Just within the last 24 hours, accusations of plagiarism against Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University’s Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies and Literature, have appeared on the net. The accusations seem first to have appeared yesterday in “Rashid Khalidi ... A Case of Plagiarism?” on Solomonia.com, a pseudonymous blog. It appears obvious from the blog post that a third party is using the blogger to surface the charges and evidence. They have subsequently been picked up in Lee Kaplan’s “Rashid Khalidi: Plagiarist?” Front Page Rag, 9 June, which is urging readers to contact Austin Quigley, Dean of the Faculty at Columbia College. Undoubtedly, he is now being inundated with calls and e-mail.
I’ve not yet had time to evaluate the evidence that is offered. Simply because the charges have been picked up by Front Page Rag does not mean that they are false. On the other hand, Kaplan needs to learn that two secondary accounts’ inclusion of the same quotation of a primary source does not constitute plagiarism. Above all, Professor Khalidi is innocent unless or until he is adjudged otherwise by his peers.
Update: After examining the evidence presented at Solomonia.com, I believe that: 1) the author of “Jerusalem: A Concise History” crossed the line of acceptable paraphrase from Kamil Jamil el Asali, “Jerusalem in History: Notes on the Origins of the City and Its Traditions of Tolerance,” Arab Studies Quarterly, XVI (Fall 1994); and 2) the implicit evidence of a crude cover-up, as indicated by this ascription of authorship compared with the Wayback Machine’s recovery of prior ascription, is additionally damaging.
