The name of the game: Keep accusations quiet

When a Penn Sociology professor accused his colleague of plagiarism last week, he called for a "full and frank public accounting" of the case.

But public discourse about academic dishonesty is precisely what Penn's administrators -- and those at universities across the country -- want to avoid.

On Thursday, Sociology professor emeritus Harold Bershady sent an e-mail memo to all Sociology faculty that alleged professor Kathryn Edin had stolen the "analytic scheme" of her new book from the work of Elijah Anderson, another Penn sociologist.

Bershady called Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage -- which Edin published in May with St. Joseph's University professor Maria Kefalas -- "conceptual plagiarism" of several of Anderson's books.

"This has the makings of a scandal as serious as any I've encountered at Penn," Bershady wrote.

With his explicit condemnation of Edin's work, Bershady sought to steer the issue away from closed-door discussions and into the public light. And this, according to reports in The Chronicle of Higher Education, is an unusual move in academia.

"It's very rare for these accusations to come from one member of a department against another," said Richard Byrne, an editor at the Chronicle. "I just haven't come across anything like this."

Most plagiarism accusations -- according to a Chronicle report published last December -- are handled with confidential mediation sessions that are never publicized.

Before Bershady wrote his memo, this was the case at Penn.

School of Arts and Sciences Dean Rebecca Bushnell said that Edin and Anderson met with mediators several months ago to discuss the similarities in their works.

And while Bushnell said Edin and Anderson had come to an agreement, they are legally prevented from discussing its terms.

These types of behind-the-scenes agreements are becoming more prevalent at American universities simply because the consequences of a public plagiarism scandal are too risky.

Universities "don't want to lose a professor; they don't want to deal with the hassle," said Chronicle reporter Tom Bartlett, who has written about several prominent plagiarism cases. "If it becomes a public thing, obviously it can be a big embarrassment for a university."

When a professor's academic integrity is questioned, universities are threatened with everything from expensive lawsuits to bad publicity.

But Bershady's memo -- and its call for a public debate -- may send a signal that this type of closed-doors, institutionalized response is inadequate.

He decided to compose the memo, he wrote, specifically to prompt a more open discussion about the academic integrity of Edin's book.

"A victim of plagiarism may feel that he or she has to go public with their charges in order to have some sort of fair hearing," Bartlett said.

And even though Bershady is not a direct victim, he was still motivated to voice concern that the University's initial response was not fair enough.

"This matter must not be ignored," he wrote. "Decisive action should be taken soon."

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