A local Christian college president has resigned after news that he plagiarized a chapter of his book. The Board of Directors did not ask him to step down. He took that on himself. Perhaps it’s an honorable move, but his explanation leaves me with doubt. He said he did not understand copyright laws at the time, and that it was “a major academic mistake.” The minister whose work was copied is quoted saying, “He told me that he had read my book in college, liked it, and was under the impression that I had passed away or that it was no longer in print when he used it.”
The former president said he tried to give proper credit to the minister in most recent editions by adding the minister’s photo and contact information to the front of the book. “There was not a cover up,” he said, “and I was planning on re-writing that section of the book anyway.”
How does any of this justify taking someone else’s published words as your own?
It does make you wonder what he was thinking. Is he so confused that he thinks any of those explanations is not completely beside the point?
It would be easier to understand if he said, “I gave into the temptation to present some good work as my own, and I felt it would do little harm to the real author, which made it easier to justify my wrongdoing to myself — but it was dishonest, and I’m ashamed.”
I can’t judge his motives, but I’ve seen this kind of thing too often. I generally assume it’s sloppiness, not outright theft–that is, not understood to be outright theft. We’ve talked about this before on this blog.
Perhaps in contradiction of what I say above, I read the last quote from the former president very harshly. “I was planning to re-write that section of the book anyway?” That’s the type of thing someone says when he knows he has done the wrong thing.