Harvard finds 'significant lapse' in phrasing in Tribe book
'Inadvertent' is Harvard verdict
Harvard University officials have concluded that it was ''a significant lapse" for law school professor Laurence H. Tribe to have used phrasing from another scholar's writing, without attribution, in a 20-year-old book. But President Lawrence H. Summers and law school dean Elena Kagan said in a statement that the mistake was an inadvertent one.
Tribe, who reiterated an earlier apology yesterday, said in a statement that he was not facing any sanction beyond the university's public announcement.
Last September, the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, published a story reporting that Tribe's 1985 book ''God Save this Honorable Court" contained numerous passages that echoed an earlier book by another author. One 19-word phrase was the same in Tribe's book and in Henry J. Abraham's ''Justices and Presidents," published in 1975.
Tribe's book, which did not contain footnotes, did mention Abraham's book in a note as the ''leading political history of Supreme Court appointments."
Summers and Kagan appointed former president Derek Bok, former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy Knowles, and Sidney Verba, a government professor and the university librarian, to conduct an inquiry.
Based on their findings, Summers and Kagan said, ''The unattributed material relates more to matters of phrasing than to fundamental ideas.
''We are also firmly convinced that the error was the product of inadvertence rather than intentionality," they continued. ''Nevertheless, we regard the error in question as a significant lapse in proper academic practice."
Tribe also issued a statement yesterday: ''No statement can erase the fact of my having been less careful than I should have been in my 1985 book, and today I want to reiterate my apology for that error and my assumption of responsibility for it. At the same time, I am gratified that the University's inquiry found no basis for accusations of dishonesty or of intellectual theft."
Abraham did not respond to messages.
Another eminent Harvard law professor, Charles J. Ogletree Jr., also acknowledged last fall that a recent book of his included six paragraphs from another author, which he said was a mistake made by assistants who inadvertently dropped the attribution. 