One of These Things is Not a Lot Like the Other

Sorry, Kathleen Breeden, you're no Kaavya Viswanathan. The Harvard Crimson broke the story last spring that then Harvard College sophomore, now junior, Viswanathan had included some suspiciously similar passages in her book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. This week they turned on one of their own and revoked two political cartoons drawn by Kathleen E. Breeden citing apparent plagiarism. The student-run paper cites two instances, including the October 25 cartoon shown above with the "apparently similar" cartoon of professional cartoonist Walt Handelsman, when Breeden's comics were too close for comfort to cartoons that had previously been published and were readily available online. Breeden's comments were not only retracted but she has been suspended from working for the paper.

Last week the Crimson pulled an opinion piece that they found to have plagiarized portions of a Slate.com article. Ah, the internets. It's easy to head on over to Google to find some sources, but if you do it's important to cite them appropriately. Neither the columnist nor the cartoonist will be the subject of legal action by the authors of the original works. In fact, Daryl Cagle, who maintains an online warehouse of cartoons, on his blog calls the cartoon plagiarism merely yatzees and urges the Harvard Crimson (and student newspapers everywhere) to teach the kids, and not punish them. But still, the fact remains, Kaavya did it first. She plagiarized directly and more flamboyantly than the current Crimson instances. When it comes to Harvard and plagiarism Viswanathan is still the brand people count on. Sorry, Kaav, we know your name is getting run through the muck again this fall – and you didn't even have anything to do with it.