At the end of last week, I received a manila envelope in the mail. The postage indicated that it was sent from Fargo, North Dakota. There was no return address on the envelope and no cover letter explaining who or why they had sent it. Inside the envelope was a xerox copy of John R. Wunder's"An Assessment of Possible Plagiarism in Profiting from the Plains by Dr. Claire Strom" and Wunder's cover letter of 23 November 2004 to Dr. R. Craig Schnell, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at North Dakota State University.

I wrote about the accusations against Professor Stromhere and here. Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed reported on the case here and here. Ordinarily, the accusations against Strom would have remained confidential, but the Attorney General of North Dakota issued an incidental directive to the University in a related matter and that led to public disclosure of an investigation that was then on-going. Subsequently, a panel of North Dakota State University faculty members found Professor Strom not guilty of the charges against her under the guidelines of NDSU's Policy Manual. She will, apparently, be considered for tenure at the University in the coming academic year.

My ethical problem is that the documents were sent to me by an anonymous person (very likely an interested party) in Fargo, North Dakota, and, when John Wunder submitted them to the University, he had every reason to expect that they would be a part of a confidential process of internal review. It is already a matter of public record, however, that, acting under the guidelines of the AHA, he had found that Claire Strom had violated some of those guidelines.

I am not at liberty to quote from these documents, because John Wunder submitted them to North Dakota State University with the understanding that they were to be a part of a confidential internal review process. What is new to me, however, is that he was well aware of the NDSU Policy Manual's requirements and took them into account in his report to the University. What I can say is that John Wunder's report is an impressively conscientious one and I have little confidence in its rejection by NDSU's faculty panel.

Tom Isern - 6/10/2005

Following the lead of my dean, in the interest of access to public information providing context for the Strom affair, here is additional guidance. The Wunder Report is available to the public on request. It was created under a university policy (the one cited by Dean Riley) that specifically recognizes the authority of the North Dakota Open Records Act. Proceedings of inquiries on plagiarism are confidential; documents are open records. The Wunder Report became known to the public when the Fargo Forum requested a copy from the Provost. Anyone can do so. Simply address: Provost, Old Main 103, North Dakota State University, Fargo ND 58105.

Lisa Roy Vox - 5/11/2005

Um, now that I've dug myself into a hole, how 'bout History's Jim Romenesko?

Thomas Joseph Riley - 5/11/2005

If you want to examine the policy, you can go to http://www.ndsu.edu/policy/326.htm

You will note that there are several phases. In only an advanced phase I(Inquiry) does an accused individual get to respond to allegations made. This is beyond the initial decision to have an inquiry. It would appear ( I am not privy to the detasils) that it was as an initial consultant before an Inquiry was launched that the Wunder Report was asked for.

Jim Williams - 5/11/2005

Ralph, you are doing the moral thing. Given that the documents were intended to be confidential, you should not post them without permission of both the author and subject.

I assume that the subject's permission will be a long time coming. The author may also be reluctant to have them made public.

Jason Kuznicki - 5/11/2005

It's particularly worrying to me to find that a committee of non-humanities academics were called to judge the case. From what I can tell, technical writers tend to be much more lenient about borrowing material. The humanities are an art form, though, and originality is key for us in ways that they might not appreciate. This is not to say that engineers are unethical, but I do think we play by different rules.

Asking for permission gets my vote too, for what it's worth. I'm not completely satisfied with any solution, but this does seem the least bad option.

Jonathan Dresner - 5/10/2005

Well, if they took some decent history courses in college, they might know something....

I could understand not having any historians on the committee, on conflict of interest grounds. But completely excluding the academic disciplines strikes me as odd, too. Of course, it's not easy to get people to volunteer on these committees; now I'm wondering how the selection process worked....

Boy, without a pretty open process these days, this stuff just doesn't go away, does it?

Ralph E. Luker - 5/10/2005

One thing that is clear under the new AHA guidelines is that its agencies will not be hearing this case or any other like it. Clearly, the employer is where there is power to act and, if my reading of this case is correct, it will not act in this case -- even against the best advice of competent outside authority. It really burns me that the internal review committee had no humanists, no social scientists, no scientists on it. What does an accountant or a home ec teacher know about appropriate citation practices?

Jonathan Dresner - 5/10/2005

At the very least, this is a cautionary tale for anyone considering a gig as an independent reviewer: your work may well be supressed and ignored, no matter how well you do it. I hope he at least got paid decently for his time.

I wonder what the odds are that you're the only person who got a sub rosa copy....

Ralph E. Luker - 5/10/2005

Just what I wanted: a reputation as History's Matt Drudge!

