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.
The investigation was conducted by Dr. Stefan Weber, a famed Austrian “plagiarism hunter” who has taken down politicians in the German-speaking world. We independently confirmed multiple violations, which are comparable in severity to the plagiarism found in former Harvard… pic.twitter.com/P9DTpZS4kV
— Christopher F. Rufo
(@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2024
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 report.
“In a section about a New York court program, Harris stole long passages directly from Wikipedia—long considered an unreliable source,” Rufo wrote. “She not only assumes the online encyclopedia’s accuracy, but copies its language nearly verbatim, without citing the source.”
Harris also reportedly lifted a description of a crime-ridden neighborhood in West Palm Beach from a Bureau of Justice Assistance report on community court programs, according to Rufo.
“Taken in total, there is certainly a breach of standards here,” Rufo wrote. “Harris and her co-author duplicated long passages nearly verbatim without proper citation and without quotation marks, which is the textbook definition of plagiarism.”
In a section about a New York court program, Harris stole long passages directly from Wikipedia—long considered an unreliable source. She not only assumes the online encyclopedia’s accuracy, but copies its language nearly verbatim, without citing the source. Here is Harris’s… pic.twitter.com/qrwHE8AAgk
— Christopher F. Rufo
“Harris, like many other public figures, may have relied entirely on a ghostwriter to draft her book,” he wrote. “But that is not exculpatory: Harris, at the end of the day, put her name on the cover.”
Harris previously came under fire for copying former President Donald Trump’s “no tax on tips” proposal during an August rally in Las Vegas. Trump announced he would end the federal taxation on tips during a June event.
Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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