Best-selling author and popular historian Stephen Ambrose has posted a public apology on his Web site in response to recent allegations of plagiarism.
Last month, Ambrose admitted to using phrases and passages in his latest book The Wild Blue that were nearly identical to passages in Penn History Professor Thomas Childers' 1995 Wings of Morning. Both books document the story of a World War II B-24 bomber crew.
And since then, critics have alleged that Ambrose lifted the words of other writers in additional works.
Although Ambrose footnoted the scrutinized passages, he neglected to quote them directly. Previously, he attempted to explain the alleged plagiarism by claiming that quotation marks would have disrupted the flow of his storytelling.
But now, in his online statement, Ambrose has put his public apology in writing.
Ambrose promised in the statement that he would correct the attributional errors in future printings of the scrutinized works.
"Recently I have been criticized for improperly attributing other author's writings in a few of my books," Ambrose wrote. "In each case, I footnoted the passage in question, but failed to put some words and sentences into quotation marks. I am sorry for those omissions and will make relevant changes in all future editions of my books."
In light of the controversy in which Ambrose was embroiled, Childers said he is not surprised at the apology.
"It's what he has to do," Childers said. "Fixing [the errors] is the minimum... the less he says at this stage, the better, and he knows that."
Childers said that Ambrose sent him a short personal letter asking for Childers' approval on the projected citational changes. Childers said that he has not yet responded to the letter, and he declined to comment further on the letter's content.
Directly below the online statement on his Web site, Ambrose posted a letter from former presidential candidate George McGovern in which the World War II veteran expressed support for his "longtime friend" and a "patriot who has donated millions of dollars to environmental and educational causes."
"Like the rest of us, he's not beyond an occasional mistake," he wrote.
"For example, his biography of Richard M. Nixon concluded that he deserved re-election in 1972. In my biased judgment, that was a more serious mistake than using a few sentences without attribution on what the ball turret of a B-24 looks like," the letter read.
However, not everyone regards Ambrose's violations of citation rules as mere oversights. In fact, Penn History Professor Alan Kors said he does not view the written statement as an adequate acknowledgement of fault.
"These were not omissions, they were choices," Kors said. "This was not a sin of omission, but a sin of commission.
"He should apologize for his moral error," Kors added, claiming that the statement "seems like no apology at all."
And the apology may not be enough for Childers, either, who said that Ambrose's recent statement will not change his decision to keep Ambrose's work off of syllabi for his future classes.
"I'm disinclined to use it, even after this," Childers said. "I don't think he'll miss it in his sales.
"I'd like to use lesser-known authors who can use the exposure," he added.
