XPost: alt.politics.conservative, alt.politics.democrats, dc.politics   
   XPost: soc.culture.african.american   
   From: rkoch@banmlkday.com   
      
   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   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)