Is CJ Werleman A Plagiarist?

Image Taken From https://www.facebook.com/pages/CJ-Werleman/207324500344 Update: 22/10/2014 – Soon after publishing this article on 17/10/2014, the charges of plagiarism contained within were confirmed to be accurate, revealing CJ Werleman to be a serial plagiarist. As a result, many new developments have occurred - including the discovery of 14 additional instances of plagiarism and a number of Werleman's publishing outlets taking action against him. I have now added additional footnotes to highlight these developments. I recently documented a number of concerns regarding the unpleasant behaviour of 'Author' and 'Social Commentator' CJ Werleman in my article: 'CJ Werleman: Misrepresentation, Dubious Ethics and Unoriginal Hackery’. Expressed within that article and reproduced below are my thoughts on some of Werleman's published writing:

'[Werleman] is simply regurgitating past hack jobs and slapping sensationalist headlines on them'

'...you’ve already heard this elsewhere, many times before, many years ago.'

'Also, what he has cobbled together in his attack on Harris has already been written by others many years ago'

I attributed his imitative output to an absence of original thought rather than something altogether more cynical. But it’s now possible my feeling of ‘having read this all before’ was a symptom of literally having read some of this before. The above article mentions Dr. Peter Boghossian (@PeterBoghossian), which subsequently prompted a conversation between us. During our conversation, Dr. Boghossian called attention to some things he'd identified in CJ Werleman's writing that I hadn’t previously considered, and so I decided to conduct an independent investigation to determine whether or not CJ Werleman is guilty of actual plagiarism. (Parts of Dr. Boghossian’s letter have been reprinted here with his permission.) I'm not an Investigative Journalist or academic, so knowing how and where to begin was a problem. Then I quickly remembered Google exists. I lifted choice sections from some of the articles Werleman published on prominent platforms such as Salon and Alternet. I paid specific attention to paragraphs containing information that would usually require a certain level of knowledge and diligence on the part of the author. My findings raise some serious questions. I shall provide examples below. The following examples assume all of the dates and names stated on these articles are accurate: Take this article from Fareed Zakaria: 'America’s educational failings' from The Washington Post dated May 1st 2014 and the following passage:

"The United States had a wide gap between its best performers and worst performers... And it had the widest gap in scores between people with rich, educated parents and poor, undereducated parents."

And then compare it with this from Werleman's article published days later at Salon and Alternet:

"The United States has a wide gap between its best performers and its worst performers. And it had the widest gap in scores between people with rich, educated parents and poor, undereducated parents...."

There is no indication that this isn't Werleman's original writing or any citation given. Take some extracts from this article: 'The Prison-Industrial Complex and the Global Economy' by Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans from 2001:

'… the prison/industrial complex is an interweaving of private business and government interests. Its twofold purpose is profit and social control. Its public rationale is the fight against crime.

... Violence occurs in less than 14% of all reported crime, and injuries occur in just 3%….Violent crimes like murder, rape, manslaughter and kidnaping don't even make the top ten.'

Then compare it with this extract from Werleman's article in Salon dated Aug 2014:

'The prison industrial complex is an interweaving of business and government interests. It serves to feed two private purposes: profit and social control. Its publicly stated goals are a little more Orwellian: “to fight crime and keep violent criminals off our streets.” But the latter is a self-serving lie. Violence occurs in less than 14 percent of reported crime, and injuries occur in less than 3 percent. In fact, violent crimes don’t even occur in the top 10 reasons for incarceration.'

There is no indication that this isn't Werleman's original writing or any citation given. Take an extract from this article: 'In Public Education, Edge Still Goes to Rich' from Nov 2013 By Eduardo Porter:

'The United States is one of few advanced nations where schools serving better-off children usually have more educational resources than those serving poor students, according to research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Among the 34 O.E.C.D. nations, only in the United States, Israel and Turkey do disadvantaged schools have lower teacher/student ratios than in those serving more privileged students.'

Then compare it with this extract from Werleman's article on Alternet dated June 2014:

'Among OECD nations, America remains an outlier, one of the few advanced nations where schools serving better-off children are afforded more funding than those serving poor students. Among the 34 OECD nations, only in the United States, Israel and Turkey do disadvantaged schools have lower teacher/student ratios than in those serving more privileged students'

There is no indication that this isn't Werleman's original writing or any citation given. Take part of an interview with Robert Pape from the article 'In God’s Name? Evaluating the Links between Religious Extremism and Terrorism' from Oct 2005:

"Instead, what more than 95 percent of all suicide terrorist attacks since 1980 have in common is not religion, but a specific secular goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Chechnya to Kashmir to Sri Lanka to the West Bank, every suicide terrorist campaign since 1980 has had as its main objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw combat forces from territory that the terrorists prize."

