Thursday, June 23, 2011

Plagiarism, Privilege, and Political Promotion (!) in the County of Poets and Thinkers

It keeps getting better. After a massive public outcry over zu Guttenberg's plagiarized doctoral dissertation which finally forced the former German defense minister and the country's most popular politician at the time to resign his post, a new plagiarized dissertation has resulted in another doctoral title being taken away from a popular German politician. And was the result the same: did the politician have to resign? No, in fact, ex-doctor Sylvana Koch-Mehrin has not only not had to quit her job as European parliament representative, she has been promoted to, get this, the Parliamentary Commission on Industry, Research, and Energy. Needless to say this is an insult bordering on the absurd, and consequently a petition calling for her dismissal has been launched. So it seems that in "Das Land der Dichter und Denker" (The Country of Poets and Thinkers), in order to succeed politically, one does not even have to have thoughts of one's own; it suffices to copy what others have said without attribution and to claim it for oneself. The more brazen the lie, the more galling the sense of entitlement that the ruling political class displays.  

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