https://spicyip.com/2015/05/whose-dream-was-it-anyway-plagiarism-and-martin-luther-king-jr.html
King’s academic career contains a well-documented litany of plagiarism, and has been the subject of much literature. His most egregious breach of the academic code of conduct was in his doctoral thesis at Boston University, found to be identical in several respects to a dissertation submitted to the same university earlier by another student named Jack Boozer. In fact, some authors have even characterised King’s conduct as piracy (paywall). King’s plagiarism was later acknowledged by the University, but his doctorate was never revoked because his thesis still made “an intelligent contribution to scholarship”. Such an assessment appears extremely suspect – the evidence on record points to King’s thesis being neither ground-breaking in its approach nor creative in its substantiation. In fact, Ralph Luker, who conducted extensive research for the Martin Luther King Papers Project, posits that King’s academic success relied, in large part, on his habit of distilling the views of authorities in the subject and submitting them to the professors who held these authorities in high esteem. If this is true, then it’s very hard to justify the University’s decision – is there a clause in their plagiarism policy that says “None of this applies if you become a cultural icon”?
