I was shocked today to hear the news that Claudine Gay has resigned from her post as President of Harvard University amid allegations of plagiarism.
I think we can all agree that plagiarism is a serious form of misconduct that constitutes a breach of academic integrity and, as such, should be punished wherever it is found. But just how widespread is this kind of unethical behaviour among the leaders of public universities?
Fortunately, I have thought of a simple test to identify Presidential plagiarism, which I encourage academics everywhere to carry out.
One of the documents for which a University President (or Vice Chancellor, or equivalent) is responsible is their institution’s Strategic Plan, which normally carries their Leader’s signature on the front page.
If you work in a University, therefore, all you need to do is run this document through the plagiarism detector Turnitin. This will compare the document with others available on the internet and produce a similarity report indicating how much of it has been copied from elsewhere. If the document is found to have been significantly plagiarized, then your President (or Vice Chancellor, or equivalent) should be forced to resign.
This simple test will probably lead to many so-called leaders being removed from office so, as well as improving academic integrity, it will also save institutions a great deal of money in salary costs. It’s a win-win situation for all (except perhaps for the ex-Presidents).
P.S. Please feel free to copy this idea.
In the Dark 