… says UD (in an echo of Tolstoy’s famous “happy families” remark). UD has studied plagiarists for many years on this blog, and they are astonishingly similar to one another.
Bahman Bakhtiari, a University of Utah political scientist who has just lost his job, is true to the form.
First, he is a serial plagiarist. UD cannot think of any instance of professorial or artistic plagiarism about which she’s written on this blog where the plagiarist did not turn out to have plagiarized quite a lot before his or her latest plagiarism.
Second, he plagiarizes promiscuously. Anything – a scholarly article, a grant proposal, an opinion piece, a syllabus – can be an occasion for plagiarizing.
And third, he blames his troubles on other people. Graduate students, laboratory subordinates, and editorial assistants are the plagiarist’s traditional fall guys, but anyone will serve, and Bakhtiari offers a broad array of enemies who sought to undo him.
August 18th, 2011 at 6:23PM
He even plays the race card:
“The Iranian-born scholar also alleges he is the victim of discrimination perpetrated by a “pro-Arabist faction” within the [Middle East Center].”
Brilliant!