This article was produced by the nonprofit publication Capital & Main. It is published here with permission.

Back in 1986, when I was a first-year graduate student in theater arts at UCLA, a white professor called me into his office to break some bad news: The term paper I’d turned in wasn’t mine, he said. It was plagiarized. I was astonished. Of course the paper was mine. I had an undergraduate degree in English and had spent years writing term papers. I knew how to construct theses, build arguments, footnote, and cite sources. And — quite unlike my fellow students — I liked the course and had participated enthusiastically in class discussions, something the professor seemed to genuinely appreciate. I assumed we had an understanding.

As it turns out, there was no “we.” Following his bom

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