The issue is hardly confined to the Harvard faculty: Researchers have been blamed in other recent high-profile cases of academic fraud. Roger Shepherd, a former professor at the New School in New York, attributed apparent plagiarism in a 2002 book to a researcher who allegedly inserted verbatim material from another professor’s book; material that Shepherd subsequently forgot to rewrite. Historian Stephen Ambrose was found to have extensively plagiarized one of his books, Wild Blue; the prolific author relied on his five children for research aid. Doris Kearns Goodwin, then a Harvard overseer, was found to have inadvertently plagiarized from numerous other works in her 1987 book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. And, of course, 2006 saw the much-publicized Kaavya Viswanathan episode, in which the Harvard sophomore with a lucrative book contract was found to have plagiarized her novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.

Still, the blurring of authorial lines might be a particular problem for Harvard’s faculty. Harvard professors are, in theory, held to a high standard, but they also have more tempting opportunities for lucrative, popular writing than professors at lesser-known institutions. (And, frequently, larger budgets with which to pay researchers.) The cult of celebrity that Harvard’s high-profile professors often cultivate requires a production line of unnamed accomplices who help maintain the professor’s prolific output—and status as an intellectual star.

“Harvard bears a certain amount of responsibility over and above everybody else,” says Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, who has written about plagiarism on his blog. “Harvard sets the tone for the university world. When you get people at Harvard doing these kinds of things, it sets a horrendous example for other people.”

Former Dean of the College Harry Lewis calls this trend the “atelier phenomenon,” likening it to Renaissance painters whose assistants could mimic their style and thus permit the named artists to increase their output—and profit. “The celebrity professor is a new phenomenon and not a good one,” says Lewis. In celebrity-driven academia, “getting ahead … means beating other people, which means establishing a personal reputation and denying it, to the extent possible, to rivals and even to assistants.

“This surely is not healthy,” Lewis says. “We are supposed to be in the business of creating the future for our students, not using our students as labor to bolster our status in the world.”

Beyond its obvious practical consequences, such as incidents of plagiarism, the research-assistant-driven culture raises questions about the core of the academic enterprise. Outsourced work is partly a response to time constraints; it allows a professor to both produce more—more books, more op-eds—and have more time for non-research work, such as appearing on television, taking on pro bono legal cases, and starting research centers. With such aims, a professor is often pursuing fundamentally different goals than the pursuit of knowledge: The frequent publication of quickly written popular books generally has more to do with the pursuit of fame and material success. Publish the book, land on TV, sign up with a speaker’s bureau for five figures a speech, maybe even get appointed to corporate and charitable boards. Suddenly, your income in the low six figures can double or triple.

A scholarly process thus devalued—emphasizing quantity and sales, not integrity and originality—must change the university’s character. Observers of the ivory tower over the past few decades have consistently remarked on a trend toward corporate values, such as the pressure to monetize scientific research and the use of public relations tactics to buff a university’s public image. Corporatization is equally visible in some professors’ attempts to “brand” themselves—not just by publishing popular books, but by choosing opportunities based on how much exposure they will generate.

Nobody epitomizes the fame obtainable by a professor more than Alan Dershowitz. The Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School racked up 5,778 media mentions between 1995 and 2000, making him the 12th-most-mentioned among both the living and dead, according to Richard Posner’s critical look at the production of popular work by academics, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. (If anything, his visibility has only increased since then.) Dershowitz has published 12 books since 2000, of which only two were for university presses. Last year, he also wrote 13 op-eds and one law review article. He’s big on the speaking circuit and also finds the time to take on high-profile criminal and civil cases, such as that of Harvard donor Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire financier charged with soliciting prostitution. Dershowitz blogs for the Huffington Post, and he also repackages his own work; Blasphemy: How the Religious Right Is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence, released this year, is his 2003 book America Declares Independence almost verbatim, with a few new chapters tacked on.

Those who work with Dershowitz say he does his own writing—by hand, apparently to protect himself from allegations of plagiarism. That didn’t stop former DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein and Nation writer Alexander Cockburn from accusing Dershowitz of plagiarism in his book, The Case for Israel, an accusation Dershowitz has vehemently denied.

Dershowitz is, however, notorious on the law school campus for his use of researchers. (The law school itself is particularly known for this practice, probably because lawyers are used to having paralegals and clerks who do significant research and writing; students familiar with several law school professors’ writing processes say that Dershowitz reflects the norm in principle, if to a greater degree in practice.)

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