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Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist

Cain

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Cain
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Alexander Cockburn on the front page of his website Counter Punch charges Alan Dershowitz plagarized Joan Peters(!) in his most recent screed.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09262003.html

A Lexis-nexis search has turned up nothing (so far) in the major papers.

I did see Dershowitz's book prominently displayed in a B&N a couple weeks back and decided to flip through (yes, I washed my hands afterwards (I'm kidding- that type of symbolism is down right silly (I should probably jump out of these parentheses))).

Anyway, I will be pleased to see the shrillest apologist for Israel thoroughly discredited (assuming Cockburn's charges are accurate).

I'm not surprised considering this is the work of a self-described "civil libertarian" who believes in issuing torture warrants.

Summers' response will be interesting (again, if Cockburn's correct) given the manner in which he treated Cornel West.
 
Our old friend Finkelstein has been onto this too.

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/id141.htm

He`s put the plagiarisms from Joan Peters in Dershowitz's latest piece of tat right into the arena.

Wonder how Dershowitz would react if he caught one of his students plagiarising like this.

edited to add:
You beat me to it bangdazap ;)
 
Bold face mine:

Cain said:
Anyway, I will be pleased to see the shrillest apologist for Israel thoroughly discredited (assuming Cockburn's charges are accurate).

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Until Cockburn's charges are proven accurate --as you said--you might want to ask Linda to change the title of your thread because it's misleading.
 
Cain said:
No Ms. Cleo, that's quite alright. I only included the qualifier to possibly induce others to read the article.
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How can you insist that it is alright Cain when you admitted that the allegations haven't been proven yet?
 
Cleopatra said:


How can you insist that it is alright Cain when you admitted that the allegations haven't been proven yet?
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Well, Finkelstien made the accusations and Dershowitz ducked the issue instead of addressing it. He even used the tried-and-true fraudster tactic of threatening to sue. I know where my $10 000 is going to be laid.
 
Mr Manifesto said:


Well, Finkelstien made the accusations and Dershowitz ducked the issue instead of addressing it. He even used the tried-and-true fraudster tactic of threatening to sue. I know where my $10 000 is going to be laid.
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Ok but I don't see how this changes the fact that Cain's title is misleading.
 
That the torture advocate Dershowitz is a plagiarist is dishonest enough (not suprising considering where his sympathies lie), but what gets me is that he thinks it`s worth plagiarising from Joan Peters.
Now that`s hilarious.
 
I read the transcript. 3 people I don't care for. The shrill and self-serving yet brilliant Alan Dershowitz. Finkelstein who loses some genuinely substantive thoughts (the holocaust industry) in the midst of a cloud of general anti-Israel writing and thought. Noam Chomsky who should probably shut up and teach linguistics.

Its hard to feel sympathy for any of these guys. Dersh and Finkelstein, the only way I will ever watch these guys on TV together is if there is a table of cream pies in the room and 3 bumbling waiters.
 
Corplinx- Did you read the transcript? It doesn't show. First, Noam Chomsky had nothing to do with the discussion (although you even come close to suggesting that he was present).

Dershowitz scored no points. After Finkelstein's initial allegation, Norman said in passing, "I think I made this available to you..." and Dershowitz quickly interjects to "inform the audience" that this is a "lie" and he's respectfully not generally a "litigious person," but he'll have to defend himself. Heh, I'd love to see Alan take him to court, but everyone knows he won't (this is a Richard Perele strong arm tactic). Instead of fessing up about the origins of the quotes, Dershowitz resorts to crass interruption and unrelated rhetorical questions -- "Is it accurate? Is it accurate??". Of course, that's the wrong question.

I recall in a discussion on memes, Richard Dawkins mentions how he got a title of a very famous journal article slightly wrong for his bibliography in _The Selfish Gene_ (I believe he may have used the word "evolutionary" instead of "biologically"). Edward Wilson's popular book _Sociobiology_, released the year before, contained an identical error. From this single error, Richard Dawkins said that a reasonable person could conclude that he may have just copied the bibliography. Fortunately, a previous lecture in 1974, before the release of Wilson's book, Dawkins had the same mistaken title.

Now, Finkelstein accuses Dershowitz of borrowing (to put it very politely) from Peters without crediting the original source. And Cockburn points out that our favorite dishonest law professor noted that he in now way relied on the Peters book. That's a lie.

In _Chronicles of Dissent_ (1992), Chomsky discusses the reasons for Dershowtiz's "personal Jihad" against him:

He's been on a personal jihad for the last twenty years, ever since I exposed him for lying outright in a vicious personal attack on a leading Israeli civil libertarian. Despite pretenses, he's strongly opposed to civil liberties. Using his position as a Harvard law professor, he referred to what the Israeli courts had determined. But he was just lying flat outright. This was in the Boston Globe (April 29, 1973). I wrote a short letter refuting it (May 17). He then came back (on May 25,) accusing everybody of lying and challenging me to quote from the court records. He never believed I had them, but of course I did. I quoted the court records in response (June 5). He then tried to brazen it out again. It finally ended up with my sending the transcript of the court records to the Globe ombudsman, who didn't know what to do any more with people just taking opposite positions. I translated them for him, and suggested that he pick his own expert to check the translations. The ombudsman finally told Dershowitz they wouldn't publish any more letters of his because he had been caught flat out lying about it.
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Cain said:
Corplinx- Did you read the transcript? It doesn't show. First, Noam Chomsky had nothing to do with the discussion (although you even come close to suggesting that he was present).
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Yes I read it. I wasn't concerned with implicating Chomsky so much in my post as I was setting up a good 3 stooges reference.
 
