← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

“It’s a little upsetting. You had more than enough ammo to fire him outright. He was an at will employee[;] there was no contract. There’s no reason. Unless you’re trying to hide something. There was no reason to tell him here’s a quarter of a million dollars.”

Quite the cascade of events in the Little Rock Arkansas school district, where things were so bad the state took over, and now there’s a lawsuit from the dysfunctional school board the state ousted…

And now, the Little Rock superintendent turns out to have plagiarized … maybe more than plagiarized… in some accounts, it sounds as though he virtually stole another person’s dissertation… And I guess the general consensus would be that the top official of a large educational system probably shouldn’t be a massive plagiarist who when asked about it says he doesn’t think he “consciously” plagiarized.

So he has had to resign.

But the person quoted up there in UD‘s headline – Matt Campbell, who discovered the plagiarism – is confused as to why the guy, having lied and embarrassed the state and all, got a large money award. UD thinks he’s probably right that that most benighted of American states thought it would be clever to give him money to go away and in that way make the story of their having hired a superintendent without checking the legitimacy of his credentials (it’s easy to put documents through plagiarism-finders) go away. It wasn’t very clever.

*********

UD thanks a reader for correcting her identification of the person quoted in this post’s headline.

Margaret Soltan, April 22, 2015 11:33AM
Posted in: plagiarism

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=48215

2 Responses to ““It’s a little upsetting. You had more than enough ammo to fire him outright. He was an at will employee[;] there was no contract. There’s no reason. Unless you’re trying to hide something. There was no reason to tell him here’s a quarter of a million dollars.””

  1. Old Hand Says:

    Actually, UD, those words are from the blogger who found the plagiarism, guy named Campbell.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Old Hand: Right you are. Thanks for the correction. I’ll fix.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories