The Jamaal Bowman Plagiarism Scandal

Late last week, Luke Rosiak and Christopher Rufo at The Daily Wire published a report accusing New York congressman Jamaal Bowman of plagiarizing parts of his 2019 dissertation.

Bowman was first elected to the office in 2020. He is facing a “bitter” primary battle for his position and has complained of being “bullied” by his opponent.

According to the report, several sections of Bowman’s dissertation contain text copied verbatim or near-verbatim without quotation marks. Though Bowman does cite the sources, the verbiage itself is not.

This is not the first time Rufo has filed accusations of plagiarism. In December 2023, he rose to national prominence for his allegations against then-Harvard President Claudine Gay. The scandal eventually forced Gay to resign.

Since then, he has published several more plagiarism accusations, most targeting black faculty at universities that were part of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

However, those allegations have been something of a mixed bag. Some pointed to serious issues, such as the allegations against Natalie J. Perry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). However, the majority were examples of trying to inflate minor issues for political gain, including in Gay’s case.

Still, this is the first time Rufo has targeted a politician. That begs the simple question: How serious are the allegations against Bowmann? The answer is probably not very.

A Mild Problem (At Worst)

Bowman submitted the dissertation in January 2019 to the School of Education of Manhattanville University (formerly Manhattanville College). It was a requirement for his doctorate in education, which he earned at the school.

Entitled Community Schools: The Perceptions and Practices that Foster Broad-Based Collaboration among Leaders within the Community School Ecosystem, aimed to look at ways community schools could improve student outcomes.

However, according to Rufo and Rosiak, several passages in the 130+ page dissertation contain plagiarism.

It is difficult to say exactly how much plagiarism there is. The report cites only four instances of alleged copying, but it seems to indicate that there are merely examples and that more copying is present. The report did not make the complete analysis available.

That said, the four highlighted passages were all very similar. Each passage was roughly a sentence or two and was copied verbatim from sources cited in the document. However, Bowman failed to either paraphrase the material adequately or place it in quotes.

To be clear, this is a form of plagiarism. When writing a dissertation or any other academic paper, you must cite the information and words you use. Bowman failed to do the latter.

However, as we’ve discussed, this isn’t uncommon in academia. Many academics, at all levels, practice poor writing and paraphrasing techniques. For some, it’s how they write.

Though I have long touted the cleanroom writing technique as a way to avoid these issues, many don’t follow it.

Ultimately, we have four relatively short examples of text copied but not properly marked as quotes. Yes, it is bad. There is no such thing as good plagiarism. However, I would expect this to be handled with a mild correction rather than revoking a degree or other, more stern penalty.

Simply put, these are a few passages in a 130+ page paper. Even if there is more of this kind of plagiarism, it would have to be significantly more to become a serious issue.

Three Things to Note

That said, I found three things interesting about this case.

First, most of the dissertation’s criticism centers around its content, not the alleged plagiarism. Since I am not a subject matter expert, nor have I been able to review the entire dissertation, I can’t comment on the validity of those criticisms.

Still, it’s interesting that, in an article touting it as plagiarized in the headline, much of the focus was on the content.

Second, Bowman submitted this paper in 2019. It’s easy to see how plagiarism issues went unnoticed in older papers, but this paper is not that. Bowman and the school had access to advanced plagiarism detection tools, so there was no reason for these errors to slip through.

While the plagiarism itself, at least what has been shown, is minor. The amount should have been zero. While mistakes happen, failure to use widely available tools to prevent those areas does raise concerns.

Finally, the story does not seem to have gotten widespread media attention. Outside of a handful of conservative websites, few seem to be interested in it.

It is unclear whether this is due to plagiarism fatigue following the deluge of scandals earlier this year or the weakness of the allegations.

Still, it’s impressive that a congressman involved in a heated primary battle faces recent allegations of plagiarism with minimal coverage.

Bottom Line

While there’s no such thing as good plagiarism, the allegations here don’t point to a significant plagiarism problem. The report doesn’t list what percentage of the dissertation is allegedly plagiarized, likely because it’s a very low amount.

If you couple that with the nature of the plagiarism itself, the allegations point to sloppy writing and not deliberate academic fraud.

That said, as I often say in these cases, the school does need to investigate further. If these are the only issues, then only a mild correction is in order. If there are other issues, then a more robust response is necessary. However, we can’t know that without a thorough and independent investigation.

Ultimately, this is another example of the weaponization of plagiarism. The author’s goals aren’t to improve academic/research integrity but to harm Bowman’s reelection chances.

However, it seems like this will not significantly affect the outcome. Since Bowman’s degree is unlikely to be revoked or any severe action will be taken, this probably won’t move primary voters to switch their votes.

Instead, it will likely be another footnote in plagiarism’s and Bowman’s history.