PrintMay 11, 2010
Elena Kagan's unequal justice?
Does Elena Kagan believe in impartial justice? That's a very important question for a Supreme Court nominee, and there are disturbing questions raised by her handling of a scandal at Harvard Law School. Evan Gahr, writing at Jewish World Review:
As Dean of Harvard Law School in 2004 and 2005 she treated two liberal law professors with kid gloves when they were busted for plagiarism. Her chicanery was so blatant that even a leftist academic said she should be fired for her "whitewash." [....]... the way she handled professors Larry Tribe and Charles Ogletree, when they both were caught swiping the words of others, seems to violate basic principles of fairness.She let the professors off easy for the kind of offense that for which any Harvard undergraduate or law school would have been suspended if not expelled.As the Harvard Crimson wrote after Kagan and Harvard president Larry Summers declined to punish Tribe, "the glaring double standard set by Harvard stands as an inadequate precedent for future disappointments."
Both famous professors published the words of others as their own, and when caught blamed research assistants. This is a familiar dodge, which begs the question: if research assistants are writing the books and taking responsibility, why are the professors credited as authors?
Kagan, as a dean brought in as a peacemaker, was not about to upset the faculty by cracking down on abusive marquee name professors. She got along to get along, in other words. Harvard Law was, at the time, bitterly divided politically.
One of the reasons I left academia in disgust was the practice of senior professors grabbing credit for the authorship of books and articles that were substantially written by others.
Read Gahr's account for the details of the infractions and Kagan's handling of them. She gives the appearance of being a member of the old boy's club, where a bureaucratic wink and a nod suffices as punishment for offenses that would get others severely punished.
Hat tip: Susan L.
Hat tip: Susan L.
