A faculty committee has issued its verdict on whether Glenn Poshard, president of Southern Illinois University, plagiarized numerous portions of his dissertation, which he completed at the university in 1984. In short, he’s off the hook.
That’s not to say he didn’t plagiarize. The report, a copy of which was given to The Chronicle earlier today, finds “many instances” in Mr. Poshard’s dissertation in which “the words of others are present in a continuous flow with student Poshard’s own words, so that readers cannot distinguish between those sources.” Remarkably, the report does not deem those instances to be plagiarism. They are, instead, “errors and mistakes.”
The committee, made up of seven Southern Illinois faculty members, writes that there are a number of mitigating factors, such as the lack of a definition of plagiarism in the graduate-student handbook at the time. It goes on to say that his many failures to properly credit the work of others was “consistent with the informal style” practiced by others in his department. It recommends that Mr. Poshard be allowed to correct the “incorrect practices” in the dissertation and that no disciplinary action be taken.
The report leaves several key questions unanswered. For instance, why does Mr. Poshard correctly cite passages in some instances but not in others? Isn’t that proof that he knew how to give proper credit, but simply chose not to do so throughout much of the dissertation?
The report is unlikely to stop debate on the campus about whether Mr. Poshard should step down. A petition signed by 30 Southern Illinois professors calls for an independent committee to review the dissertation. Robert Bruce Ware, a professor of philosophy at the university’s Edwardsville campus, was one of those who signed the petition. He said he had been contacted by other professors who wished to sign but were afraid of retribution.
“A person who doesn’t understand what intellectual integrity is has no business leading our university,” he said. Mr. Ware called what Mr. Poshard did in the dissertation “intellectual theft.”
In one of the most perplexing portions of the report, Mr. Poshard argues that he was a “novice” in his field and therefore “did not want to assert his own voice.” In addition, the president of the university says he received no training on the meaning of plagiarism.
The Chronicle attempted, without success, to reach all of the seven professors who prepared the report.
Some professors at Southern Illinois — and elsewhere — are wondering what message the report’s findings send to students. It’s not a good one, according to John M. Barrie, the creator of turnitin.com, a plagiarism-search engine. “People always ask me why the problem of plagiarism is so bad,” Mr. Barrie said. “One of the reasons is that presidents of universities are doing this kind of thing, and when they’re caught, they wave it off.” —Thomas Bartlett