Friday, September 07, 2007
A Prominent Midwest Democrat Accused Of Plagiarism: Illinois College Prez Was U.S. Rep
CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The Chicago Sun Times has been following the story at Southern Illinois University, where former Democratic U.S. Rep. Glenn Poshard is suspected of filching portions of his doctoral dissertation. Poshard is the university's president and served 10 years in the House. He quit to run for governor in 1998 and was defeated by Republican George Ryan, who left office in 2003. Ryan was convicted of federal corruption charges in 2006. Now, Poshard's ethics are under review for claiming original authorship of work that was done by someone else, an allegation he is disputing, according to press reports.
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Poshard said he was not worried about losing his Ph.D. He acknowledged he needed the degree to get the $300,000-a-year job as president but said he never used the degree for political gain in his years in the state Senate and U.S. House.
ReplyDelete"Plagiarism in a doctoral dissertation is not something that goes away once the dissertation has been accepted by the candidate's university: the scholar is always answerable for his or her work. And the nature and extent of the plagiarism in Glenn Poshard's thesis are *not* excusable on the grounds that there were no word processors 24 years ago! The kinds of copying evident in Poshard's dissertation have never been acceptable among scholars. The fact that SIU folk seem so ready to defend Poshard suggests to me that there is no real commitment to excellence there. At best, his academic work was worse than mediocre. "
The Chicago Tribune, on Friday, called for SIU President Glenn Poshard--accused of plagiarizing parts of his 1984 doctoral dissertation--to step
Poshard claimed that he may have inadvertently neglected to put quotes around several passages lifted from other source materials and he did not intend to deceive.
The Tribune's call on this is the correct one. Poshard has lost his credibility to lead the SIU campus system.
Shalom,
--- Prof. Leland Milton Goldblatt
http://www.prof.faithweb.com
http://drgoldblatt.blogspot.com/