One full day after finding out that they have a plagiarized speech adorning their homepage, I check on it today, and lo! I find out that it is still there. I am bumfuddled by this, since we have all been solemnly instructed that this is the most grievous of academic offenses. Maybe there has not been enough time to google up the truth. That’s it. We shall see how long it takes the fact-checkers down there at “notonthepalouse” to determine that the speech in question does contain plagiarized material. When they find out, do you think they will take it down? How long do you think it will take them to find out? Day one, and counting.
On the bright side, the web page of my accusers does not list Martin Luther King as a doctor. No doubt this is because even they recognize that vast stretches of King’s doctoral dissertation (as in, 66 percent of that learned document) submitted to Boston University were lifted from the dissertation of one Jack Boozer. If our community really wants to have an extended brawl on the subject of plagiarism, I am certainly willing. I have lots of samples and will not run out in the foreseeable future. He plagiarized about half an acre.
Or better, we can just drop it where it is, with my enemies having one to chortle about. We got tagged on something that was our responsibility, and we dealt with it honestly and immediately back in January. We have acknowledged our fault (where it lies, not where it doesn’t), and we continue to do so without any spin. To Fogel and Engerman, and to the publishers of Time on the Cross, we heartily, humbly and unreservedly apologize, and seek their forgiveness. We do the same with any readers of the booklet in the first edition.
But for those who are incapable of hearing this sort of thing, and who want to turn this into an everlasting cafeteria food fight, they have a choice to make. And they should take this into account as they do. I can assure you that any spectators to this “frank exchange of views” are going to learn a whole lot more about Martin Luther King than you wanted them to know. By the way, that plagiarized speech is still up on that web site of yours.