Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for September 7, 2007 THE ACCIDENTAL PLAGIARIST

Editorial

Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard has a simple plan to placate the nitpickers who are troubled by passages in his doctoral thesis that appear to have been lifted from other sources. He wants a do-over.

Poshard has offered to resubmit the paper to SIU's department of educational administration and higher education, which awarded him a doctoral degree in 1984, and make whatever corrections it recommended. Department officials balked at that idea -- Poshard is now their boss, after all -- and suggested that "a committee with broader academic representation" should conduct the review.

Poshard's proposed solution gets points for originality, which is more than you can say for his dissertation. The Daily Egyptian, SIU's student newspaper, reported last month that it found 30 examples of verbatim or near-verbatim text from other sources in Poshard's 111-page thesis.

Poshard acknowledges that he neglected to put quotation marks around some material (16 times, according to the Daily Egyptian), but says he believed that was OK as long as he cited the sources in footnotes, which he might have forgotten to do a few times (14, the newspaper says). But that's not plagiarism, Poshard says.

Yes, it is. And it's an egregious and unforgivable offense for a university president, of all people. Poshard should step down.

"There was absolutely no intention here whatsoever, whatsoever, to deceive anybody or take credit for anybody's work," he protests. If this reminds you of Bill Clinton defending his marital fidelity by parsing his definitions, go to the head of the class. A former congressman and candidate for governor, Poshard is a charming guy and an adroit politician, which might explain why he seems to think he can ride out this storm.

He allowed in at least one interview that he wouldn't have been named university president without that doctorate. He's right, and now that degree has been exposed as a fraud.

(Though let's be honest: his most important qualifications were that he had political influence and knew how to play the game in Illinois. He could draw state funds to SIU.)

Let's pretend we buy Poshard's explanation that he cribbed all those passages accidentally. Does that excuse it? No. Though plagiarism sometimes involves the unabashed theft of someone else's brilliant inventiveness, those cases are dangerously easy to spot. Far more common is the careless or lazy misappropriation of another's words, a larcenous shortcut designed to spare the researcher from doing the actual work.

Some of the sections copied into Poshard's soporifically titled paper, "The Provisions for Gifted Children Education from 1977 Through 1983 in 22 Southern Illinois Counties" are so opaquely worded that it's hard to believe Poshard or the committee that reviewed his work let them stand as written. But hey, he was a busy man -- raising a family, working two jobs, launching a political career and writing a dissertation. He didn't take the time to synthesize and summarize. He should have.

An SIU student who commits plagiarism -- defined in the code of conduct as "representing the work of another as one's own work" -- faces sanctions ranging from a failing grade to expulsion. Faculty members can be fired or disciplined. Last year, Poshard named a task force to come up with a clear definition of plagiarism in response to a rash of complaints against teachers and administrators.

The Daily Egyptian's story began with a tip from Alumni and Faculty Against Corruption at SIU, a group that dedicated itself to exposing plagiarism after Edwardsville campus professor Chris Dussold was fired for copying another instructor's teaching philosophy statement. Dussold is suing the university, saying he was unfairly singled out, and his supporters are doing a pretty good job of bolstering his everybody-does-it argument.

All the more reason for SIU to take an unambiguous stand on the importance of academic integrity, starting at the top. Glenn Poshard has to go.