Kamala Harris Plagiarism Scandal Surfaces

United States Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer contains over a dozen “vicious plagiarism fragments,” according to Austrian “plagiarism hunter” Stefan Weber’s recent report.

Why it matters: Plagiarism is a deceitful act that often ends careers. The commonality of this dishonesty in America—even reaching the top levels of government—does not bode well for the United States.

Details: Harris’s book—coauthored with Joan O’C. Hamilton—came out a year before she ran for California’s attorney general’s office in 2010. The book helped establish her credibility.

• Some instances of plagiarism are minor: copying small sections or paraphrasing inadequately.
• Other instances match the severity of those that ended former Harvard president Claudine Gay’s career.

Harris and Hamilton copied long passages almost verbatim from news reports, press releases and Wikipedia. The Wikipedia excerpt contained misinformation.

After copying from the Wikipedia article, she continues by copying from the pdf linked in the Wikipedia article’s first reference. Although she acknowledges at the end of the book that she took examples of community courts from that report (without providing the url), the copied sections are presented as if they were her own words.
—Stefan Weber

• In one instance, the book cites a nonexistent page number from a source.
• Details were sometimes changed in copied sources.
• Harris recounted a story very similar to one told by Martin Luther King Jr (which she has since retold in other instances).

Weber also found that, in an interview about her book, Harris quoted a previous interview she gave about her book in which she often quoted the book verbatim. He said, “[I]t is … unethical to reproduce text chunks from an older interview verbatim in a newer one. Different media should have different content. In sum, it seems to be a rather ‘cheap’ way of producing content.”

Harris has faced criticism for using the same lines verbatim in presidential campaign rallies.

Harris and Hamilton may have used a ghostwriter for the book, who was the main plagiarist. But their names are on it, so that doesn’t excuse these infractions.

Prophetic perspective: The Bible prophesies that modern America’s leadership will be morally sick. Unless repented of, America’s moral decline will lead to its fall.

Learn more: Read our Trends article “Why the Trumpet Watches Moral Decline in Britain and America.”