“As I depart WNYC and the Gothamist, I want to share with you lessons I’ve learned from my ten (amazing!) years of plagiarizing articles.

First: You can get away with it! After having me on the staff for ten years, they found four plagiarized pieces only six months ago, and nothing much happened. In fact, I was reassigned to “mentor staff members.” LOLOL.

Second: You can only get away with it for so long before you do have to sue. Recently, a squad of people has been investigating everything I’ve (let’s go with “I’ve”) written over a decade, which is so unfair because I’ve been plagiarizing all that time! So I’m slapping New York Public Radio with a lawsuit for racism.

Wish me luck!”

Wotta shocker.

In this post about UNC’s plagiarizing vice chancellor FOR RESEARCH, UD expressed amazement that “ninnies” at Chapel Hill let the guy get off with a slap on the wrist.

But then, thought she, he’s a honcho, he brings in the bucks, it’s the southland, he sports expensive suits, he’s in good with the boys’ club, blahbiddyblahblah…

How could UD have known about Mimi Chapman, who speaks for UNC’s faculty? Thirty minutes after someone high up in the administration – someone who knows how to read – read this letter from her, The Kay M. & Van L. Weatherspoon Eminent Distinguished Professor of Genetics packed up his y chromosomes and went home.

Let’s take a peek!

… Over the last few days, faculty members from all over the University have contacted me about the current situation with our Vice Chancellor for Research, concerned that Vice Chancellor Magnuson has not stepped down from his position. As a faculty, we believe that this situation has the potential to taint our own scholarship and gives the impression that some members of our community are “untouchable” while for others such a situation would be a career-ender. Every hour, I have been hoping that an announcement would come so that I would not have to make this statement. But that has not happened and here we are.

… [P]lease resolve this situation in the interests of the institution and out of respect to this faculty with all deliberate speed.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Brava! I see no reason to stick quotation marks around untouchable, but with this small correction the letter is perfect. And it seems to have accomplished its goal. It has disrupted the sausage party at the top and reminded the guys that somewhere hidden among the sports programs at UNC is a faculty, and it can be quite ugly when provoked.

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And as for the institution-embarrassing miscreant himself, he opts for the I’m Too Good for this World defense, stunning all of us with his life-saving achievements, which leave so little room for him to notice that he steals from multiple sources in grant applications. It’s a “teachable moment,” he piously informs us, forgetting to add that it’s only a teachable moment for people like him, who plagiarize.

The recent academic history of UNC Chapel Hill is really stinky — just a shitload of scandals — so you might think faculty and administrators there would be superduper careful not to add to the world’s growing sense that a once-respectable school has become a cesspool. But the awesomely titled vice-chancellor — FOR RESEARCH — a man not only eminent, but also distinguished, has been outed as a plagiarist.

In a grant application … but you and I know that soon enough many other instances of his plagiarism will be uncovered… though he seems to have convinced the ninnies at Chapel Hill that this is his one and only eminent distinguished theft from multiple sources, cuz they’re not really punishing the dude.

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Remember UD‘s tripartite plagiarism scheme (refresh your memory here). In this instance, we have Category One: ATELIER. Dude’s simply too esteemed and illustrious to bother writing his own grant applications or (UD feels certain we’ll discover) research papers, etc., etc. He relies on an atelier, his very own workshop of Santa’s elves, to do all his work for him, and he has fallen victim to the same thing all the other busybusybusy atelier-overseers (see oodles of Harvard law professors) fall victim to – he doesn’t review the work that goes out under his name. If you’re going to oversee, you need to oversee!

In short: I didn’t plagiarize! The dumb-dumbs that plagiarize on my behalf plagiarized. I give you my pledge: There’s gonna be a helluva shakeup on my staff and the new crew will know how to plagiarize and not get caught.

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Mr UD: “A reasonable punishment would be a fifty percent reduction in his adjectives. He’s currently the Kay M. & Van L. Weatherspoon Eminent Distinguished Professor of Genetics. The choice is his, but he must lose either Eminent or Distinguished.”

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Update: Yeah. Well. Initial reports that he’d get a slap on the wrist sounded way dumb to ol’ UD, and, as she suggests up there in this post, you don’t deal with a plagiarist in that way. You fire a plagiarist. Esp. one in charge of research for the whole school! Mamma mia.

