A Penn Sociology professor has accused one of his colleagues of committing "conceptual plagiarism" in a scandal that has enveloped the department and generated buzz at universities across the country.
In an e-mail memo obtained by The Daily Pennsylvanian, professor emeritus Harold Bershady accused Sociology professor Kathryn Edin of stealing the "analytic scheme" of her new book from Elijah Anderson, another Penn faculty member in the same department.
Bershady said that Edin's book -- Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage, which she co-authored with St. Joseph's University sociology Maria Kefalas -- took many of its concepts from several works by Anderson. The problem, Bershady said in the memo, was that they gave him very little credit.
"I do not believe Edin and Kefalas have plagiarized Anderson's work in the literal sense of lifting sentences," Bershady wrote. "They have done something more subtle and more grievous. ... They have in effect committed a kind of conceptual plagiarism, taken Anderson's ideas and concepts and represented them as being their own."
Both Edin and Kefalas declined to comment on the memo. Anderson said he could not comment because he was bound by a confidentiality agreement after attending mediation sessions with Edin.
According to several members of the Sociology Department, Bershady sent the memo last Thursday to a listserv that included all Sociology faculty at Penn. He was prompted to do so, he wrote, because the sociology community had been buzzing with the controversy since Edin and Kefalas' book was published in May of this year.
In the memo, Bershady presented several examples of similarities between Promises I Can Keep and the chapters on sex and parenthood in two books by Anderson: 1999's Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City and 1990's Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community.
No complete sentences or paragraphs in Promises I Can Keep were taken from Anderson's work. Edin and Kefalas also cite Anderson's books in their bibliography, devoting three footnotes in the body of the text and four references to his work.
But according to Bershady, those citations were not enough. They "do not acknowledge any similarity or debt to the specifics of Anderson's approach, themes, issues or conclusions," Bershady wrote.
Sociology Department Chairman Paul Allison declined to comment on the memo. Representatives of the University of California Press -- which published Promises I Can Keep -- did not immediately return phone calls for comment.
Despite Bershady's accusations, not all sociology experts think there is a problem with Edin and Kefalas' work.
Several professors -- at Penn and at other prominent American universities -- who are familiar with both Promises I Can Keep and Anderson's books said the books' similar conclusions were a sign that the authors' research was accurate, not that Edin and Kefalas had plagiarized.
"This kind of controversy is actually pretty frequent," said Penn Sociology professor Randall Collins. "It pretty typically arises because several people are working in the same area and examining the same thing."
Collins added, "People, and particularly people's partisans, can build the [controversy] up, maybe more than the individuals involved in it themselves."
However, news of Bershady's accusations has reached universities around the country, and, according to his memo, was the talk of the American Sociological Association meeting in August.
Academics in the field are quickly dividing themselves into two camps: those who consider it plagiarism and those who do not.
"I think [Promises I Can Keep] is an original and valuable work," said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University who is familiar with both that book and Anderson's works. "I think [Edin] does terrific work, very original and groundbreaking."
Others agree with Bershady, saying that Edin and Kefalas owe Anderson more credit.
Promises I Can Keep "should have referenced professor Anderson's contributions more specifically," Bryn Mawr College sociologist Robert Washington said. "That's just part of the whole scholarly culture, that you have to acknowledge prior work."
Because the academic integrity of Edin and Kefalas' work is so ambiguous, it is not clear whether disciplinary action will be taken.
Though Bershady did not call for specific corrective steps, he urged a swift resolution to the issue.
"A dark cloud has been forming over the Sociology Department," Bershady wrote in the memo. "If not dispelled, [it] will, I fear, blacken the reputation of both the department and the University for years to come."
Sociology scandal - Sociology professor emeritus Harold Bershady accused professor Kathryn Edin and her co-author of stealing the 'analytic scheme' of their new book from professor Elijah Anderson. - Bershady wrote that Edin's under-citation of Anderson's research could 'blacken the reputation of the [Sociology] department and the University for years to come.'
