‘Plagiarism Hunter’ Finds More Than A Dozen Lifted Passages In Book Harris Co-Authored

An Austrian professor known for exposing plagiarism says he identified multiple instances of lifted material by Vice President Kamala Harris in a book she co-authored on crime.

Dr. Stefan Weber, whose past work revealed academic misconduct by German and Austrian politicians and gave him a reputation as a “plagiarism hunter,” found over a dozen instances of lifted material in the book, according to Manhattan Institute writer Christopher Rufo. Passages in the book, published in 2009, were allegedly lifted from several sources, including a NBC News report, a press release from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Urban Institute, Rufo reported.

“We independently confirmed multiple violations, which are comparable in severity to the plagiarism found in former Harvard president Claudine Gay’s doctoral thesis,” Rufo wrote on X.

Harris allegedly copied material from a 2008 NBC News article, which was not cited, about graduation rates in city schools, Rufo reported. Several paragraphs from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release about efforts to address illegal drug markets were allegedly nearly copied verbatim, while language describing a nonprofit group appeared to be taken from an Urban Institute