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Friday, July 15, 2005
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THE THRILL IS GONE I don’t know what’s wrong. Faithful readers know how much UD loves a good plagiarism story (“And pray,” as Lady Bracknell says, “make it improbable.”). So what with Professor Finkelstein going after Professor Dershowitz in all the papers, she should be full of glee. And yet… and yet … (as Erich Heller, UD’s professor at Northwestern long ago, used to say) -- she discovers within herself absolutely no interest in this high-profile case. The combatants are both shitskies, for one thing, so when they meet for radio debates you root for both of them to lose… There’s no subtlety, either. They just bang away at each other, bang, bang, bang… For the record, UD figures Dershowitz probably did lift some of the book what’s his name accuses him of having plagiarized. Dershowitz is one of those busy professionals who has groups of students do a good deal of the writing of his books for him, far as UD can tell (for another Harvard law school instance of this practice, see Ogletree), and, as UD has pointed out before, there are obvious dangers to this form of outsourcing. I realize that this is an important story is some ways, and so I’ll do some outsourcing of my own. Hiram Hover, a fellow academic blogger and a very impressive one, does seem to be able to get excited about Finkelstein/Dershowitz. Read him. |