Conservative activist accuses Harris of plagiarizing passages in co-authored 2009 book

Vice President Kamala Harris has been accused by a conservative activist of plagiarizing passages in a book she co-authored more than a decade ago.

Vice President Kamala Harris has been accused by a conservative activist of plagiarizing passages in a book she co-authored more than a decade ago. Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, on Monday cited in an online post an analysis by so-called Austrian plagiarism hunter Stefan Weber, alleging Harris lifted “verbatim language” from uncited sources in “Smart on Crime,” which she co-wrote with Joan O’C. Hamilton. The book – published in 2009, the year before Harris was elected California attorney general – focuses on policy drawing from her experience prosecuting crimes that ranged from child sexual assault to homicide in Alameda County and San Francisco. Rufo, in his post, refers to six specific paragraphs from Harris’ roughly 200-page book. CNN reviewed several of the passages highlighted by Rufo and found that Harris and O’C. Hamilton failed to properly attribute language to sources. Plagiarized works include using someone else’s work without giving them proper and appropriate credit for their ideas and words. Even if the source of the information is cited, it is still considered plagiarism if the ideas are not paraphrased or quoted in the correct place, experts told CNN late last year. In one instance, Harris and O’C. Hamilton appear to have lifted some language from a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release without proper attribution. The book copies exact language and sections of the press release but fails to use quotation marks in several sentences, according to an analysis of the book and the press release.