Is That Legal?

I don't really see the issue here. If the point is that the three or four graduation speeches delivered at colleges twice a year (December, May) are derivative crap(hard to avoid that with 2,000+ institutions of higher education) then the point is proved. But if we are going to start pounding everybody who cribs material for speeches, especially for insignificant stuff like this, I think nobody will survive without a stained reputation. Should speeches be verbally footnoted? Is the fact that the speech was in text format yet still without scholarly footnotes the thing that set you off? Ordinarily, we do footnote texts for printed materials, but speeches generally aren't footnoted. What about newspapers that convert advocacy group press releases into articles, without attribution?

Throw me a bone here. I'm looking for the underlying principle that's causing you upset.

And where's the outrage about Cornel West plagiarizing (if that's what this is) Hegel?

Al:
Speeches are subject to the same general citation requirements as papers. Of course, you are not expected to read through a whole citation- Harvard Law Review, Title page, volume, date blah blah blah. You are expected, however, to give at least mininal attribution to any source that would have required a citation in print- "As Eric Muller argued in his book "Free to Die for Their Country"..." I took two public speaking courses in undergrad. and the professors were adamant that any use of a fact or idea from another source had to be acknowledged and cited in the speech.

That being said, what Le Beau did goes far beyond simply utilizing a fact or idea without attribution. Le Beau took the words of another's address verbatim, and passed these words off as his own. He utilized someone else's jokes and thoughts. This amounts to the blatant theft of another's creative content.

The appalling nature of this is magnified by the fact that Le Beau makes his living in a profession where one's status is to some extent defined by the inventiveness of his or her thoughts, and the ability to articulate these thoughts.

If you had any doubts about the vileness of his man's character, all you need to do is look at his reaction to recent events. When confronted with damning, overwhelming, incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing, Le Beau's first response was to issue a hilariously weak denial that barely made sense. This guy is a loser who does not deserve to teach or publish again.

West explicitly attributes the quote to Hegel.

Incidentally, if anyone knows the exact cite for Hegel's original, can they let me know? Sally wasn't sure, it's not in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and digging through the collected works of 19th century German Antisemites lacks a certain charm.

This brings up an interesting question. It does seem like taking down the speech at this point was a futile attempts to hide evidence, but surely it wouldn't be right just to leave a plagiarized work up where it might be read -- and quotes from it misattributed -- forever.

Should it have been left up until the controversy died down, and then removed? Should it have been left up permanently with a note that it had been plagiarized? with footnotes added? with relevant sections of the originals included for comparison? (This last would, I assume require copywright permission from West)

What if it had been published in a book -- say, a collection of commencement speeches? If the book ran into additional printings after the plagiarism was discovered, would there be a standard way of dealing with it?