… Atul Gawande. But what made this the plagiarism winner and still champeen was that students in the audience got on their cell phones, discovered the plagiarism, and began mouthing the dean’s words in real time. That was very cool of them, and the guy resigned.
The current plagiarism story out of Smith College is less cool, but has its own fun wrinkle. The singer who got an honorary degree there plagiarized her speech and the degree was withdrawn; but what makes this one fun is the official statement from the school’s president, who noted that the speaker explained to her that she “sought to infuse the words of others with her own emotional valence.”