Plagiarism in High Places

One of the big running debates over the last few weeks--"big" for those of us who teach first-year writing--is Hillary Clinton's accusation that Barack Obama "plagiarized" his good friend Massachusetts Governor Devall Patrick in a speech of his. The Obama campaign's response was first that (a) Patrick had given Obama permission to use his words; then, after the Clinton campaign protested that approval doesn't make a difference if the intent is to deceive the American people into thinking that Obama is a great orator, they added, more substantially, that (b) political speech is not protected, and American politicians borrow from each other all the time, and (c) that Hillary Clinton does this herself, even borrowing, over the course of this campaign, several catchphrases from Obama. The Clinton campaign's response to that last? "Plagiarism" only counts if Obama does it, because Clinton isn't running on her rhetorical prowess.

The pundits on the left and the right have been fairly dismissive of Clinton's charges, largely along the lines of (b), above. Now, though, we seem to have a new plagiarism scandal brewing in high places: Nancy Nall, a blogger who used to write a column for the (Fort Wayne, Indiana) News-Sentinel, just this morning has outed News-Sentinel columnist Tim Goeglein, whom one of the commenters on her blog describes as a "White House Public Liaison officer and Karl Rove gopher" (primarily he is a liaison between the White House and the Christian Right), as plagiarizing extensively from "What is a College Education?", a late-90s piece in the right-wing Dartmouth Review by Jeffrey Hart, a long-time Dartmouth English professor who also served as an aide under Nixon and Reagan. She provides long quotations from both sources, showing just how little Goeglein changed in stealing Hart's words; Goeglein has now admitted the plagiarism (Nall broke the news this morning, and Goeglein had confessed online by noon).

But meanwhile, Nall's readers have been busy, and have uncovered numerous other plagiarized pieces "by" Goeglein, and have documented them in the comments section to her post.

As one commenter pointed out: how stupid do you have to be to plagiarize off the Internet? We shake our heads in amazement at our freshmen, who apparently aren't savvy enough in the ways of the world to avoid ripping off other people's work from websites; but this is a senior public liaison in the White House ... and a conservative guru on (get this) media ethics ... writing on education!

Ayn Rand, Devil's Advocates, and Academic Addictions

A few days ago on the WPA-L list (for the full thread, click here), Lauren Sewell Ingraham--one of our rhet/comp Ph.D.s from the nineties, now WPA at UT Chattanooga--wrote about a problem student of hers who is giving her trouble:

In short, he discovered Ayn Rand a few months before the semester started and now fashions himself an infallible, morally superior, savior-of-the-masses Rand-inspired Hero (I am using all caps here because he does). This student, as Hero, appears as the main protagonist in everything he writes.

Never having read Rand myself, I didn't recognize the student's initial bizarre writing as being so completely influenced by her. I just thought its sentiments were oddly cocky for having been so poorly written. The student's drafts of the two formal assignments we've attempted so far have both centered around this inflated sense of himself, often with direct references to _Atlas Shrugged_. I've tried using strategies that usually work with students who have an artifically inflated view of their own writing prowess, but I am getting nowhere fast. This guy seems to have sealed up his core personality in some shiny Randian protective suit. It's a little unnerving.

WPA-ers have responded to Lauren in a variety of ways. John Gravener at De Anza College, for example, seems to believe that the solution is to escalate the instructor’s authority:

Gawd, Rand should be banned, or at least no student under 40 should be able to read her (hopefully by the time they hit 40 they will have had their blind idealism knocked out of them--kind of like teenagers who find that it actually costs money to live in the real world and that they have to work for that money). I'm kidding, of course, kind of.

