He was a young dandy working to become a scholar, as his leadership of the Philosophical Club suggests. But he was only twenty-two years old when he entered the doctoral program. “Was the King of Crozer and BU actually a rather immature and insecure young man?” asks Garrow. “Was he a talented young preacher with no particular aptitude for scholarly creativity?” King’s indiscretions, regardless of their cause, should have been caught. His advisers should have noticed King’s heavy reliance on a Boston University dissertation written three years earlier by a student named Jack Boozer.
