Q&A: Writing Academic Papers and the Like for Students for Pay: A Moral and Halakhic-Legal Clarification
Writing Academic Papers and the Like for Students for Pay: A Moral and Halakhic-Legal Clarification
Question
Hello Rabbi Michael Abraham
My question may seem a bit exotic, and I would greatly appreciate your intellectual and learned response.
I write academic papers for students for pay.
After some back-and-forth with the best of my righteous religious friends, it came up that they and I should consult the opinion of an academic and Torah intellectual who doesn’t hesitate to publicly express even his most esoteric views.
So as you can infer, I’m the one arguing in favor of the morality of my livelihood, while my friends are the prosecutors.
I’ll present my best arguments in favor. If you have additional arguments, or stronger ones, in favor, I’d be happy to hear them; and if you have arguments against, I’d be happy to hear those too. I’d also be glad if you refute me. I’m a person with values, and if I become convinced that what I’m doing is not moral or not in accordance with Jewish law, I’ll change my ways.
As you can imagine, I’m a capitalist, and my friends sometimes call me an anarchist. After a number of capitalist premises, I reached the conclusion that many laws the state legislates do not have legal-halakhic or moral validity. One example is the obligation to stop at a red light, or the obligation to report products and small businesses.
I think the complex reality today, in which there are laws and actions of the state that support me, like the army, the security system, and health care, while on the other hand there are laws that harm me, like taxes, employment restrictions, etc., leads me, as a private citizen, to weigh for myself what is good in my eyes, and where I receive help and where I contribute in return.
So sometimes I tell friends that if you’re right-wing, then you should evade taxes, because part of that money goes to the Ministries of Culture, Education, and Sports, and instead invest your money in settlement, security, and medicine. When people tell me in response that a leftist would do the same, I say: all the better, excellent.
Similarly, I think that a number of rules legislated by the various universities also do not have halakhic-legal sanction, and as such they lose their validity. An example would be the online exams held during the coronavirus period. Some lecturers demanded that students not look at the material. In general, a rule that cannot be enforced has no legal validity in my eyes, similarly to testimony that cannot be disproved in the view of the Sages, or in Popper’s view regarding scientific theories.
By contrast, rape, for example, is not forbidden in my eyes because it’s in university policy, but because it is immoral, and therefore legislators should enact a legal or Torah law about it.
So there are many arguments against me, but for the most part they are mainly based on shock at rebellion against social conventions. The most common is that I’m stealing or lying. I don’t understand from whom I’m stealing or to whom I’m lying, as follows.
I make a deal with a person, and usually both of us fulfill our obligations.
And now regarding writing papers. After the long introduction, I’ll now write briefly.
1. The university cannot enforce cheating, paper-writing, and the like, and as such its rule has no validity, and a student studying at its institutions is permitted to do as he pleases with himself and his work. (That is also why its status declines, but that is another matter.) On the other hand, lying is forbidden only when the lie creates a distorted reality, such as lying in a religious court or in court. Since, in my view, a degree in the social sciences or humanities has no real validity, there is no meaning to lying in this area. (As for the exact sciences, I’m not expert in that.) Also, I saw that you argued that in things like this, “it’s more a lie than mere deception.”
2. As a capitalist, one of our basic claims is that socialists, once they have power, tend to become corrupt. I therefore conclude that academia is corrupt in my eyes, and if not every lecturer or person in charge, then at least it has no academic authority for me as an institution striving for truth.
3. Students turn to writers in any case; I’m competing with peers in this gray market.
4. It’s important to me to stress that I’m not resorting to escape arguments. One of the lecturers I esteem argued that the Averroists would hold that it is moral to sit on the mountain and contemplate philosophy and films, and every now and then go down to a nearby village and loot it. I’m not doing this for its own sake; I’m doing it for a livelihood. The price is high, and both sides benefit, as in any business in the end. And maybe it is for its own sake too, because then I have more time to read books.
I’ll add at the end that sometimes moral people harm themselves for the sake of others or for the sake of values, and that seems very immoral to me.
