science at the City University of New York, whose biography of   
   Dr. King, "Bearing the Cross," won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987.   
   Mr. Garrow is a member of the King Papers Project's advisory   
   board and has reviewed the papers in question. "But this serious   
   an offense really does alter how we have to evaluate him,   
   especially in the context of telling 10-year-olds who they   
   should look up to."   
      
   But to many supporters of Dr. King, the allegations are another   
   attempt to detract from his accomplishments.   
      
   "Dr. King as a young fellow may have overlooked some footnotes,"   
   said the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, president of the Southern   
   Christian Leadership Conference, which was founded by Dr. King.   
   "But history is caught up in his footprints, and will be hardly   
   disturbed by the absence of some footnotes." Donation of Papers   
      
   Scholars at the King Papers Project said the fact that Dr. King   
   donated his papers to Boston University six years before he was   
   assassinated in 1968 indicated that he knew future scholars   
   would look at his work and he not think he had done anything   
   wrong.   
      
   In the 343-page dissertation, titled "A Comparison of the   
   Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry   
   Nelson Wieman," Dr. King appears to have used many of the same   
   words and titles as another doctoral dissertation written three   
   years earlier by Jack Boozer, under the guidance of the same   
   adviser, L. Harold DeWolf. The earlier work was cited in Dr.   
   King's bibliography, but footnoted only twice, The Journal   
   reported.   
      
   According to Mr. Carson, in certain sections of the paper   
   dealing with complex theological conceptions, Dr. King lifted   
   entire sentences and some longer passages from the works of   
   Tillich, Mr. Boozer and other authors.   
      
   In one passage, for example, Dr. King wrote, "The basic   
   characteristic of the symbol is its innate power." Mr. Boozer,   
   discussing the same concept, wrote, "A characteristic of the   
   symbol is its innate power."   
      
   In his academic papers Dr. King occasionally used another   
   author's argument as his own, the researchers found, and even   
   where he did use citations and footnotes, his reliance on   
   previous material was often more extensive than he explicitly   
   acknowledged.   
      
   But Mr. Carson said it was important to understand the scholarly   
   context of the work. He said it was not uncommon, especially in   
   dealing with abstract theological concepts, for interpreters to   
   rely on and even paraphrase the same material; in this case, the   
   conception of God as set forth by Tillich.   
      
   "That doesn't excuse King, because clearly students are supposed   
   to put even difficult and complex thoughts into their own   
   words," Mr. Carson said in a telephone interview. "But Tillich   
   is particularly difficult because his writing is fairly dense."   
   Discovery of Similarities   
      
   Graduate students at Stanford who were working on the papers   
   project first noticed similarities in the dissertation to other   
   works as early as 1988. They then investigated other academic   
   papers, finding a recurrent pattern.   
      
   The findings were presented to the project's advisory board of   
   scholars in October 1989, but Mr. Carson, as senior editor,   
   decided not to make public any details until the first   
   installment of the collected papers was published. The original   
   date for publication was the end of this year.   
      
   Mr. Carson said yesterday that the first two volumes of the 14-   
   volumne series -- covering Dr. King's early life up to 1955, the   
   year of the dissertation -- were now expected to be published,   
   with footnotes nearly as extensive as the text itself, in 1992.   
      
   Scholars familiar with the papers say the academic works are Dr.   
   King's least important writings and show very little of the   
   dramatic orator who was to emerge so forcefully in later years.   
   Mr. Garrow, Dr. King's biographer, described the dissertation as   
   "dry as bones," and said that was why no one had ever published   
   it.   
      
   Mr. Garrow, said that as far back as 1970 he was aware that   
   parts of books and articles published by Dr. King after he left   
   Boston University probably had been written by others. He said   
   Dr. King's speeches also borrowed from others because in the   
   oral tradition in which Dr. King lived, it was common for   
   ministers and preachers to adopt as their own the words of   
   prominent men who had come before them.   
      
      
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