How do we teach others to do what we have declined to do for ourselves? How can we urge our students in their efforts if we have admitted that we devoted our efforts to other things? How do we ask them to earn their degrees if there is uncertainty about whether we earned our own?
This is the predicament in which some of us who teach at Southern Illinois University now find ourselves. We have devoted our careers to our students, our research and building our university. Our predicament is that all of these careers and credentials are little better than the name of our university. Anything that tarnishes its name devalues that to which we have devoted ourselves.
The president of our university, Glenn Poshard, has been accused of numerous counts of plagiarism in his SIU doctoral dissertation and his SIU master’s thesis. The accusations have circulated in the national media. Various media have referred to this chain of events as “unbelievable” and “incredible.” Jokes have appeared.
By way of defending himself against these charges, our president has publicly stated that he was too busy with other things to type quotation marks around the passages that he typed verbatim from various sources. Media reports have referred to this as a “cut-and-paste methodology,” but cut-and-paste technology was not available when our president did his writing. In those days, writing was an act of letter-by-letter deliberation. And, how can anyone be too busy to type a quotation mark when it is just another stroke?
Poshard also has stated that his two theses are deficient in the basic elements of attribution and punctuation because none of his teachers at SIU helped him to understand these things. This is to say, that he received both a MA and a PhD from SIU without having learned the things that every American learns before entering high school. He also has said his SIU doctoral and master’s advisers signed off on his theses even though they contained many instances of what he has described as “mistakes.”
So this is our predicament: Either thousands of people will see our university as run by a group of plagiarists, people who cannot hold themselves to the standards that they require of their subordinates and their students, or our university will be seen to have academic standards so low that it could not hold a doctoral candidate to the level of any ordinary high school. Either way, SIU and everyone who ever has been, or ever will be, associated with it is harmed.
A name can be difficult to clear, because it must be cleaned so carefully that it shines wherever it is seen. One way that we might begin to clear our name is to accept the resignation of our president. That would show that we repudiate his actions, and that we do not regard such actions as qualifications for our academic leaders, our students or ourselves. Ironically, Poshard’s resignation also would help to clear his name, for it would show that he shared our concern for the well-being of the university that we placed in his care.
Instead of resigning, Poshard wants to submit these plagiarism allegations to a review by a faculty committee. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t help to clear the name of SIU or the name of our president. Few people will believe that he was impartially evaluated by a group of people who operate under his authority and whose careers are dependent on him. Few people will believe that SIU’s board of trustees acted impartially when it stated its support for Poshard in advance of the review. Some will notice that until recently, Poshard was the chair of the board of trustees. He previously headed the people who now oversee him, just as he now oversees the people who will review him.
The credibility of our standards has been undermined by this scandal. By insisting upon an internal review by his subordinates, Poshard will not be seen as standing and fighting so much as stacking the deck in his favor. Due process is now the only way to clear our name, the only way out of our predicament. Due process requires a review that is fully external and fully independent of our university. If our president cannot see his way to due process then we may require the assistance of the Illinois Board of Higher Education or the governor’s office.
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Robert Bruce Ware is a philosophy professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
