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Plagiarism hunter Weber gets involved in the US election campaign

Plagiarism hunter Weber wants to expose Kamala Harris.

(Bild: APA/AFP/DUSTIN FRANZ)

The highly controversial plagiarism hunter Stefan Weber is getting involved in the US election campaign in the hot phase. He accuses the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris of having copied from other authors in a book from 2009. For Donald Trump's election campaign team, the accusations are a real feast for the eyes - even if there is actually very little to them.

The communication scientist and publicist from Salzburg has repeatedly made a name for himself by checking the academic work of public figures for plagiarism and publicly beating the drum about any infringements.

Sources not named in non-fiction book
Now another of his expert opinions is circulating on social media: this time, however, it does not concern someone from a German-speaking country, as is usually the case. As he describes on the platform X (formerly Twitter), he has discovered at least five passages in the book "Smart on Crime" that the author and current presidential candidate Kamala Harris may have copied from other works - without naming the source.

He repeatedly accuses the Democrat of "self-plagiarism", as she also quotes from her own speeches or articles. However, this is a common practice in the USA - Donald Trump also repeatedly repeats various standing sentences verbatim in his interviews and speeches.

Passages from Wikipedia and from the news agency
Passages are said to have been taken almost verbatim from Wikipedia, but also from sections of text from an Associated Press article or a press release from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. On his website, Weber lists in a side-by-side comparison which passages he considers to be suspicious - he discovered a total of 27 plagiarized passages on the 248 pages of the book.

The self-proclaimed plagiarism hunter

In German-speaking countries, the self-proclaimed plagiarism hunter has recently had to put up with a lot of criticism. While he caused the resignation of former Austrian People's Party Minister Christina Aschbacher ("Assumptions are like barnacles") and ex-EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn to come under fire with his expert opinions on scientific papers, he has recently fallen into disrepute again and again due to questionable accusations.

For example, a right-wing populist media outlet commissioned him to investigate journalist Alexandra Föderl-Schmid's handling of sources and ultimately stylized his findings into a scandal - of which nothing remained. It was not until June 2024 that Weber was convicted of defamation in a trial with the rector of Klagenfurt University, and his accusation of deception against Minister Alma Zadic also turned out to be false.

Republicans are grasping at straws
The accusation is now causing a discreet rumbling in the USA for the time being. "Kamala didn't even write her own book," immediately mocked Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, referring to Weber's report. The study was also well received by extreme right-wing US media, such as Breitbart News.

But what is the truth of the allegations? "Smart on Crime" was written in the run-up to Harris' campaign for the office of California Attorney General. The book's description states that it "presents practical solutions to make the criminal justice system really - not just rhetorically - tough."

How serious are the accusations?
Indeed, Weber's findings appear justified at first glance. In some cases, sources are only mentioned once in the book, but then cited again without reference. If Harris had her work - which she had ghostwritten by Joan O'C. Hamilton - as a scientific work, this, along with others, would be a clear violation.

However, "Smart on Crime" is a non-fiction book, for which far lower standards apply, as the texts are normally prepared for laypeople in such a way that they are fluent and easy to understand. If the sources were to be constantly referenced here in the style of a scientific work, the flow of reading could be considerably disrupted.

Plagiarism expert only moderately upset
The editor of the specialist blog "Plagiarism Today" comes to the same conclusion. He describes the accusations of the self-proclaimed plagiarism hunter to the "New York Times" as "not serious". The number of misconduct cases also "indicates to me errors, not the intention to cheat", the expert clarifies.

The report is therefore unlikely to have any real impact on the US elections. And Weber doesn't seem to be entirely sure about the scope of his accusations either: "What does that say about Kamala Harris? (...) I have no idea," he writes as a conclusion on his website.