Joyce Carol Oates wrote a short story in which an English professor, envied by his colleagues because he has had some of his poetry published, is accused of plagiarism right before his tenure review. IN the week before his review, he disappears. On the day of his review, each member of the tenure committee finds a large envelope in his and her mailbox. Inside is a detailed expose of that professor's plagiarism! Needless to say, the poet was granted tenure.
michael yates
BTW, I know John Beverley, the scholar whose comments on the Guatemala book were reported here yesterday. He grew up in Peru and is a long-time radical. I would not be as critical of his remarks as Jim H., but I think that it is a mistake not to criticize comrades for weaknesses in their arguments or errors in their facts. It did strike me as curious that Beverley, when he had a more classically Marxist view of things, was a very militant supporter of the drive by teachers at Pitt to unionize, but as he moved toward a more post-modernist take on the world, his militance diminished. Probably a coincidence!!
michael yates
d-m-c at worldnet.att.net wrote:
>
> Oh jesuschristoncrutches Gregg, consider yourself blessed that your
> students don't actually plagiarize from the damn book they've been assigned
> to read. Heck, they'd even plagiarize my handouts. Made me thoroughly
> disgusted, since it happened quite regularly. These were students who were
> very privileged (private school/elite public schools) and ostensibly
> smart--Colgate University. They were given warnings, a handout on what
> plagiarism is, and they still did it. As they generally told me, they did
> it because they could get away with it. They hear that profs don't
> actually read their papers. Well, I'm not surprised about this. I
> reviewed a grad student paper for a lousy in house grad student journal
> once. It was awful: the author spelled consensus six different ways, had
> the numbers on unemployment over the past 50 yrs all wrong, incomplete
> sentences. It was clearly a seminar paper that must have passed through
> the hands of some prof at some point, but apparently s/he never bothered to
> point out these mistakes. Something wrong with that picture. Well, he'll
> go on to be some policy wonk in Washington, so whatevA.