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Saturday, September 11, 2004

TODAY'S NEWSCLIPPING
FROM OUR SIMULACRAL WORLD




"Concerns raised over use of research assistants
Ogletree controversy draws warnings about `farming out' writing


By David Mehegan, Globe Staff | September 11, 2004

Is the author really the author?

That implicit question is being raised by writers, in and out of academia, about this week's statement that six paragraphs in a new book by Harvard Law School professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. were accidently transposed from another scholar's book. Ogletree has attributed the error to research assistants involved in the process of drafting and editing the book.

"It's a problem that is very old in historical writing -- the atelier problem, the work that is a product not only of the author or artist but also his students and assistants," said a Brandeis University historian, David Hackett Fischer. "That sort of problem is growing, with more pressure on historians and others to be more entrepreneurial. Teams are becoming more important in every field."

Pressure or not, writers who don't use researchers in the actual drafting of their books have little sympathy with Ogletree's explanation. "What has to stop," said Caroline Alexander, author of several nonfiction books based on international research, "is the use of the term `scholarship' in publishing for things that are committee-written. Don't kid yourself that farming it out is the same as having something new to say."

Ogletree's law school website statement offers an explanation of how material from Yale Law School Professor Jack M. Balkin's 2001 book, "What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said," got into Ogletree's 2004 book, "All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education."

Ogletree wrote that an assistant inserted the Balkin material into his manuscript, with quotation marks and attribution, but that a second assistant, editing the work, mistakenly deleted the attribution and sent a final draft to the publisher. Ogletree also wrote that he had read over the Balkin text and hadn't realized it was not his own writing. (Attempts to reach Ogletree were unsuccessful late yesterday.)

"Most people use research assistants to gather information for them, or sometimes to read and summarize material," said historian Alan Brinkley, provost of Columbia University. "But it is inconceivable to me that I would ever allow a research assistant to alter a manuscript."

Historian William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin doubts that such errors by assistants is an increasing problem. But he acknowledged the risks. "There are two ethical issues," he said. "One is how to guarantee quality and protect against plagiarism and shoddy work when many people are involved. The second is, how do you figure out who gets the credit?"

For himself, Cronon said, "I can't imagine turning over my text to a research assistant. It's a different relationship to a work product when you have a team of people working on the output."

Ogletree's public statement contained mea culpas and an apology to Balkin -- "I made a serious mistake during the editorial process of completing this book, and delegated too much responsibility to others during the final editing process. I was negligent in not overseeing more carefully the final product that carries my name."

Some writers found that statement unsatisfying.

"Since when is a book a product that bears someone's name?" said Deborah Dwork, the director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, who has written several books about the Holocaust. "We're not talking about razor blades or soap. We're talking about creative endeavors. A book that bears a name is widely presumed to be written by that author."

The Ogletree book is largely a memoir, along with historical background of the Brown decision and the author's political and legal analysis. In his acknowledgements, he expresses thanks to "so many of my students" who worked "to find obscure but important details about Brown." He adds, "I am privileged to have a group of staff members at Harvard Law School [here he lists the names] who have patiently worked with me to ensure that the book would be completed before the fiftieth anniversary of Brown." Cronon wondered whether something in the culture of the law might allow greater reliance on support staff in writing than other fields. However, the Harvard Law School dean, Elena Kagan, took the Ogletree incident seriously enough to appoint former Harvard President Derek Bok and former Law School Dean Robert Clark to investigate, and to issue a statement calling the error "a serious scholarly transgression." Ogletree said there will be a penalty, though neither he nor the school would specify it. His public statement appears to be part of his penance.

"It is certainly true that many legal practitioners rely heavily on their associates to assist in the drafting of documents," said Joseph Steinfield, who teaches at the Boston College Law School. "But I don't see what that has to do with scholarship. Readers assume that the author did the writing, and that assumption applies as much to lawyers who write as to anyone else -- the ethical rules are the same."
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