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.