The left-leaning New York Times was accused of “lying” about plagiarism allegations against Vice President Kamala Harris to undermine an exclusive report by a conservative activist who called out the Democratic presidential nominee.
Christopher Rufo — who helped expose alleged plagiarism by Harvard President Claudine Gay that ultimately led to her ouster — tweeted Monday that several passages in Harris’ 2009 book, “Smart on Crime,” were too similar or fully matched wording from other sources.
The Times followed up with a story noting that Rufo found only “five sections” comprising “about 500 words” that raised questions. He quoted plagiarism expert Jonathan Bailey, who said Rufo made relatively minor citation errors and tried to “make a bid for it.”
“The amount of plagiarism amounts to a mistake rather than an intent to deceive,” Bailey, who runs the website Plagiarism Today, told the Times.
But after Gray Lady published her story, Bailey wrote on his X account that his quotes were based on “information provided by journalists” and that he hadn’t done a full analysis of the book – written by Harris while she was in California . the general prosecutor.
Rufo said he provided the Times with the full analysis by Austrian researcher Dr. Stefan Weber, who found “18 claims of varying severity” — a much broader sample than the one cited by the Times.
“The New York Times is lying about my plagiarism story and I have the receipts to prove it,” Rufo, an academic at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, wrote on X on Tuesday in a lengthy post.
He accused the Times of “deliberately withholding” the full analysis conducted by Weber to downplay the scope of the scandal.
When he asked the Times “politely for a correction,” the editor, Mary Suh, “had nothing but excuses,” Rufo said.
“And so, we’re going to fight this,” Rufo said, adding, “They have to make a correction, but even if they don’t, I’m going to correct the record publicly.”
The post has sought comment from the Times.
In his original report Monday, Rufo posted screenshots of five side-by-side passages showing that Harris may have lifted wording from a 2008 Associated Press article, a Wikipedia article drafted in 2008, a Bureau of Legal Aid report from 2000, an Urban Institute Report from 2004, and a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release describing a 2007 award.
In at least two of the cases, the source of the original word is cited in the footnotes.
But there were no quotation marks around the raised words, and in other cases the passages appear to be completely uncredited, such as the Urban Institute report.
The Times story was headlined “Conservative Activist Seizes Passages From Harris Book.” The caption read: “A report by Christopher Rufo says the Democratic presidential candidate copied five short passages for her 2009 book on crime. A plagiarism expert said the mistakes were not serious.”
The paper also seemed to imply that Rufo’s motive in publishing the plagiarism allegations was racist.
“Mr. Rufo is part of a loose confederation of conservative writers and activists who have spent the past year trying to expose plagiarism among academics, many of whom have been black scholars working in the fields of diversity and inclusion,” the Times wrote, adding . : “Some academics … have characterized the campaign as racist.”
On Monday, Harris campaign spokesman James Singer said: “This is a book that has been out for 15 years, and the vice president clearly cited sources and statistics in footnotes and endnotes.”
In 2021, a story then-Vice President-elect Harris told Elle magazine drew attention after readers noticed parallels to a similar one told by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965.
Additional reporting by Steven Nelson
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