Crime and Punishment: it isn't academic

Since this story, which has been in the media for a month or more now, directly relates to what we do in AEP, I emailed The New York Times article to myself a few days ago so that I could come back to it later and blog it when I had a little more time. In "Plagiarism in Dissertation Costs German Defense Minister His Job", Judy Dempsey tells the salutary tale of a very popular and successful politician whose life has now been pretty much destroyed because of his academic crimes.

Dempsey reports that Germany's defence minister, the popular and influential Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, resigned on March 1 because of charges the he plagiarised other people's work in his doctoral thesis. As Dempsey notes, Guttenberg had initially denied the accusations of plagiarism, but the evidence was there in his doctoral dissertation as a record; after finally admitting a week earlier that "he had made mistakes" (¶ 11) in his use of sources, he finally did what opposition politicians and academics had been demanding, both resigning from his powerful government position and renouncing his doctorate. Meanwhile, the University of Bayreuth has revoked the degree because of his crime.

As Quest repeatedly emphasises, plagiarism is a serious crime which no good university will tolerate (Hartmann, 2007, p. 188; Hartmann & Blass, 2007, p. 110). Some garbage universities with low standards might not refuse a degree to students who steal other people's ideas, but who would want such a worthless degree? And that is why Bayreuth has cancelled Guttenberg's degree - it's the only thing the university can do to protect its reputation as a serious academic institution. It was the right decision, and the normal response of a good university to plagiarism. My own response is a little gentler: as my notes on plagiarism in the Explanation of AEP Grades advise, when I come across it in my students work, I give that piece of writing a P, with no option to revise it (Filicietti, 2011). Actually, I'm even gentler: I'm prepared to overlook it once if we haven't already covered plagiarism in class. This blog post counts as covering it in class for this term.

One reason we are blogging the news here as part of our daily writing is to practise the skills involved in using sources in academic writing. Whatever field you study, you will constantly need to use other people's work to support your own ideas, to argue against them, to build on them, and so on, and learning the related skills of quoting, paraphrasing, citing sources and writing reference lists are essential to doing that successfully and safely in your academic writing.

Don't fall into Guttenberg's costly mistake. His university would have been less concerned and would not have stripped him of the degree if he had only committed a murder or two, or indulged in some corruption.

And one last question: in my title, what does the word academic mean?

__________

References

Dempsey, J. (2011, March 1). Plagiarism in dissertation costs German defense minister his job. The New York Times. Retrieved March 6, 2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/world/europe/02germany.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Filicietti, P. (2011, February). Explanation of AEP Grades. Retrieved March 6, 2011 from https://docs.google.com/View?id=dm6nf6d_97ftx84fgb

Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Hartmann, P. & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.