Lisa Roy Vox - 5/10/2005

Wow. Plagiarism in all of academia needs to be examined more closely (not just history--but we're getting all the attention), but I don't think Dr. Luker should have to bear the burden himself by becoming a sort of Matt Drudge for academia (and I don't mean that in a negative way...while I don't agree politically with Drudge, one cannot doubt that he has had the impact in the past of bringing at least some "hidden" stories to light, whether one might think it was for better or worse). This might open the flood doors for more anonymous submissions to blogging academics, which might not be too fun on a personal level.
But if these documents are published online, I think Dr. Luker would be the right person to do it.

Ralph E. Luker - 5/10/2005

I agree that being "used" is a possible problem. My "being used" antenna went way up when I received these documents from an anonymous source. I have to weigh that against the public's right to know.

Oscar Chamberlain - 5/10/2005

Asking permission seems a reasonable path to me as well.

It's important to remember that we do not know the motive of the person who passed on the report; nor do we have all the context for the "in-house" investigation.

Concerning the latter, I trust Ralph to compare the two reports carefully, but final reports don't always reflect the full range of discussion. Perhaps that full discussion would put Dr. Strom in a better light, perhaps in a worse light.

Either way, this blog is being used by someone, and we need to be careful that we are serving the truth and not simply someone's agenda.

Ralph E. Luker - 5/10/2005

Thanks, Van. I am consulting with the authorities about this.

Van L. Hayhow - 5/10/2005

Ralph:
Since you have the documents and some of the story has been made public, why don't you ask the appropriate people for permission to post the documents?
Van

Ralph E. Luker - 5/10/2005

But your thoughtful challenges in both directions _are_ helpful. That's why I framed this as an ethical problem. One of my other colleagues at Cliopatria has also raised questions about this in private e-mail to me. Frankly, one of the reasons that I am dubious of the report of the University's internal committee is that it included no one from any humanities or social science discipline at the University, so the detailed report of the only historian consulted about the matter was simply waved away by a committee composed of faculty technicians. I've read both reports and there's no doubt in my mind but that the report of John Wunder, the historian, is by far the most persuasive.

Jason Kuznicki - 5/10/2005

What use do you suppose the sender intended for this material? Did he really want you to sit on it and do nothing? Admittedly I'm quite an outsider here, but it looks as though you are being treated like a journalist--and that accordingly, some information has been leaked to you. This happens all the time to journalists, and they are in general free to publish the results.

Again, I'd like to challenge you: If you have actual evidence of a fraud, how can you in good conscience conceal it? And if you don't have actual evidence of a fraud, then what has your post accomplished? I would think either that the above post is an improper insinuation, in which case it should come down--or else it is perfectly justified, in which case there needs to be some more documentation to support it.

To be honest I'm not sure which one I would choose, and it certainly is a difficult problem. Were you solely a journalist, it seems the disclosure would be a lot easier to justify. Being mainly an academic, though, and only a part-time journalist, there is some obvious need for you to respect academic confidentiality. I don't personally know what to do.

Ralph E. Luker - 5/10/2005

Jason, There's the small matter of permissions. I don't post anything I receive in e-mail without the permission of the first party author (except if I post spam; spammers are to be given no rights since they didn't respect my right not to be spammed).
Here, there really are three parties: the author of the documents sent to me; the recipient of the documents sent to me; and the subject of the documents sent to me. I don't have permission from any of them. I do believe that Professor Strom's right of confidentiality was breached in the Attorney General's public order to the University. Had the right of confidentiality not been breached, we would not have known about the case at all. I do not know the identity of the party who sent these documents to me. I do not know what interest that person has in my having these documents, which were clearly not intended for public release.
In my opinion, the internal processes at NDSU have yielded a deeply flawed result, but I wouldn't have even known that there was an issue if Professor Strom's right of confidentiality had not been breached. I might add that if Professor Strom had not submitted her flawed book for a prize, all of this might have gone unnoticed.

Jason Kuznicki - 5/10/2005

No, really. It would be a very strong first impulse of mine to put everything up on the web, and here's why.

If Claire Strom is cheating to get tenure, then you are doing a service to the taxpayers of North Dakota by revealing that information. Put the whole thing up in PDF and let the world decide. Why should confidentiality ever shield an actual fraud?

Ralph E. Luker - 5/10/2005

Wunder concluded that Strom violated both the AHA guidelines and the guidelines of NDSU's Policy Manual.

Jonathan Dresner - 5/10/2005

Can I at least get a little clarification? Are you saying that Wunder concluded that Strom had violated NDSU guidelines as well as AHA ones? Because I've thought that the differing conclusions were kind of odd, myself, even allowing for "looser" standards at the local level.