I once had a student of Rand in a FYC class, and it was all I could do to not slap him upside his head. One of the texts we were reading was Kozol's Savage Inequalities, and he could not get his head around the notion of the cycle of poverty. His belief, based on Rand, was that poor students in horrific schools were to blame for their situation because they would not pull themselves up by their bootstraps. He, too, had some inflated sense of self, which caused him to have no charitable or empathetic bone in his body. Unfortunately, he was not the well-groomed (not counting the missing teeth) type of student you have; he fashioned himself as some new bohemian (raggedy clothes, uncombed hair, Birkenstocks). It was a tough semester. Every one of his essays would cite Rand, and I would dread having to read the essays, but I held my tongue (and pen) and just stuck to working on the essays themselves. I, of course, pointed out the grammar and mechanical issues, but I also pointed out the argumentative fallacies he presented. We never did see eye to eye ideologically, but at least his essays got clearer, cleaner, and more focused.

Dennis Ciesielski at the University of Wisconsin – Platteville seems to agree with John, except that, where John bites his tongue and just tries to improve the student's writing, Dennis encourages more reading and pushes to have the student attack his own position:

Sounds like the problem of: one student who has read one book in one lifetime -- sort of a scary secular fundamentalist. My advice: More reading to flush out or dilute the Randisms.

Perhaps a good advanced comp assignment would be to have the student play the devil's advocate in an essay that challenges Rand's libertarian schlock, including a research project aimed at discovering the other side . . .

Since we agree that Rand's thought is "libertarian schlock," the instructor needs to do everything possible to undermine or "flush out" the student's ideological adherence to it, which is "scary fundamentalism." Seth Kahn at West Chester University of PA adds to this approach:

Echoing (riffing on?) Dennis' suggestion ...

I had a student a few years ago who did research for an entire semester so he could argue for privatizing all higher education. About 3 weeks before the end of the term, I had everybody updating everybody else on their progress, and he did about a 5-minute diatribe on the subject. When he was done, and a couple of students had asked him some detail questions, I couldn't help myself and had to ask, "Does it strike you as at all ironic that you're arguing in favor of privatizing higher education while you're sitting in a public school classroom? If you believe what you're saying, why are you here?"

His response, in the grand tradition of Michael Dukakis' running mate (whose name I'm blipping on right now--must be the snow), "Well, the law says I can come here, and I can't afford a private school."

I suggested that he do some more research into the operating budgets of WCU, Villanova, Temple, and some other nearby schools with an eye towards figuring out whether WCU is less expensive because it costs less to operate, or because his and other students' tuition is subsidized by the state. It was a marquis moment in my teaching when he came back a week later with numbers that clearly showed him how much he benefits from subsidized higher ed.

He didn't give up his argument, exactly, but it sure helped him, uh, modulate it.

The basic assumption here, again, seems to be that when a student gets locked into a certain argumentative or stylistic strategy, it is the instructor’s duty to get him or her to "give it up." But note also that Seth encourages his student to do more research not to "flush out or dilute the Randisms" but to help him see the bigger picture.

I then posted a Writing As Drama-based suggestion similar to Dennis’s, except that, instead of being set up to attack Rand, it is designed to give the student a chance to explore another side of Rand, so as to foster critical-thinking skills without (overtly) setting him in rhetorical opposition to Rand:

I don't know, why not try something a little more creative? Why not require that he write his next essay in the voice of Lillian Rearden, or some other character in Atlas Shrugged that is as LITTLE like him as possible? That way he'll be exercising his critical skills a little and not just idealizing.

Nick Carbone at Colorado State opens up a different approach:

I remember reading Rand and finding a lot to admire at that age and that time. There's stuff from her that still makes sense to me, though it's mightily tempered.

You've caught a student at first blush with her ideas; enthralled and literally captivated. So much so that he's trying them on.

I've just finished reading Tom Wolfe's _A Man in Full_ and it has a character who finds his way by reading the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus. If you have Wolfe's book, there's a chapter where that philosophy is brought forth via that character's view of it.

Getting that to your student might be a good way of showing that Rand's not *all* that original on the one hand. Or heck, have him go to the source (http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/epit.htm) and ask him to compare Stoicism to Objectivism.

It will at least give him the start of wider view of things but in a framework that isn't necessarily contrary, which he just might not be reader for.

Rand's philosophy, since he's in the grip of it, is of the kind that will make it hard to talk/reason him out of it for now. But expanding his view of its variations might begin to open for him longer term, intellectual options.

