Except it is not different. As the Harvard guidebook recognizes, the circumstances, including the intent of the author, the extent of copying, and the significance of the contribution to the paper in question, all matter. This applies to students, graduate students, and professors.
Hypocrisy would be firing her decades later for a few snippets and citation errors over an entire career, when the alleged copying never would have raised any flags because of its triviality. It had little or no significance of the works in question, and never would have been questioned when it was reviewed.
For example, here is the acknowledgement from Dr. Gay’s dissertation, which seems to have everyone so up in arms and going after her scalp. The supposed copying in bold:
I am deeply indebted to and wish to thank the many people who aided me in this dissertation project.
Special thanks is due to Sidney Verba, Gary King, and Katherine Tate whose critical and consistent support encouraged, inspired, and challenged me throughout this project. I owe a great deal, in particular, to Katherine who introduced me to the field of Black Politics, and continued to be both a mentor and a friend long after shehad moved on from Harvard. 1 am also grateful to Gary: as a methodologist, he reminded me of the importance of getting the data right and following where they lead without fear or favor; as an advisor, he gave me the attention and the opportunities I needed to do my best work. His invitation to join the ROAD project was critical to the development ofthis dissertation, providing me with both the data and the experience I needed to get this project offthe ground.
Mark Gersh and Jon Leahy of the National Committee for an Effective Congress deserve special thanks for generously allowing me access to their voting data.
I have also been lucky to count among my colleagues and friends an incredibly talented and intelligent group of graduate students. Whether in the Government Department lounge, in the American Research Workshop, or over lunch in the Square, conversations with several o f my fellow graduate students sparked useful insights that have been incorporated into this work. On a more personal level, their humor and unwavering support saw me through the occasional frustrations of grad school life.
The National Science Foundation, The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, the Mellon Foundation, the Leadership Alliance, and the Brookings Institution, have all provided critical financial support throughout my graduate career. The Brookings Institution, in particular, not only funded my final year of dissertation writing, but also provided a wonderful place to work. My fellow Fellows, Jennifer Klein and Eric Lawrence, have my gratitude not only for encouraging my progress, but also for distracting me just enough to keep me sane. Seminar participants at Brookings and George Washington University helped me to refine wayward arguments, and to communicate my ideas better. Maurice Heilberg and the staffat Brookings were especially helpful with everything from faxes and FedEx packages, to troublesome printjobs.
I am grateful to Chris Afendulis, an essential colleague and dear friend. Without his intellectual energy, love, sanity, and humor this dissertation would never have been finished.
Finally, I want to thank my family, two wonderful parents and an older brother. From kindergarten through graduate school, they celebrated my every accomplishment, forced me to laugh when I’d lost my sense of humor, drove me harder than I sometimes wanted to be driven, and gave me the confidence that I could achieve. My mother returned to school just as I was preparing to enter the real world. I only hope that I can take some of her courage with me.
Should Gay have been fired for these trite expressions of gratitude, when there is nothing inherently original or especially valuable in the ideas expressed or how they were expressed? Preposterous. There is nothing at all novel about “the importance of getting the data right” or “following where they lead without fear or favor.”
It is the acknowledgement version of common knowledge. The person she supposedly copied didn’t invent or create those notions nor present them in a unique or original way. For example, “Without Fear or Favor” is a common phrase dating back at least a century, and was the title of at least one book. Should the author who Gay allegedly copied have her career ruined as well for not properly crediting those who expressed the same sentiments using the same or similar words in the past?
According to the WaPo article cited above, the aggrieved author found the individual examples of alleged copying “trivial” with “no substantive theft of ideas.”
