Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard University sophomore who apologized last week for plagiarism in her debut novel, has now lost a two-book contract with Little, Brown, the publishing company that withdrew the plagiarized book from the market. According to today’s Boston Globe, the publisher also canceled plans to reissue the novel with all the copied material cleaned out, as fresh allegations arose about possible plagiarism in the book drawn from other sources.

The controversy has stoked criticism of the student (The Chronicle, April 24, April 25, and April 28). Support for her, however, came from an unlikely source today. In a column for The New York Times, David Leonhardt compared her to William H. Swanson, the chief executive of the Raytheon Company, who last week was also revealed to be a plagiarist.

“It is worth remembering that Ms. Viswanathan is only 19 and that a lot of us did stupid things at that age,” Mr. Leonhardt wrote. By contrast, the 57-year-old Raytheon CEO runs a big company and is supposed to be an embodiment of integrity in leadership. When confronted with evidence of his plagiarism, Mr. Swanson, after some prompting, “did apologize—twice—and he blamed a staff member for the problem.”