Wednesday, June 15, 2005

wailing and gnashing of teeth

This just in from History News Network

BREAKING NEWS
***Plagiarism Charged Against Bryan Le Beau: The Chronicle of Higher Education has reported a charge of plagiarism against Bryan Le Beau. Sally Greene, an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina's law school, made the discovery via a simple Google search and comments on her finding. The accusation is that Le Beau's Commencement Address at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, in December 2003 substantially plagiarized from Cornel West's Commencement Address at Wesleyan University on 30 May 1993. Greene and the Chronicle of Higher Education identify parallel passages. There is tell-tale evidence, as well, in the misspelling of the name of Toni Morrison, the novelist, in both texts. Le Beau denies he
ever read West's speech, but admits he must have borrowed the language from
somewhere.


You can just imagine how I feel about this.

UPDATE: A blogger has discovered that
Le Beau also borrowed in the same speech from Russell Baker.


C'mon PhDs. If we (and as a wanna-be I put myself in this category) can't behave with honor, how can we expect the same from our students?!

You remember them, right? The ones with whom we share our work so that they can go into the world better informed? The ones who might remember us and thus buy our books?

1 comment:

tommyspoon said...

It's been my experience (and I know that you are an exception to this, Lem) that many PhD folk could give a hoot about teaching. My wife had a few bad experiences with one at GWU, and I've heard of many others from fellow over-educated folk.

And don't get Alison and me started about our time at CUA...