Working with Integrity
What Is Academic Integrity?
The Harvard College Honor Code
Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to producing academic work of integrity – that is, work that adheres to the scholarly and intellectual standards of accurate attribution of sources, appropriate collection and use of data, and transparent acknowledgement of the contribution of others to their ideas, discoveries, interpretations, and conclusions. Cheating on exams or problem sets, plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs.
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"Learning how to learn is something you're going to carry with you...if you cheat yourself of that, you come away with a much, much weaker, thinner education." - Prof. Steven Levitsky
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Do the Exercise
Goal
In this exercise, you have two goals: to identify common types of plagiarism, and to develop strategies for avoiding them in your own writing and research.
Avoiding Plagiarism
What to Do:
- Prepare by reading “Avoiding Plagiarism” at the Harvard Guide to Using Sources website, where you will learn what constitutes plagiarism and why it matters as well as how to identify and avoid common types of plagiarism.
- Read the two source texts below.
- Choose one of the scenarios below the source texts. Each scenario presents a short sample of student writing based on the two source texts.
- Now identify the type of plagiarism presented in the scenario you have chosen. For an overview of common types of plagiarism, revisit “What Constitutes Plagiarism?” at the Harvard Guide to Using Sources.
- Reflect on what strategies would help a writer avoid the type of plagiarism you have identified in this scenario. For a list of guidelines for conducting research responsibly, revisit “How to Avoid Plagiarism” at the Harvard Guide to Using Sources.
Please note that these forms are not monitored; no feedback will be sent at this time.
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Source Text 1
The evolution in King’s thought concerning nonviolent action has gone largely unacknowledged by those who have written about him. This shift from nonviolent persuasion to a more aggressive nonviolent coercion was based upon a very shrewd and wholly accurate understanding of the dynamics of protest and of what would most aid the movement in its attempt to secure the enactment of a new federal voting rights law. King accurately believed that nothing could be more effective in activating support among the national audience for the movement and its goal of equal suffrage than scenes of peaceful demonstrators, seeking their birthright as American citizens, being violently attacked by southern whites. Not only would such attacks draw substantial news coverage, but the perceptions of rank injustice stemming from such scenes would be the most effective stimulus of all in appealing to the values and norms of the American people and their political leaders in Washington.
-- Garrow, David. Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. 223.
Source Text 2
A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.
-- King, Martin Luther. Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010 [1958]. 92.
In his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King’s vision of nonviolent direct action underwent a subtle but significant change. This shift from nonviolent persuasion to a more aggressive nonviolent coercion was based upon a very shrewd and wholly accurate understanding of the dynamics of protest and of what would most aid the movement in its attempt to secure the enactment of a new federal voting rights law. King’s espousal of nonviolent protests was deviated from his earlier philosophy of nonviolence in several significant ways….
Historian David J. Garrow describes King’s later understanding of the purpose of nonviolent protest as a tool to create dramatic confrontations with segregationists, eliciting a violent response from opponents in order to gain sympathetic media attention and thus also the support of the public in other regions of the country.[1] In contrast, King had initially viewed nonviolent action as a form of persuasion.
Nonviolent resistance seeks to persuade the opponent by rejecting not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. Nonviolent protest is grounded in love for all of humanity and a refusal to respond to hate with more hate. Only by responding to hate with love can the cycle of violence and hatred be broken. By 1963, however, King’s understanding of nonviolence did not conform to this ideal.
[1] David J. Garrow, Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 223.
King believed that nonviolent resisters needed to shun not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. He explained that to be a nonviolent resister a person had to not only refuse to shoot his opponent but also refuse to hate him. For King, refusing to hate your opponent was central to his vision of nonviolence. He felt that if oppressed people gave in to the temptation of becoming bitter and met hatred with more hatred, the chain of hate would never end.[1]
[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010 [1958]), 92.
Most historians do not recognize that King’s understanding of nonviolent protest changed notably over the course of his career. While initially King hoped to persuade segregationists to support integration and voting rights with the use of peaceful protests, he later gave up on this goal. Instead, he sought to force these changes upon the South by strategically creating dramatic confrontations that elicited violent responses by opponents that were captured by the national media, gaining the sympathy of public opinion.
One historian argues that King’s perception of the purpose and meaning of peaceful protests underwent a transformation “from nonviolent persuasion to a more aggressive nonviolent coercion” and that this latter understanding reflected “a very shrewd and wholly accurate understanding of the dynamics of protest.” By 1963, King’s articulation of his philosophy of nonviolence in fact reflected this latter, more realistic understanding of the potential of direct action to combat segregation and inequality.
Tips
Forming Study Groups: How to Read with Integrity
In study groups you can get together with other students to debate the meanings, merits, and limitations of the readings assigned in class. Students often report that working with their peers in study groups is a foundational college experience. We remind you, however, that study groups are not a substitute for grappling with the assigned readings on your own.
In the video on this page Professor Levitsky gives a couple reasons why assigning each person in a study group to do one or two readings and then pooling notes is “cheating yourself.” But is this a matter of academic integrity? It can be. If you rely on other people to distill the content of readings for you without first trying to do so on your own, you run the risk of later using the insights of others and claiming them as your own when you write papers or take exams. This is a bright line that should not be crossed.
Approaching Assignments: How/When to Brainstorm with Peers
Coming soon.
Entering the Scholarly Conversation: How to Identify and Cite Reliable Sources
Coming soon.
Incorporating Feedback: How to Credit the Input of Others
Coming soon.
Thinking More About Integrity: Real-Life Scenarios
Coming soon.