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UD in the New Zealand Press

Tomorrow, the New Zealand Listener – in which reviewer Jolisa Gracewood broke the story two weeks ago with examples of plagiarised content – reveals more unattributed lines in The Trowenna Sea from other people’s work.

It is not clear whether these have been acknowledged by Ihimaera.

The latest Listener quotes Margaret Soltan, a professor of English at George Washington University in Washington DC, who criticises Ihimaera.

But she mostly criticises Auckland University, where Ihimaera is a distinguished professor and lecturer.

She says the university has too-readily accepted the author’s word that the plagiarism was inadvertent.

“Pretending it did not happen is the sort of thing a very provincial university will do,” she says.

I’ll link to The Listener when the issue appears. Not sure if you’ll be able to read the article online.

Oh, and — I told you plagiarists were lifers.

Margaret Soltan, November 19, 2009 11:44AM
Posted in: plagiarism

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3 Responses to “UD in the New Zealand Press”

  1. Craig Ranapia Says:

    Like drug cheats? I though the more appropriate analogy for plagiarists is that they’re like kleptomaniacs — you can pity them, appreciate that it’s a psychological disorder, but stealing still isn’t tolerable in any society with any pretensions towards civilization? 🙂

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Craig: Yes – I thought the drug cheats thing a little strange, too. Though I see the idea. The plagiarist gets books out faster than his competitors because he saves all sorts of writing time…

    From my study of the subject, I’ve come to think that there are two kinds of plagiarists, haughty and pathetic, with Witi the pathetic type.

    The haughty plagiarist is a brilliant and accomplished person who just hasn’t the time — is just too important and special — actually to WRITE any more books. Other people do that, and the haughty person puts his name on the cover.

    The pathetic plagiarist has no faith in his ability to write well. At his core is a deep self-doubt; and the more success the pathetic plagiarist enjoys, the deeper his self-doubt becomes, and the more he plagiarizes. In other words, he has always felt himself to be a hoax, a fraud, and turns to plagiarism because he sincerely believes himself incapable of valuable independent work.

  3. Craig Ranapia Says:

    Love it. The sub-type of the "haughty" plagairist I particularly adore are the Stephen Ambroses and Doris Kearns Goodwins who can’t be expected to micro-manage their research assistants. It’s like listening to some dowager out of Henry James or Edith Wharton complaining that when they were young servants knew their place and weren’t afraid of a little hard work.

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