Regards,
Me
Answer
I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t agree with a single word here.
- There is an obligation to obey the law, even if it is not just, unless it is an extreme injustice. I don’t know whether you are religious (committed to Jewish law), but from a halakhic standpoint this is a full-fledged application of dina de-malkhuta dina. And if you think otherwise, that is what democracy is for: through it you can influence the law and try to change it.
- Beyond disobeying the law, this is a moral wrong and a lie. Both toward the university, which certifies a person without having tested his abilities, thereby giving the university a bad name when people see its weak products; and toward the free market too, to which a person goes out with no qualifications but with a certificate. That is a fraud on his potential employer. And of course there is also lying here. The fact that you think there is no real value to a degree in the social sciences—I did not write that. I said it is not science and that there is a lot of nonsense there. That is a different claim—doesn’t mean you may rely on that in order to lie and enrich yourself unjustly.
- Indeed there are others. About that it was said: “Bandits like you conquered it.” The fact that there are others willing to steal for you does not mean that I am allowed to do it for you.
You remind me of when I was young in the hesder yeshiva, and of course a perfect rationalist—that’s the age—and I decided that instead of studying Torah I would read books of various kinds (what I today call “Torah in the person”). I argued to my friends that there was no problem with this, because I owed nothing to the government or the army. They allowed the hesder arrangement as a concession to political constraints, and they had no interest in my studying. I owed nothing to the heads of the yeshiva. So I wasn’t harming anyone. I have to tell you that that argument of mine was immeasurably stronger than your strange argument. Especially since in my terminology today I would say that even one who studies in yeshiva is often engaged in “Torah in the person.” So what difference is there between the Kuzari and the Maharal, and Kant and Spinoza?!
Discussion on Answer
There are flaws everywhere, and still these anarchistic arguments (despite my fondness for anarchism) seem to me baseless and childish.
The fact that there are sometimes irrelevant courses or problematic degrees (and I’ve written quite a bit about that) means you may copy papers indiscriminately? Or do you make sure to do it only for irrelevant courses? What kind of childish argument is that?! Are you supposed to decide in place of the employer what he demands from his employee? I really can’t see even a shred of an argument here. This is nonsense. And I say that as someone who often criticizes the factors you mentioned here.
But I’ve written what I had to write.
Okay
1. I intentionally didn’t get into dina de-malkhuta dina. In my view, that is the authority of gentile law, plus only if it contributes far more to justice than to injustice, following an interpretation of the Ran and Maimonides. And come on… really, influencing things through democracy? See the column you wrote about going to vote.
2. a. Are you serious about what you’re writing here? What potential employer are we talking about? You remind me of an argument I once read in a game theory book discussing the prisoner’s dilemma. The question was why students in difficult degree programs shouldn’t simply organize together, not study for exams, and the bar would remain the same bar—why invest so much? Another example: the college basketball teams in the U.S. decided that instead of every player investing a lot of time in practices at the expense of studies, each institution would allocate limited practice time, and the struggle among the teams would remain the same struggle.
What validity does a degree in psychology have? You yourself claim it’s worthless. The real injustice is that I can’t open a clinic and present myself as a clinical therapist.
b. The reality today is that many institutions require you simply to have a B.A. and don’t even look at the paper—from bank clerks, to secretaries, to state employees.
c. If anything, the reality is the opposite: lecturers at respected universities fail courses and students so that the degree will be “prestigious.” I actually expected you to bring examples about the corruption of academia after I saw that you wrote about it.
In addition, students in all fields take courses that are plainly irrelevant to their profession (Judaism, statistics, introduction to this and that, etc. etc.) and to what they will actually do—courses that sometimes don’t even count toward the average and only require a passing grade—so where is the fraud here, according to your view?
3. Only if you’re right about 1 and 2.
4. Exactly my point—so then an average yeshiva student is also forbidden to go on dates, right? And if he is neglecting Torah study, or not investing all of himself in lomdus, then is he violating dina de-malkhuta dina? Is it really forbidden to cross on red, according to your view? And reading Spinoza inside Rabbi Kook is fine, of course.