Where would Dante put the plagiarists? The moral language of plagiarism policies at American universities

This paper uses Dante’s moral distinction between theft and other forms of fraud to query the ways in which American universities typically explain to students why plagiarism is wrong. A survey of academic integrity policies at 50 American universities revealed that the Christian universities tended to use ethical language to characterize plagiarism as morally wrong, whereas R1 universities used ethical language to describe plagiarism less often. Christian universities most often characterized plagiarism as a form of deceit, and less often as a form of theft. This paper contends that it is more logical to describe plagiarism as deceit.