Some time ago Roger Kimball and I had a back and forth on Pajamas Media about plagiarism, occasioned by the discovery that Timothy S. Goeglein, then the deputy director of the White House’s Office of Public Liaison, had been boosting words to compose columns for his Indiana hometown newspaper. Roger had this to say about the increasing stigma attached to plagiarism:
These days, plagiarism is a Cardinal Sin in the academy. Of course, it’s always been frowned upon, but it’s my sense that the level of opprobrium that surrounds it has risen noticeably in recent years. Perhaps this is partly because, with nearly universal access to the internet, it is so much easier to plagiarize now than before. . . . Possibly plagiarism seems a more scarlet violation these days because so many other intellectual vices—deliberate obscurity, political tendentiousness, general vacuousness—get a free pass.
I wasn’t sure that plagiarism itself doesn’t get a free pass, given the “right” circumstances:
I’ve heard a few objections to a supposed “double standard”: Haven’t other possible plagiarists, like Barack Obama and Columbia University’s Madonna Constantine, skirted scrutiny for their own thefts? There’s only one standard, which either is upheld or isn’t: If you love something, attribute it.
Good news, folks: That standard still stands. The New York Sun reports that Constantine has indeed been found guilty and will be suspended “indefinitely” from Teachers College at Columbia University. The Sun story also notes that “[d]uring the months since the College levied sanctions against her . . . Professor Constantine continued to make accusations of plagiarism, including in at least one instance to the press, against those whose works she had plagiarized.” Looks like Dartmouth doesn’t have the monopoly on crazy professors.
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