OK Wendy -- Come Clean! You've Damged Yourself Enough Re: The Smith/McElroy Dispute: An Insider's View

[Ephebos]

Vincent Cook wrote:
>
> [Jeff Riggenbach distributed to numerous libertarians the
> following letter concerning George Smith's charges of plagiarism
> against Wendy McElroy and threats of litigation made by McElroy's
> attorney, N. Stephan Kinsella, against those who are trying to raise
> the issue on the net. It is forwarded here with Jeff's permission.]
>
> I had intended to try to stay out of this dispute; up until now it
> had seemed to me useless to pour any more fuel on an already raging
> fire. But now that Wendy McElroy has taken the (for a supposed
> libertarian) contemptible and outrageous step of threatening to use
> state power to silence those who disagree with her or dare to
> criticize her, I feel I must demonstrate my refusal to be cowed or
> muzzled either by intellectual humbugs or by legal charlatans. If you
> feel it would be appropiate to disseminate the remarks that follow to
> a wider audience, please feel free to do so.
>
> I have known Wendy McElroy since 1970 or 1971 and have been close
> friends with George Smith since 1972. I am therefore, I think, in a
> position to evaluate the plausibility of certain of McElroy's key claims
> in her dispute with Smith.
>
> As you know, Smith has accused McElroy of plagiarizing his work in
> putting together her book _The Reasonable Woman_ (Prometheus 1998). He
> has produced extensive examples of passages copied verbatim from earlier
> published writings of his, from transcripts of tape-recorded classes he
> gave during the 1970s and 1980s in "The Fundamentals of Reasoning," and
> from printed material distributed in connection with those classes.
> McElroy maintains that these printed materials, the curriculum in the
> classes themselves, and, therefore, the published writings of Smith
> which were based on this material were all originally co-authored by
> her. According to McElroy, she was a full intellectal partner with Smith
> in developing the "Fundamentals of Reasoning" course. Therefore, she
> argues, she is as entitled as he is to make use of that material for her
> own purposes.
>
> I have reason to doubt this. I know that Smith originally developed his
> "Fundamentals of Reasoning" course during 1973 and 1974, when he was
> still living with his then-wife, Diane Hunter, a year or more before he
> even met McElroy. I know also that this course, and a series of lectures
> Smith sponsored at Larchmont Hall in Los Angeles during the mid-1970s,
> proved so successful that Smith was able to rent a suite of offices on
> Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and open the Forum for Philosophical
> Studies, where he embarked on an even more ambitious program of lectures
> and courses.
>
> As a lecturer and teacher at the Forum during 1977 and 1978, I know
> that when one approached the door of the office suite one was confronted
> with a sign that read: "George H. Smith -- Forum for Philosophical
> Studies" and "Wendy McElroy -- Personal Consultant." At this time
> McElroy was using one room in the suite to practice Reichian therapy, an
> enthusiasm she had picked up from Jack Willis, a Reichian therapist who
> was McElroy's last boyfriend before she met Smith. During this period,
> McElroy never gave any courses or lectures for the Forum. Her interests
> at this time seemed to revolve almost exclusively around Reichian
> psychology, poetry, and fiction. As far as I could tell from my frequent
> contacts with them -- at the Forum, at their home, at my home, and on
> frequent used book buying expeditions with Smith, their intellectual
> relationship was not one of equals and partners at all, but one of
> teacher (Smith) and pupil (McElroy). It is my impression that Smith
> taught McElroy most of what little she knows about philosophy (outside
> of the realm of aesthetics, which, interestingly, she has never chosen
> to write about) and also taught her, a person who had never published
> anything but poetry and a handful of mostly literary book reviews and
> short articles, how to write scholarly non-fiction.
>
> Under the circumstances, it is is difficult (for me, at least) to
> believe that McElroy was the co-author of all the "Fundamentals of
> Reasoning" curriculum, and the printed materials and subsequently
> published works by George H. Smith which were based upon it. The only
> evidence McElroy has produced for this far-fetched claim is her contract
> with Smith, which states that they have co-authored an untitled book on
> reasoning. As Smith has repeatedly emphasized, and as anyone who knew
> both of them well at the time knows, this contract was signed before any
> such book existed. It was signed in anticipation of the completion of
> such a manuscript by McElroy, based on the transcripts she had typed up
> of Smith's presentations in his "Fundamentals of Reasoning" classes.
> Unfortunately, the only such manuscript that was ever produced was
> produced nearly ten years later and was published by McElroy under her
> name alone, without the consent of the man she had contracted to honor
> as the book's first author.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> JR