Right-wing advocate alleges Harris of duplicating segments in jointly penned 2009 publication
Christopher Rufo, a renowned figure at the Manhattan Institute, a recognized conservative think tank, shared an allegation on Monday through an online post. This allegation stemmed from an analysis conducted by Stefan Weber, who's known for his work in Austrian plagiarism detection. According to Weber, Kamala Harris, in her co-written book "Smart on Crime" with Joan O’C. Hamilton, had allegedly utilized "straight from the book" language from unacknowledged sources.
Published in 2009, prior to Harris' election as California's attorney general, the book serves as a reflection of Harris' experience in prosecuting various crimes, ranging from child sexual assault to homicide, in Alameda County and San Francisco. Rufo, in his post, zeroed in on six specific sections from Harris' roughly 200-page book.
CNN scrutinized several of the passages referred to by Rufo and discovered inconsistencies in credit given to the sources.
Plagiarism involves using somebody else's work without providing the appropriate recognition for their thoughts and words. Although the source of the information might be cited, if the ideas are not rephrased or accurately placed in quotation marks, it is still classified as plagiarism, as experts clarified to CNN towards the end of last year.
In one instance, Harris and Hamilton appeared to have incorporated parts of a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release without due acknowledgment. The book incorporates the press release's verbatim language and sections, but fails to use quotation marks in several sentences, as per an examination of the book and the press release.
Nevertheless, the authors do acknowledge the press release as a source in a footnote adjacent to the text. They also appropriately attribute other quotations from the press release.
Rufo further emphasized another instance, claiming that Harris and Hamilton had plagiarized language directly from an NBC News report about a 2008 study on low graduation rates in city schools. CNN confirmed that the text closely mirrors both the book and the NBC News report.
Harris and Hamilton reference the study in their book when using the study's statistics, but they fail to cite the NBC News article.
The Harris campaign responded by stating that the Democratic presidential candidate had thoroughly acknowledged sources and statistics throughout the book with footnotes and endnotes.
"Right-wing activists are growing frantic as they witness the bipartisan coalition in support of Vice President Harris, growing stronger as Donald Trump retreats into a conservative echo chamber, resisting dialogue about his falsehoods. This is a book that's been around for 15 years, and the Vice President has consistently cited sources and statistics throughout with footnotes and endnotes," said Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer.
Senator JD Vance, the vice presidential nominee, swiftly capitalized on the allegations, sharing his thoughts on X: "Kamala didn't even write her own book!" Vance additionally posted on the platform, "I wrote my own book" - referencing his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy."
CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.
In the midst of the controversy, politics surrounding the allegations of plagiarism against Kamala Harris have become a topic of discussion.
The issue of plagiarism in politics, as in other fields, necessitates thorough attribution and proper credit for other people's ideas and words.
