Many on Campuses Disdain Historian's Practice

By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

HILADELPHIA, Jan. 14 — After accusations first surfaced that the author Stephen E. Ambrose had copied passages of Prof. Thomas Childers's book on World War II aviators, Professor Childers surprised colleagues and students at the University of Pennsylvania by saying he would continue to use Mr. Ambrose's books in his classes.

But as it became apparent that Mr. Ambrose had failed to attribute language from other people's work in his latest book, "The Wild Blue," Professor Childers stood before his packed lecture class on World War II and announced he would cease using the popular historian's books.

The revelations about Mr. Ambrose's book are fueling a debate on several campuses over whether universities should continue to assign works by scholars who have been accused of appropriating someone else's work. The discussion is lively at Penn, where similarities between passages in Mr. Ambrose's best seller and Professor Childers's 1995 account of his uncle's aviation crew, "Wings of Morning," tripped the first disclosures over Mr. Ambrose's prose. But it also extends to the University of Virginia, where some professors are pondering whether to use Mr. Ambrose's work amid an unfolding plagiarism scandal that has led to the expulsion of 17 students over the last year. While professors appear somewhat divided in their reactions, students at this urban Ivy League campus appeared to favor dropping Mr. Ambrose's work. They note that Penn, like most other universities, has strict rules against cheating and plagiarism, forbidding students from using published materials without thorough attribution. They said there should not be a double standard.

"They're telling us not to plagiarize," Sumit Walia, a sophomore majoring in economics, said on his way to class this morning. "But what kind of message does it send if they accept it at the very highest levels?"

Ray Groller, a sophomore chemistry major, also opposed using Mr. Ambrose's books, a debate that has played out in the student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian.

"Teachers are supposed to be role models in students lives," Mr. Groller said. "They should try to lead by example."

He said he had found himself tempted "lots of times" to appropriate quotations he had come across and pass them off as his own. "But the thought of the consequences kept me from doing it," he said.

Still, there is a great deal of disagreement. At Virginia, Kenneth W. Thompson, a history professor, said he would continue to assign Mr. Ambrose's "Rise to Globalism" in his course on American foreign policy.

"If we discontinued books that I at least have used because of some evidence of human fallibility, I'd run out of books tomorrow," Professor Thompson said. "This is an imperfect world with people who do make mistakes."

While Mr. Ambrose's scholarly works, including biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon, are mainstays of college reading lists, his more recent works appear on them less frequently.

Mr. Ambrose did not respond to a request for comment, but he has told The New York Times that he did not consider his mistake to be plagiarism. He said that if he came across passages from another author that fit the story he was telling, he would drop the passages into his text and credit the book in footnotes. Most scholars concur that such extended passages require the use of quotation marks. Mr. Ambrose has apologized for his technique.

Among academics, Mr. Ambrose's popularity had provoked soul searching and no small measure of envy. History professors on Internet chat groups wondered what the success of Mr. Ambrose and other popular historians said about their own failure to write readable books.

"The reason why historians tend to get envious — and there's lots of Schadenfreude about Stephen Ambrose — is that we don't tell good stories," said David Carlton, a history professor at Vanderbilt University who had participated in a chat session.

Also mentioned in the broader campus discussions about professional integrity is Joseph J. Ellis, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning book "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation." Professor Ellis was suspended from teaching at Mount Holyoke College after admitting that in classroom talks he had falsely claimed to have served in Vietnam. But his scholarship has not been questioned, and there has been no movement to drop his books in college courses.

Professor Carlton said historians had misgivings about the trade-offs they suspected Mr. Ambrose and other popular writers of making, and he noted that Mr. Ellis, for one, "got in trouble for turning that storytelling technique to his own life."

"What Ambrose did is something I could haul students before the honor council for," Professor Carlton said. "And I actually have students who have trouble understanding why they should be hauled before the honor council for doing something like that."

Professor Childers said that while he initially praised Mr. Ambrose's swift apology, his feelings changed when he read the author's description of his method. It was not just a matter of using quotation marks, the professor said, but of toiling to write a good passage rather than appropriating one.

"I just can't conceive of that," Professor Childers said in his office, after reading Mr. Ambrose's comments aloud. "It doesn't take so much effort. Find the words. Write it yourself."