Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized the writings of others in his doctoral dissertation, but that act shouldn't tarnish the Nobel Prize winner's reputation as a civil rights leader, a panel of scholars said.
The panel also said its conclusions should not result in Boston University rescinding King's doctorate, adding that his work still has scholarly value.King, who wrote the dissertation in 1955, was assassinated in 1968. He won the Nobel Prize for peace in 1964.
"While Dr. King was at fault for failing to cite sources accurately and fully in many parts of the dissertation, this fact does not detract from his enormous contributions as a leader in the civil rights movement and as a symbol of accomplishment and vision for all people," the committee said in a report released Thursday.
The group recommended a letter spelling out its findings be placed with the copy of King's dissertation in the university's Mugar Memorial Library. The full report also will be filed there.
BU Provost Jon Westling has accepted the committee's recommendations.
The report said King "plagiarized in the dissertation by appropriating material from sources not explicitly credited in notes, or mistakenly credited, or credited generally and at some distance in the text from a close paraphrase or verbatim quotation."