A plagiarist so vile his colleagues persisted in outing him despite their university’s attempts to shut down their complaints has now sued the people who outed him.
A 45-year-old professor at the prestigious Xi’an Jiaotong University in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province was sacked on Sunday after six of his colleagues repeatedly posted letters to the university and on the Internet exposing his academic scandals.
… “The university even questioned our motives,” said [one of the six]. “Some university leaders told us that we could share some awards with Li, if we kept quiet about the scandal. It was such a humiliation!” the 81-year-old academic was quoted by China Central Television (CCTV) as saying on Saturday.
… Using their real names, the six professors then exposed about 30 examples of Li [Liansheng] plagiarizing the work of others online, which attracted more than 60,000 comments from netizens in a single month.
… In response to the allegations, Li sued his former teachers who exposed his plagiarism on the Internet, blaming them for sabotaging his reputation, according to a July 2009 report in the Shanghai Daily.
Li’s lawyer told Xi’an Beilin district people’s court that the six senior professors used insulting phrases such as “academic thief” and “rat on campus” in their posts on a website about Li, the newspaper reported.
His counsel also demanded the six professors make a public apology and each pay compensation between 120,000 and 150,000 yuan ($17,600 to $22,000), said the report…
Madonna Constantine seems to be the model here.