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Poaching Poshard, Batman; another university president accused of a plagiarized Ph.D. thesis!

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Dr. Blandina Cardenas, president of a school in the University of Texas system, has been accused, anonymously, of plagiarism of portions of her Ph.D. thesis from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The thesis of Cardenas is titled "Defining Access to Equal Educational Opportunity for Mexican Americans: A Study of Three Civil Rights Actions Affecting Mexican American Students and the Development of a Conceptual Framework for Effecting Institutional Responsiveness to the Educational Needs of Mexican American Children."

The accusers sent out a packet to several places, including AP, which noted, among other things, the copying of the text, without quotation marks or attribution:

"By 1835 there were 25,000 to 35,000 American farmers, planters and traders in Texas and more were on the way."

"The Mexican American is the product of the fusing of Hispanic and Mexican Indian cultures; to a greater or lesser degree, he is racially a mixture of Indian and European."

Those who recall the recent, sad case of Allison Routman, Semester at Sea, and wikipedia may note that Allison copied less than Cardenas but got expelled. [see Routman's copied lines from wikipedia: enough to walk the plank?. In 1965, Joe Biden, now Vice-President Elect, copied five pages for a law school paper, but did not get expelled from Syracuse Law School. Based on the AP report, it might seem that Cardenas copied less than Glen Poshard, President of SIU. [See Page 54 of the Poshard Ph.D. thesis: a real problem as to plagiarism

**In passing, CBS Sunday Morning had a piece on Ian Fleming on 9 Nov 08, noting the 100th anniversary of his birth. The piece suggested that Ian Fleming's James Bond work was largely unknown until it was publicized that one of John Kennedy's favorite novels was "From Russia With Love." The CBS piece made no mention of the collaboration between producer Kevin McClory and Ian Fleming to make what would have been the first 007 film, back in 1960, before Kennedy's literary preferences were publicized. In this alternative universe, one had Richard Burton as Bond, and Alfred Hitchcock directing. {Recall Burton as Alexander the Great.] The CBS piece also made no mention of Fleming's plagiarism problem.
[See
Of plagiarism, James Bond, and Thunderball ]

Keywords: University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, Matt Flores, National Education Association report

Full post as published by IPBiz on November 10, 2008 (boomark / email).