And that is now what has happened.

… by legitimate scholars uncovering his long history of plagiarized sports-injury research.

One could dismiss this jerk as one more no-account, plagiarism-addicted nonentity, except that he’s actually a very high-profile, influential concussion-enthusiast, always in search of ways to justify letting concussed athletes keep playing.

Finally cornered, he’s letting out with all sorts of explanations and apologies (UD has no idea why he’s not blaming underlings, but as more of his plagiarism is discovered, McCrory will no doubt take this time-honored route), and he’s removing himself – or being removed – from this and that committee. Let’s see if the scummy schools and organizations keeping him on board will… keep him on board.

Let us sing of a country all of whose prime ministers (well, more than a few) plagiarize their dissertations – dissertations written merely, it seems, to append DR to their names.

Seldom has the search for respectability led so many to such disreputability.

Indeed Romania’s current prime minister (in 2012, this blog covered the last plagiarizing prime minister) is plausibly accused of plagiarizing a third of his military thesis.

That’s a bit less than the 2012 guy plagiarized, so bravo…

And yet… UD has been writing about plagiarism long enough to know that when the given figure is a third, the actual figure is probably… Just making a rough calculation here… Let’s see… Uh… Yes. Got it: — The real figure is one hundred percent.

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UPDATE: Amusing motive-explanation here.

A reader alerts UD to a University of Kansas provost who plagiarized the MLK Day inspirational message he sent to everyone at the university. “If you want to go technically, then yes,” he replied when asked whether he did it, shaming all us tight-asses who care more about the trivial technicality of stealing other people’s words than the wild sweeping grandeur of uplifting sentiment.

D.A. Graham highlights “communications specialist,” “integrity leader,” “and “Adjunct Faculty: Writing” on his LinkedIn page.

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UPDATE: Lift every voice, press SEND, and resign. Respectable schools keep a very close eye on their reputation (except when it comes to sports, of course). Kansas is a very good school, and will fire people who bring it into academic disrepute.

A provost who sends plagiarized material out to the entire school under his own signature belongs at a school like (cough) West Liberty. West Liberty retains a plagiarist president. Reputable schools won’t even let a provost get away with it.

There’s indigenous “story weaving,” and there’s weaving together an academic article by plagiarizing from eight sources.

Eight? As I’ve learned over years of blogging about plagiarism, the number is probably closer to twenty.

Particularly contemptible in this case is Sandra Delaney plundering multiple unpublished dissertation theses. Stealing from young people who’ve not even gotten a chance to have their voices heard is really disgusting. Kill them when they’re just out of the womb.

Brutal colonization among those who make their living denouncing colonialism. A commenter at Retraction Watch writes: “One of the most ironic cases of plagiarism ever.”

For details of the latest, AMAZING, academic plagiarism, it helps to read French. Because even though attorney/politician Arash Derambarsh’s cut and paste définitivement rises to the level of English-language-world interest, someone has decided it won’t travel well. Listen up to realize just how wrong that is.

1. Almost every word of his dissertation, at deadhead Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, is plagiarized.
2. Just in case anyone might look at it, he somehow got the university to agree to keep it secret for thirty years – because it contains incredibly sensitive, high-level, top-secret material, see.
3. For its part, the university assigned as his committee various buddies and non-specialists, all of whom – vive la France – passed the thesis with flying colors.
4. Someone managed to get hold of the thing, despite its ultra-top-secret status, and determined that it was entirely plagiarized, which forced the hand of deadhead Paris I, which began an investigation. Investigators were unable to find “the missing mandatory report on the defense (which legally has to be entered into the academic record for a PhD to be valid).” Derambarsh’s thesis advisor advised that it “was in a computer that had been stolen.”
5. Arash submitted to the investigators an entirely different piece of writing, this one cleansed of copying. Ballsy.
6. The thesis was voided; Derambarsh may never again register at any French university for any course of study.
7. He’s been disbarred.

Luxembourg’s prime minister committed plagiarism “unparalleled in its scope”in his master’s thesis. The headline in the Guardian says it all:

‘Only two pages’ of Luxembourg PM’s university thesis were not plagiarised

‘[O]nly “a few paragraphs in the introduction” and “an equally short conclusion” had not been copied wholesale…’

… Which leaves us free to imagine what those stunningly original intro and conclusion paragraphs had in them. Let’s see… hm…

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I should like to thank my wife Babette, and our daughters Lucette and Lunette, for their steadfast love, support, and patience, as I sweated bullets to get this thesis in on time. Only they can know, because they lived with me throughout, what labor this work represented, and how many piano and dance recitals I had to miss because of it. Forgive me! I hope this accomplishment of mine can in some way compensate for, or at least explain, my absences.

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I leave these pages with bittersweet emotions. My close study of voting systems in the European Parliament has been rigorous and even exhausting; and yet, as I bid it farewell, I find myself surprisingly melancholy, surprisingly reluctant to give up the work and hand my thesis in to my mentor, Professor Criqui*, whose no doubt minute reading of this work will result in extensive critical commentary and (I hope) a truly deserved A!

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*Author of the forthcoming Post-Plagiarism-Detecting Software and the Collapse of the European University .

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UD thanks Elizabeth.

Can these claims be true? Longtime observers of SCSU know it’s a basket case; how could anyone have accomplished these remarkable … accomplishments there?

Hey, maybe the dude did… But if I were reviewing his self-presentation at West Liberty University, I’d vote against making him president…

But they did; they did make him president. And now they’re stuck with this disgraceful career plagiarist as the head of the school.

The guy UD routinely relies on in her posts about plagiarism gets a New York Times feature.

Or not. Apparently Sermon Stealing is worth noticing (by the New York Times!) on a sort of high-season basis, when one instance of it goes viral and prompts urgent discussion about the morality of getting emotional in front of the flock and testifying to someone else’s love of Jesus as if it were your own.

This latest shock and awe that ill-educated inspirationalists copy their betters will blow over in a sec, and the Bible Belt Industrial Complex will resume operations.

While plagiarism accusations have proven a number one reason for political resignations in the Merkel era, they usually centre on politicians’ doctoral thesis. Baerbock’s [plagiarized] book, entitled Now: How We Can Renew Our Country, is a mass-market nonfiction title in which the Green politician lays out her political philosophy, ghostwritten by a journalist.

Somewhere, under the pile of plagiarism, ghostwriting, and vacuous title, lies – I think – a person, a Green party leader… Does she have a name, or did her parents hand that too off to a ghostwriter?

Oh, Baerbock. Does it say “Baerbock’s book” up there? In what way is a ghostwritten plagiarized pre-pulped poopoo platter Baerbock’s book? And since when does the Green Party endorse wasting paper on plumped up platitudes?

Who knows why the University of South Carolina president, addressing a proud contingent of students and parents on an important day, referred to the students as lucky graduates of the University of California? Who knows why he for the third time (reportedly) recycled in this speech a plagiarized paragraph from a speech by a famous Navy Seal? Who knows why (according to some observers) he slurred his words throughout?

I don’t know why. But let me speculate about Bob Caslen, who has now resigned. Let me begin with the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips:

These are parts of ourselves – that don’t want to live, that hate our children, that want ourselves to fail. Freud is saying there is something strange about humans: they are recalcitrant to what is supposed to be their project.

I think anyone reviewing Caslen’s odd behaviors (which, according to some, predate this speech) would want to entertain the possibility that he hates his job (the university bestowed it unwillingly; he has been an unpopular president) and wants out; but rather than grasp that fact forthrightly (a military man, he has always done his duty) he has at it were allowed his unconscious to have its way with his situation. He has allowed his recalcitrance to what is supposed to be his project to emerge, and USC got the message.

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For a wee bit more insight into the whole “unconscious” thing, consider the fact that in Donald Trump the USA experienced its first president with no apparent unconscious. He lost an election and this made him mad; to get the election back he sent a mob to the Capitol to kill his vice president (who made him mad), take out the Congress, destroy democracy, and get back what he wanted. When desperate allies called him from the besieged building, he blew them off and went back to enjoying the riot’s tv footage. Now THAT’S having no unconscious. Recalcitrant to his project? Just like Ubu the King, Trump was happily blowing up the world to achieve his project.

But this is very rare. Outside of select psychopaths, most everyone has an unconscious.