Gripla - 20.12.2005, Page 265

ON PLAGIARISM 263
AN ADDITIONAL NOTE ON PLAGIARISM
MY NOTE on plagiarism was written in October 2005, and was to be published
within the end of that year. I see no reason to withdraw it, after reading the
letter of April 11, 2006, on the vote of the Administrative Board of Harvard’s
GSAS, on my charge of the plagiarism of the Harvard Ph.D. Árni Heimir Ing-
ólfsson.
My BA-thesis in history, from 1997, is not and never was in the public
domain. Árni Heimir Ingólfsson gave me a photocopy of an article on the
Buchanan psalter by Widmann, an article I knew about, listed in the New
Grove Dictionary of Music. For the sake of clarity this was on January 13,
2001, and at the time I was grateful for his support. Njáll Sigur›sson has not,
to my knowledge, published anything on the Buchanan psalter prior to my
BA-thesis.
The decision of the Administrative Board was based on a document by
three anonymous persons, called “Investigative Subcommittee.” The big
words and strong opinions of this document (11/2 page in letter-format), not
supported with any references or examples, imply that these persons regard
themselves of some authority. However they do not in their decision display
any familiarity with the unpublished Icelandic manuscripts I use in my thesis,
nor any of the other sources that are widely spread and hard to find. The Sub-
committee’s opinion is based on documentation concealed to me. The
letter of January 28, 2005, from the rector of the University of Iceland to the
president of Harvard, with the report by professor Gu›mundur Hálfdanarson,
seems to have been ignored by the Administrative Board. My repeated
formal complaints to Harvard since January 13, 2003, until the Ph.D. disserta-
tion’s acceptance, are ignored. It is ignored that Ingólfsson was given the
opportunity, by Harvard University, to change his dissertation, prior to
acceptance, by removing 28 references to my BA-thesis, without removing
the corresponding material. This included a table which was dissolved and
placed in a footnote. A statement in the document by the “Investigative Sub-
committee” can certainly be said to speak for itself: “Intellectual cross-fertil-
ization was entirely possible since the two authors were once classmates and
friends, and even attended the same musically related events.” A rather curi-
ous statement from an Ivy League University, in the context of plagiarism.
Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson