Plagiarist-in-chief
I've been going through my old blogs, and noticed this one, which was always one of my favorites. I am retired now, so I have to admit that my active study of plagiarism that is encompassed on this blog is more or less dormant, and that's why you haven't seen anything for five or six years.
Really, it's an interesting topic, namely, why a person could feel that they are so poorly able to say something that they have to just use someone else's words. It was common for international students and I studied carefully for as long as I could; the results are here. But two other things happened. One was that a former governor became president of my university, and, lo and behold, someone discovered that his dissertation had been plagiarized. And, lo and behold, it had been about gifted education.
now on the topic of general incompetence, or cheating, going all the way to the top, I just want to mention that a lot of my friends are leftists, and they can't stand Biden for a whole swath of reasons - sold out to the corporations, sexist, no record on the environment, you name it. He's kind of a middling senator with twenty or thirty years middling record to back it up. But what I have against him is that long ago - maybe fifteen or twenty years ago, he plagiarized in his campaign speech, and got caught. He would have made a better president back then, than now, because he was younger, sharper, more in the right place at the right time. But he'd got caught, and it ruined him, for at least that election cycle. He was lucky enough to get in under Biden, and that helped everyone forget, but I didn't forget.
We all come back around to the things we couldn't get past before. I hate to make a moral judgment last twenty years, but here I am doing it, and saying: Plagiarism is no small deal. It's like being a draft-dodger, and then calling on the army to do something heinous. Of course, I'm old enough to have seen that, too.
Really, it's an interesting topic, namely, why a person could feel that they are so poorly able to say something that they have to just use someone else's words. It was common for international students and I studied carefully for as long as I could; the results are here. But two other things happened. One was that a former governor became president of my university, and, lo and behold, someone discovered that his dissertation had been plagiarized. And, lo and behold, it had been about gifted education.
now on the topic of general incompetence, or cheating, going all the way to the top, I just want to mention that a lot of my friends are leftists, and they can't stand Biden for a whole swath of reasons - sold out to the corporations, sexist, no record on the environment, you name it. He's kind of a middling senator with twenty or thirty years middling record to back it up. But what I have against him is that long ago - maybe fifteen or twenty years ago, he plagiarized in his campaign speech, and got caught. He would have made a better president back then, than now, because he was younger, sharper, more in the right place at the right time. But he'd got caught, and it ruined him, for at least that election cycle. He was lucky enough to get in under Biden, and that helped everyone forget, but I didn't forget.
We all come back around to the things we couldn't get past before. I hate to make a moral judgment last twenty years, but here I am doing it, and saying: Plagiarism is no small deal. It's like being a draft-dodger, and then calling on the army to do something heinous. Of course, I'm old enough to have seen that, too.
posted by tom @ 7:34 PM
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This weblog is about my efforts, sometimes futile, to teach about plagiarism to international students. Deeper in the blog is a documented story (if the newspaper articles still are there) about how a really nice guy made a mistake...however, that's water under the bridge. My classes have always been full of nice people who made mistakes.