Then compare it with this extract from Werleman's article 'Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and atheists’ ugly Islamophobia' on Salon:

"More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks have a strategic goal in common—to compel an occupying force to withdraw from territory the terrorists prize. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to the West Bank to Chechnya, the central goal of every suicide terrorist campaign has been to resist military occupation by a democracy."

Werleman's article does discuss Pape's actual research, but gives no indication that the above passage isn't Werleman's own original writing. There is also this line from Why Men Love War  by William Broyles Jr. in Esquire, November 1984 (also reprinted in May 2014 as part of a retrospective):

"There is a reason for every war and a war for every reason."

The line is also used in the first paragraph of Werleman's article: Why Do We Lust for War? On Alternet:

"There is a reason for every war and a war for every reason."

There is no indication that this isn't Werleman's original writing or any citation given.

In Boghossian's correspondence with me, he notices an issue of tense regarding the reference to Khomeini in Werleman's article 'We are ISIS':

"Iran has broad ambitions to spread its influence over the whole Middle East. But excluding pockets of support in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq - the Middle East remains a hostile world for the predominantly Shiite Iranians, which is why Ayatollah Khomeini’s strategy has always been that Iran must be more Arab than the Arabs. Iran’s posturing against Israel is nothing more than Khomeini’s tactic to win Arab hearts and minds."

As noted by Boghossian, Werleman must actually mean Ayatollah Khamenei as Khomeini died in 1989.  Werleman's words appear to be lifted from the book The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat By Vali Nasr (view section here). The relevant line reads:

"Khomeini's strategy had always been that Iran had to be more Arab than the Arabs…"

It seems Werleman has changed the tense, but the fact he is now talking about a dead man as though he were alive appears to have gone unnoticed.

There is no indication that this isn't Werleman's original writing or any citation given.

There are many more examples[1. Whilst reporting on my observations over on his blog, Michael Luciano appears to have discovered an additional 14 instances of potential plagiarism], but the ones provided here seem adequately revealing. I’m not lettered in journalistic ethics, but as a former student I know academic institutions take acts of plagiarism very, very seriously. Consider this taken from the University Of Oxford’s guidelines: ‘Intentional or reckless plagiarism may incur severe penalties, including failure of your degree or expulsion from the university’. I would be incredibly surprised to learn that award-winning news platforms such as Salon and Alternet don't require their contributors to adhere to a similar code of ethics. Perhaps Werleman has personally sought and received permission from all of the sources he's ‘borrowed’ from. However, if that is the case, failing to clearly indicate, cite or quote this — yet publishing solely under his own name — is an unacceptable exercise in deceiving readers while overstating his proficiency. Needless to say, I’d like Werleman[2. Werlman eventually released an ‘apology’ via his Facebook page which is nothing more than excuse making exercise whilst playing the victim.  You can read my thoughts on that here], Salon[3. Salon have noted this plagiarism on their corrections page: 'Four of contributor CJ Werleman’s stories for Salon, three of which were originally published by our partner site, AlterNet, have been discovered to contain passages that were either improperly sourced or plagiarized. In the interest of transparency, we have emboldened the sections of these articles in question and included hyperlinks to the original source material. Salon deeply regrets the oversight'.  I’d submit this isn’t an appropriate response to serial plagiarism and would support calls for further action from Salon], Middle East Eye[6. It seems Middle East Eye are standing by Werleman and continue to publish his work.  This speaks to their integrity as a news platform], Alternet[4. Alternet have taken a strong professional stance on this and have removed all of Werleman’s articles whilst releasing a statement here] and others[5. The Secular Global Institute appears to have removed Werleman’s profile from their page], to clear up these concerns with some convincing answers. Update 22/10/2014: Werleman felt the appropriate response to accusations of plagiarism was to accuse Sam Harris of plagiarising too.  Sam Harris has provided a devastating rebuttal to these accusations here. You can listen to The Godless Spellchecker Podcast here, and support it by becoming a patron here.