It’s an ugly term, isn’t it? Plagiarist. The very syllables reek of wrongdoing.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is trying to apply that unpleasant label to rival Barack Obama. The charge has torpedoed the campaigns of other politicians (see: Joe Biden, circa 1988). It has also damaged the reputations — and, in some cases, ruined the careers — of a number of academics.
In 2005 a dean at the University of Missouri at Kansas City stepped down after it was revealed that he borrowed portions of a speech from Cornel West. In that case, there were multiple, near-verbatim passages. The following year, the chancellor at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville was found to have taken parts of a speech from a Web site. He apologized.
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