Chronicle of Higher Education - September 14, 2004
Plagiarism by Design? MIT Press Seeks Recompense From McGraw-Hill for Copying in Architecture Book By SCOTT MCLEMEE
MIT Press has demanded compensation from McGraw-Hill for infringing MIT's copyright on Pietro Belluschi: Modern American Architect, by Meredith L. Clausen, a professor of architectural history at the University of Washington. Portions of Ms. Clausen's monograph are reproduced, without acknowledgment, in Structures of Our Time: Thirty-one Buildings That Changed Modern Life (McGraw-Hill, 2002), by Roger Shepherd, a professor of fine arts at the Parsons School of Design, in New York.
Mr. Shepherd, who has admitted the duplication, said that McGraw-Hill destroyed all unsold copies of the book last year.
In addition to seeking unspecified reparations from the publisher, Roger L. Conover, MIT Press's executive editor, has asked Mr. Shepherd to apologize to Ms. Clausen. Most of the section on the Equitable Savings and Loan building in Portland, Ore., in Chapter 5 of Mr. Shepherd's book is taken verbatim, or with small changes of wording, from Chapter 6 of Ms. Clausen's study, "The Equitable Building and the Postwar Boom." No acknowledgment to Ms. Clausen appears anywhere in the book.
In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr. Shepherd acknowledged the plagiarism and said that there were "a variety of reasons why some chunks of that book ended up in a book of mine from two years ago."
"None of them, I have to say, are reasonable," he continued. "That is, they're reasons but not excuses."
Asked to elaborate, Mr. Shepherd said, "It had something to do with one of the research assistants I had hired, and the pressure I was under during 9/11." He said that some of Ms. Clausen's book "had been put in as rough stuff, meant to be rewritten, and it remained in."
"There's really no excuse," he said.
Mr. Shepherd said that it is not the first complaint that McGraw-Hill has received about Structures of Our Time. "About a year ago," he said, Princeton Architectural Press contacted the publisher about passages from one of its books that had been incorporated into Mr. Shepherd's volume.
Kevin Lippert, publisher of Princeton Architectural Press, confirmed that the press had complained to McGraw-Hill. But he also indicated that material from not one but three of the press's titles had "appeared without attribution or permission" in Structures of Our Time.
"McGraw-Hill went so far as to recall the book," including the remaindered copies, said Mr. Shepherd. "It's shredded them."
April Hattori, McGraw-Hill's vice president for communications, confirmed that the press had received a complaint about Structures of Our Time in 2003, but said that the book had not been withdrawn because of the plagiarism charge.
"For business reasons," she said, "it was taken out of print."
Copies of the book remain in circulation, however. Ms. Clausen said that in late June, she received an e-mail note from a British reader "with a good eye and a keen memory" who had noticed overlaps between Mr. Shepherd's book and hers, and "said that he was appalled."
At first, Ms. Clausen said, she was not particularly concerned: "I didn't get around to doing anything until a couple of weeks later." Then she examined a copy of Mr. Shepherd's book. "I was just amazed," she said.
Encouraged by a lawyer for the University of Washington to pursue the matter, she prepared a document comparing the two volumes. She cites 19 passages from Pietro Belluschi: Modern American Architect -- including several long paragraphs -- that also appear in Structures of Our Time. (Ms. Clausen's book was reissued in 1999 and remains in print.)
At times, the wording varies slightly. Someone identified as "an all but ideal client" in Ms. Clausen's account "proved to be the ideal client" in Mr. Shepherd's telling. Sentences appear to have been copied intact, then altered for punctuation. In each case, Mr. Shepherd's book follows exactly the sequence of information and argument presented in Ms. Clausen's work, including her quotations from primary sources, without adding new material.
"This is about as clear a case of copyright infringement as I've seen," said William Strong, a lawyer in Boston who is representing MIT Press. "It isn't just plagiarism, though a lot of people don't get that distinction." Plagiarism includes a variety of ways of appropriating another work without giving credit -- for example, by paraphrasing it without acknowledging the source.
"Plagiarism is a moral violation," said Mr. Strong, "but it's not illegal."
Reproducing the actual words appearing in a copyrighted text, however, is legally actionable. It is a matter to which Mr. Strong has devoted close attention over the years, as author of The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide (MIT Press), now in its fifth edition.
When asked how much compensation MIT was seeking, Mr. Strong declined to answer, saying only that "we've put a number of options in front of them." Attempts to contact McGraw-Hill's legal department for comment did not yield any response as of Monday afternoon.
Ms. Clausen said she had had qualms about seeking remedies, at least at first. "I don't like inflicting pain or suffering on anybody," she said, "and I knew this would certainly have some sort of impact" on Mr. Shepherd.
Apparently the last straw came when she learned that Structures of Our Time was on the list of recommended readings for an introductory architecture course at her alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley.
"Knowing that students were going to be reading Shepherd's work, and thinking that it was he who came up with the insights and the connections, that was really painful," she said. "I thought of all those hours I had spent interviewing Pietro Belluschi before he died, traveling back and forth from Seattle to Portland, three hours each way, largely at my own expense."
Paul Goldberger, dean of the Parsons School of Design and architecture critic for The New Yorker, said on Friday that he had not heard about the plagiarism charges against his faculty member. "Without knowing the specifics," he said, "I can't comment more, except to tell you that we take this very seriously, not at all casually or lightly."
For his part, Mr. Shepherd said that he is now writing a letter to Ms. Clausen. "I'm going to tell her I have remorse for this, and that I take total responsibility. And in fact, I'm probably not going to be able to write any more books. It's really a tragedy, probably the worst thing I've ever done. Nevertheless, it's being addressed."