Plagiarism is a big deal. This new case at the University of Kansas wasn’t the first
The University of Kansas recently announced the resignation, under pressure, of its interim Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging D. A. Graham, who had held the position since December 2020. The message he sent to the university community to mark Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, as KU explained, “contained sentences similar or identical to those in a message written by Curtis L. Coy, Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity in the Veterans Benefits Administration, in 2015.” Provost Barbara Bichelmeyer called the termination “a consequence that befits the action.” KU, like universities everywhere, regards plagiarism as a cardinal academic sin.
The termination of Vice Provost Graham brings back memories of other KU luminaries who have committed such academic transgressions. One of them was Deane W. Malott, KU’s chancellor for 12 years before he left to become president of Cornell University in 1951.
Shortly after his departure, he gave his inaugural address at Cornell, and it soon became known that part of that discourse was a verbatim copy of a talk by Harold Taylor, the president of Sarah Lawrence College. Word of that plagiarism soon reached E. B. White, the noted New Yorker magazine writer as well as the author of many still-cherished books. White fretted about the matter: “My bet is that Malott (who is an ex-businessman — he used to grow pineapples) assigned a lieutenant in his office to help him get up a speech. … He even uses quotes, in one place, but no mention of what he is quoting from.”
White goes on, in another letter, “In Malott’s case, my guess is that he is just not very bright. His statement published (in the public press, which had a heyday with the episode that quickly became known as ‘the New Yorker incident) makes no sense, or rather it fails to vindicate him. He says he got his material from ‘some educational handout or filler paragraph in a weekly newspaper which was printed with no reference to source or authority.’ Well, the president of a university ought to know that everything, no matter what, originates somewhere. It has an author, however obscure, however ghostly, and you can’t knock him off, even though it is a convenience and saves work.”
White concludes by wishing “that the president’s chair was occupied by a scholar — that is, a man who is serene and magnanimous and doesn’t have to fiddle around among educational handouts and filler paragraphs.”
White’s observations are preserved in “Letters of E. B. White.” They constitute a reminder that poor judgment can occur anywhere. Did Malott plagiarize while at KU? Did plagiarism damage his career? Who knows?
But plagiarism is a severe transgression. I have failed students in my own KU courses for that very infraction.