A radical idea: instead of assuming that you know better and should do everything in your power to get the student to agree with you, or disagree a little less violently, start with where the student is, what the student believes, take it seriously enough to encourage him to take it more seriously as well, by studying it--with an eye not to refuting it but to understanding it in its larger context. Geof Carter at Saginaw Valley State University finds another positive approach to Rand:

Your quandary reminds me that Slavoj Zizek, a leading Lacanian scholar, once said during an interview. When asked which film he would take to a desert island, he said his he would take Rand's -The Fountainhead-.

This choice intrigued and I did some looking into Rand and this film. Recently, Shelia Kunkle has published an article in the International Journal of Zizek Studies entitled "Zizek's Choice" that explores his relation to Rand. It's perhaps a bit "heavier" perspective than what you're looking for with regards to dealing with this student, but perhaps thinking about Rand in terms of Zizek will offer a valuable perspective.

Here's the link to Kunkle's article:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22zizek+and+rand%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a">http://www.google.com/search?q=%22zizek+and+rand%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Bruce McComiskey at the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggests another approach based less on the contents of this students' papers, more on how he addresses them to his readers:

I've also had some "interesting" students (a self-proclaimed satanist, a practicing witch, both of whom were otherwise quite normal and pleasant). I usually bring them back to reality, at least in my writing classes, by emphasizing the constraints of academic discourse and, more importantly, emphasizing the relationship between ethos and audience. A self-inflated ego fails rhetorically if audience is considered remotely important. Interest in Rand is no problem--I've been into some "out there" folks, and it's done me little harm. The problem here seems to be that your student's ethos is inappropriate for the audiences he wants to address. If he's interested in spreading the word about Rand (a perfectly reasonable purpose), then he's not doing it effectively with self-important language. Ethos and audience are the directions I'd take this students.

Andrew Winslow at the University of Arizona adds a psychotherapeutic note:

In terms of practical suggestions, I think Bruce McComiskey's right on; it's hard to go wrong with having the student address the issues of (target) audiences and ethos in his papers.

If you're the God-fearing sort, I'd also recommend setting aside some time daily to pray that the student receives humility from a divine source.

Aside from the divine, I think your best bet with the "more attitude than talent" types is to recognize the problem as an academic addiction.

Gravitating toward Rand so strongly is probably due to academic frustration and a sense of alienation; echoing Rand gives him a comfort zone with a seemingly built-in method of success, a comrade-in-arms, access to an elite group, and a justification scapegoat for low grades (i.e. "no one gets me/us--the truly enlightented"). I ran into the same problems myself in undergrad psyc echoing Stanley Milgram, in grad school echoing Karl Marx (and there are a few craters still smoldering with the faculty over that flirtation), and more lately with Kenneth Burke, though not to the same extent. Solving the addiction means finding a more appropriate solution for frustration and alienation in the long-term. A series of compassionate interventions might work best in the short run. Keep your doors open to him and perhaps set up a regular meeting schedule.

This will evolve the relationship from "him and Ayn Rand against you" to "you and him against discursive ignorance." In effect, you'll be his new sponsor. Also, incorporate him in as much group discussion as possible, no matter how ridiculous he sounds, and keep your correction light or humorous. Students in the class are generally perceptive of behavior outside of the norm, and will begin policing him as well. Getting the "family" on board even if they don't know it will take some of the burden off of you. If the environment is light enough, he'll begin to see the absurdity of his ethos in comparison to the group without hostility. I managed to win over a few students this way--especially when I occasionally agreed with the individual student against the class. It demonstrated that I was on the side of good arguments and not particular favorites.

There were a lot of really good suggestions on the list already; the more reading he gets into the more at home he'll feel with academic discourse and the less likely he'll be to continue posing on his not-so high horse once he's disillusioned with Rand. No one goes cold-turkey these days; wean him off on academic barbituates as part of the system until he's flushed it out entirely.

Excellent advice! For academic addictions, go here.