… Glenn Poshard (scroll down here for UD‘s posts about one of the few old-time political hacks running an American university). Before Hungary’s president showed that you can plagiarize your thesis and not have plagiarized your thesis (scroll down), Poshard was already there, doing the same thing and holding on – to this day – to his position as president of Southern Illinois University.

But just as No-Quit Schmitt is under strong pressure to leave his post, so Poshard finds himself under threat. The governor’s office and some high-ranking SIU trustees are trying like hell to get him out (faculty are leaving; fewer and fewer students are applying; Poshard and his cronies are fatally tied to the Blagojevich regime), to the point where Poshard has actually had to try to talk. Which never works out well. “My leadership has been one of a positive nature on this university.” That’s your president speaking, kiddies.

Poshard’s problem is that the current government of the state of Illinois is very embarrassed and seems to be on an anti-corruption kick.

“I will prove that as a former Olympic champion I still have perseverance,” the 69-year-old Schmitt said. “I will prove … that I can write a so-called Ph.D. dissertation and obtain my doctorate in this manner.”

No-Quit Schmitt announces the next phase of his Embarrass-Hungary-to-Death project.

In Part I, Hungary’s president was cleared of plagiarizing his university thesis, even though he plagiarized his university thesis. Now the university that gave him a summa for his efforts is going to strip him of his degree, even though he didn’t do anything wrong.

Hungary’s Semmelweis University plans to strip the country’s president of his doctorate for plagiarism even though an investigative committee cleared him of wrongdoing, its rector said on Thursday.

At this rate the guy’s going to have to resign the presidency, even though he did absolutely nothing wrong.

The world press is doing its best to report the plagiarism that wasn’t plagiarism story. Sample headline:

HE COPIED, BUT HE’S NOT A PLAGIARIST

Hungary’s president has also “become a favored target of Internet users, who mock him with memes like Ph+D = (Ctrl+C) + (Ctrl+V).”

As brave as Dimitrov, as wise as Stalin.

You’re a Gaelic poet and a Stalinist. You remain a Stalinist way past the degenerate stage (invasion of Hungary). While a Stalinist you write and publish a poem with the above line. (A Bulgarian communist, Dimitrov was head of the Comintern from ’34 to ’43. Although all traces of him have been removed from Bulgaria, “A massive painted statue of Dimitrov survives in the centre of Place Bulgarie in Cotonou, Republic of Benin, two decades after the country abandoned Marxism-Leninism and the colossal statue of Vladimir Lenin was removed from Place Lenine. Few Beninois are aware of the history of the statue or its subject.”) You edit the lines out of the poem much later – for a 1989 collection – but now – on the centenary of your birth – a big collection of your work comes out which restores the original passage. You died in 1996, and so have nothing to say about the restoration.

The editors explain that “it is perhaps time to remind people that there is more to [Sorley] MacLean’s work than what he presented himself back in 1989.” Another Gaelic poet comments, “MacLean’s self-shaped ‘biographical legend’ might not stand up to scrutiny in the way he intended, but his status as a major European poet is never in doubt.”

It’s an intriguing moral question. To what extent should editors honor only the poet’s approved versions of much-redacted poems? Especially when the poet has arguably airbrushed his own political history?

… to this book, Promises of 1968: Crisis, Illusion, and Utopia, an essay by Karol Edward Sołtan appears (UD‘s too lazy to slash the l).

But put that aside. This post is about Heller. (Mr UD remembers walking Heller back to her hotel from the Promises of ’68 conference.)

It’s about Heller and four of her colleagues in philosophy departments in Hungary. From an article in Science Insider:

It began last summer with what authorities describe as an anonymous tip to police that taxpayer-funded grants for philosophy research were being misspent. A police investigation began, but nothing was heard about it until last month. On 8 January, the office of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, announced to the press that it was launching its own investigation into the use of grant money awarded to five Hungarian philosophers. The scholars have received grants totaling 440 million forints—about $2 million—to support dozens of research projects, postdocs, and students. The commissioner in charge of the investigation, Budai Gyula, did not name specific charges but implied that there was evidence of wrongdoing.

Outside Hungary, some journalists have called the move a government attack on dissidents. But the right-leaning Hungarian media took a different tack, according to critics. “The press has depicted these philosophers as a criminal gang,” says István Bodnár, a philosopher at the Central European University in Budapest. One of the accused philosophers, Agnes Heller, has appeared on YouTube (in English) to make the case that they are being persecuted.

Here’s Heller’s YouTube.

Here’s an open letter from members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to the president of that organization. There’s an online petition.

This latest attack aligns nicely with the Hungarian government’s new law repressing free speech.

… the world,” writes George Konrád, in The Melancholy of Rebirth.

Free thought and free speech generally should serve as antidotes to the world, and it’s particularly depressing to see Konrád’s own country, Hungary, screwing up bigtime along these lines lately.  The country’s center-right government has passed a disgusting new press-restriction law.

Miklos Haraszti, former OSCE representative on freedom of the media, denounced an “unprecedented” attack against press freedom aimed at establishing the subordination of the media to the whims of the ruling party and instituting self-censorship among journalists. “It is practically like in Belarus,” he added. “This law is the tip of the iceberg at the ending point of a process whereby the Hungarian government is misusing its legislative majority to methodically dismantle legal balances and constitutional guarantees.”

Protests – online and on the streets (more than 10,000 people showed up at a Budapest rally yesterday) – are taking place.

There are two models for this.

One, typified by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, is a comprehensive institution, almost entirely devoted to extortion of private and public funds. Other examples of the-university-as-criminal-conspiracy are Asia University (currently available for purchase at seven billion won) and Panteion University in Greece.

The other model involves top-down, restricted theft, as in the recent case of Hungary’s National Defense University. Here the extortion seems to have been performed by the rector, on his own initiative.

The rector of the Zrinyi Miklós National Defense University – Hungary’s higher education facility for military personnel – was placed on remand last Thursday on suspicion of abuse of office. János Szabó had to be wrestled to the ground by National Bureau of Investigation (NNI) officers while attempting to resist arrest the previous Tuesday.

Szabó had allegedly told the Hungarian arm of the German parcel carrier DHL that it was the subject of an investigation over personnel transporting drugs and arms. He is alleged to have offered to use his influence to have the probe stopped, in exchange for DHL signing a contract with a security firm nominated by Szabó.

Scrappy Hungarians! Can you imagine an American university president wrestled to the ground while resisting arrest? You know they’d go quietly.