Did you ask Linda to change the misleading title?
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Cleo, no I did not.

Why don't you give the Anti-Defamation League a call. We wouldn't want someone browsing these forums to see the title "Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist," scratch his chin and exhale, "That's good enough for me," before gleefully clicking on the "Segway Sucks" thread.

I think it's a far more tame title than the others I entertained. For instance, I nearly created a poll: "Biggest attention whore (and fraud): David Blaine or Alan Dershowitz?" Ann Coulter would have been one of the possible choices, but let's be honest, she's no longer big enough to headline.
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Yes I read it. I wasn't concerned with implicating Chomsky so much in my post as I was setting up a good 3 stooges reference.
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Oh... :rolleyes:
 
Cleo, no I did not.

Why don't you give the Anti-Defamation League a call.
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Originally posted by Cain

Maybe you're just trying to be provocative, but I want to remind you that stupidity is not a prerequisite for the role of provocateur. At least that's my helpful suggestion for the day.
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Well, I read thru the transcripts and most of the links I think.

Finkelstein accuses Dershowitz of basing a significant section of his book on the work of Ms. Peters in her book, From Time Immemorial.

This seems to have been proved completely by Finkelstein in his detailed comparison of the Dershowitz and Peters writing.

Finkelstein calls it plagiarism. That seems reasonable, but plagiarism has degrees. A lot of the disputed work is quotes that Dershowitz says are accurate, regardless if they were first published in Ms. Peters book.

So are any of the quotes wrong? I don't know but it seems not. Finkelstein didn't say they were, he just felt that it showed poor scholarship to use the exact quotes in exactly the same way as was done in a book that he says was discredited.

OK, so were the main facts presented by Peters/Dershowitz wrong. Finkelstein say they were since he says he discredited pretty much all of the Peter's book. But all the links neither argue for or against the notion that the facts were wrong.

The Finkelstein focus on the plagiarism angle prevented any discussion of the substantive issues in Dershowitz's book. So at this point I don't know how bad Dershowitz's actions were. He copied, word for word at times, some facts and arguments from Peters. If the facts were right it seems like he is guilty of not acknowledgin the work of Peters well enough in his book. If the facts are wrong then it seems far worse to me. Not only did he use facts and arguments from an author without proper attribution or compensation, but he didn't check those facts or used them anyway knowing them to be false.
 
Cleo, please give it a rest. The title for my thread came from the article itself. I don't see you complaining about the "Global Warming from +CO2 = FARCE" thread. Could I appease you by adding a question mark? Will that make you happy? Well, I don't want to add a question mark because the facts are already rather clear.

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The Finkelstein focus on the plagiarism angle prevented any discussion of the substantive issues in Dershowitz's book. So at this point I don't know how bad Dershowitz's actions were. He copied, word for word at times, some facts and arguments from Peters. If the facts were right it seems like he is guilty of not acknowledgin the work of Peters well enough in his book.
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I do not find this "it could be much, much worse" argument very compelling. Finkelstein exposes Dershowitz's work shoddy scholarship. Dershowitz consciously avoids properly crediting Peters (discredited) work because it would deflate the power of his arguments. Therefore he fails to meet the minimum standards of intellectual honesty. That whole "turnspeak" nonsense speaks volumes.

And remember, this is not a business major rearranging words off a website for an ethics term paper due the next day. This is an academic at the most visible and presitigious university in the United States. I hope our public intellectuals are held to higher standards.
 
Cain dear, I wouldn't even mention it if you weren't among those that criticize such methods in debating...

You are the Pope of criticism here and you should be more careful.

That's all.

Now I see that 15 posts below ( including mine) your opening post you have a verdict that you hesitated to post at first place.

This is not necessarily bad, it's just an observation.
 
Cleopatra,

My second post -- that would be the one that came after my first post -- contained a link to a transcript for Amy Goodman's program "Democracy Now", where Finkelstein personally confronted Dershowitz with these charges. Alan's performance on the program -- and it was quite a performance -- removes all doubt. The only circumstances under which I thought Dershowtiz could be vindicated is if Cockburn made it all up (highly unlikely). If you read inbetween the lines on the first post you'll clearly see the words "nee-nur, nee-nur, nee-nur" repeated (look closely). I believed anyone who read the original article could reach only one conclusion: Alan Dershowitz is a piss poor scholar.

I have no idea what you're talking about in "criticizing methods of debate" or "Pope of criticism" and all that other nonsense.
 
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