Patrick deHahn

USA TODAY

President-elect Donald Trump's pick of conservative pundit Monica Crowley to fill the senior communications officer role at the National Security Council is turning out to be controversial -- not because of her views, but because she has a history of plagiarism, even going back to her Ph.D. dissertation.

Crowley submitted her international relations dissertation on China policy at Columbia University, of which Politico Magazine found several cases of plagiarism in her 2000 academic Ph.D. paper, with weak or missing attribution.

"An examination of the dissertation and the sources it cites identified more than a dozen sections of text that have been lifted, with little to no changes, from other scholarly works without proper attribution," Politico reported. "In some instances, Crowley footnoted her source but did not identify with quotation marks the text she was copying directly. In other instances, she copied text or heavily paraphrased with no attribution at all."

The examples Politico provide seem to violate Columbia's definition of plagiarism.

Columbia defines plagiarism as including "buying, stealing, borrowing, or otherwise obtaining all or part of a paper (including obtaining or posting a paper online); hiring someone to write a paper; copying from or paraphrasing another source without proper citation or falsification of citations; and building on the ideas of another without citation." The university advises graduate students to take special care to avoid plagiarism:

"Graduate students are responsible for proper citation and paraphrasing, and must also take special care to avoid even accidental plagiarism. The best strategy is to use great caution in the handling of ideas and prose passages: take notes carefully and clearly mark words and ideas not one’s own. When in doubt, consult your professor. Failure to observe these rules of conduct will result in serious academic consequences, which can include dismissal from the university."

USA TODAY College reached out to Columbia for comment on the Crowley case. In response, Robert Hornsby, associate vice president for media relations at Columbia, e-mailed this statement:

“We have no comment on Monica Crowley’s dissertation, which was submitted in 2000 and is publicly available. The University's process for addressing concerns raised about University research preserves the confidentiality of any review, and even the fact of a review’s existence is confidential while it is underway. Columbia is committed to upholding the very highest standards of integrity and credibility in academic research.”

And Crowley's apparent plagiarism problems didn't end in college, it seems. Crowley also was found to have plagiarized up to 50 times, according to CNN, in her 2012 book What The (Bleep) Just Happened. Wikipedia was one uncredited source in the published book, -- with no notes on sources or bibliography.

Others found plagiarism in a column she wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

The Trump administration stands behind their choice of Crowley, despite the contradiction of plagiarism and communications at a national level. The role does not need Senate confirmation.

Team Trump said anyone making allegations against Crowley is just playing politics:

"Monica’s exceptional insight and thoughtful work on how to turn this country around is exactly why she will be serving in the Administration. Any attempt to discredit Monica is nothing more than a politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country."

But plagiarism troubles aren't new for Team Trump. Most famously, Melania Trump's Republican National Convention speech last summer included passages apparently lifted from Michelle Obama's speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

At first, the Trump campaign denied that Mrs. Trump had plagiarized part of her speech, but later admitted it.

Related: Melania Trump's speech "classic definition of plagiarism," professor says

No word yet from Crowley herself.

Plagiarism seems to be the scandal du jour. It's even hit the president of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, who apparently plagiarized from two former U.S. presidents: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Does knowing that a high-level staffer in the incoming president's administration affect your thinking about plagiarism?

We definitely don't recommend trying it on your professors.

#truth



This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.