…plagiarism.

In Germany, it’s raining plagiarists.

Veronica Sass, daughter of a former premier of Bavaria, has just had her University of Konstanz doctorate taken away.

Karl-Theodor Guttenberg – now he’s blaming his family, and his dissertation chair – Veronica Sass, and pretty soon Silvana Koch-Mehrin.

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Keeping in mind that Guttenberg was Defense Minister, consider his explanation:

Another problem [he said] was with the expectations of his family to master his existing commitments successfully. It had been made clear to him that it would not have been acceptable if the quality of any of his various commitments suffered and that a work once started had to be completed. Furthermore, Guttenberg wrote that he did not want to disappoint his advisor Peter Häberle.

Big strong head of German military! Capitulates to family, dissertation advisor…

He’s now known in the German press as the Self-Defense Minister.

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UD thanks Chris.

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UPDATE: Koch-Mehrin folds ’em.

… some people have complained that although when you check in at Lufthansa online “you can choose between Herr/Frau, Dr, Prof, Prof Dr,” you cannot choose Prof Dr Dr.

Prof Dr Dr! A country that loves titles that much is gonna get itself into plagiarism trouble, with everyone scrambling for more Prof Drs. Indeed we’ve already followed Baron Googleberg’s story (it’s still going on). Now another prominent politician, Silvana Koch-Mehrin, is in trouble. Rumor has it the University of Heidelberg is close to taking away her PhD.

This is all moving much faster than Guttenberg’s case did; institutions realize that the people behind this website are finding cases left and right. But the targets of the website’s dissertation-analyses aren’t themselves up to speed. Koch-Mehrin has still made no comment (the story’s been out there for a couple of weeks); like Guttenberg, she’s hoping arrogance and disdain will make it all go away.

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Chris expands on German titles:

Germany is full of politicians who are Prof Dr Dr (sometimes even Prof Dr Dr h.c. mult., to signify that the person holds various honorary doctorates). Another common case is someone who is a medical researcher, as they are often Dr. med. and Dr. rer. nat.). Or people with bi-national degrees. The most prominent, in terms of TV exposure, is Prof. Dr. Dr. Karl Lauterbach, who holds a Dr. med. from the University of Düsseldorf and a D.Sc. from Harvard.

If you like titles, the United States is real shit. We don’t seem to have the same respect for them. I don’t see Donald Trump running off to get a PhD so we’ll call him Prof Dr Dr Trump. And he’s our next president.

We do have Major Major Major Major.

But only Germany has Johann Gambolputty.

… graduate students and secretaries?

… when someone running a secondary school or a university turns out to be a plagiarist. These people spend a lot of time pontificating to their students about honesty, academic integrity and hard work, and when they are found out, it makes their students – and their students’ families – look like dupes.

As Karen Francisco reports in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette:

Gwendolyn Griffith Adell is a member of the Indiana State Board of Education and administrator of a Gary charter school singled out for distinction by Gov. Mitch Daniels. She also stands accused of plagiarizing her doctoral dissertation.

Purdue University officials have confirmed they are reviewing the allegations.

Adell’s response so far is the classic I’ve just been hit with this response: Bullshit! I’m getting me a lawyer!

Once she calms down and realizes she’s been caught, she will probably go through many of the same stages most people – from the high and mighty German defense minister on down – go through:

She’ll admit there might have been one or two inadvertent lapses on her part.

She’ll ask her university for permission to correct the dissertation. This will be denied.

She’ll say she was busy having five children, running for political office, caring for her sick aunt.

She’ll say there’s a political conspiracy to get rid of her because she’s an outspoken critic of the establishment.

She’ll say her plagiarism occurred long ago and has nothing to do with what a great job she does. Judge her by her current work.

In her resignation speech, she will portray herself as a religious martyr.

Glenn Poshard got away with it.

But Yoo Kwang-chan, head of Korea’s Jeonju National University of Education, has gotten caught plagiarizing almost all of a textbook that appeared under his name. The newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reviewed the text and found, for instance, that the entire first chapter, word for word, was taken from another book.

Yoo, by the way, makes his students buy the book.

A new entry for the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Background here.

The newly appointed director of the University of South Australia’s Hawke Research Institute has resigned following the revelation of his role in a plagiarism scandal in South Africa.

Appointed three months ago. Exposed as a veteran plagiarist five days ago. Immediately fired. (They haven’t had time to change the website.)

But why didn’t the Hawke Research Institute know about Abebe Zegeye’s long history of plagiarism? Two years ago, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Stuart Hall, and David Theo Goldberg wrote a letter to Zegeye’s last place of employment, South Africa’s Wits Institute, complaining that he’d been plagiarizing their work, and the work of others, for years. Apparently these three (or perhaps others) had “warned [Zegeye] explicitly in the past of its unacceptability,” but he kept at it.

Wits investigated, found him guilty, and canned him.

Zegeye, like scads of miscreants before him, blamed it — all of it — on a research assistant.

Then he packed up and took an excellent job as director at Hawke.

How was he able to do this?

Nobody told Hawke about the man they had hired to direct their institute. Only because the Mail and Guardian newspaper got hold of the investigative report on Zegeye and wrote about it did Australia learn about his past.

Universities have to release information about faculty plagiarists. Otherwise, like Zegeye, they’ll keep bouncing around.

“I cannot be accused of cogently borrowing any intellectual capital from other writers, although, as admitted, their text was sometimes reproduced in my works,” [Zegeye’s] statement said.

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Update: They’ve now changed the webpage.

With the second case of apparent plagiarism on the part of a German politician noted for sticking DR. in front of all mentions of her name, we have to ask whether this behavior is general over there. When will one of the DR.s blurt out, in a moment of frustration, Everyone does it ?

Brad DeLong first quotes Benjamin Barber calling plagiarism charges against Saif Gaddafi “garbage.” Then he quotes a bunch of plagiarized passages.

Everyone knows that important busy people who want to refer to themselves as Doctor have a tendency to plagiarize or just outright buy their theses. So what? Speeches and op-eds are ghostwritten; articles get penned by graduate assistants or subordinates in the lab or pharma-hired consultants. BFD. Everybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it…

But people are remarkably unforgiving about it. You’d think by this time, all of us postmodernized to within an inch of our lives, we’d find the revelation of yet another totally simulacral political leader a real shrug.

Apparently not.

… a professor of history at Kansas State, looks into Saif Gaddafi’s London School of Economics PhD:

I spent an hour on google and found big chunks of plagiarized material, evidently not caught by the academics whom Saif thanks in his dissertation: Nancy Cartwright, David Held, Alex Voorhoeve, and Joseph Nye.

Go to his group website, The Russian Front, for details.

In parliament, Mr. zu Guttenberg said his “clearly faulty” dissertation sent a “poor signal” to academia, but didn’t impair his ability to serve as defense minister.

[The German Defense Minister] told a swarm of reporters enquiring about the plagiarism allegations swirling around him: “I will temporarily – I repeat temporarily – give up my doctoral title.”

[Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg] will do so, he said, while the university that gave him the doctorate completes its investigation into whether it really was all his own work.

Inherit one title, inherit another.

… on whether he plagiarized much of his University of Bayreuth dissertation.

Ja, the German defense minister is accused of “brazen plagiarism.”

“The duplication appears throughout the work and in all its substantive parts,” [Andreas Fischer-Lescano] said.

See for yourself.