Notes on Plagiarism: the zu Guttenberg Affair
For those of you who don't follow the news in Europe, Germany's Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned this past Tuesday after bowing to allegations that he had plagiarized large sections of his doctoral dissertation in law while studying at the University of Bayreuth. This comes as a huge blow for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who made the mistake of quickly backing zu Guttenberg when the scandal first broke two weeks ago. “I am more concerned about his work as defense minister. He performs this excellently, and that's all that matters.” 1 Zu Guttenberg, young, insanely charismatic, and born into nobility, was seen by many Germans as a likely future German Chancellor, and yet, through this scandal, those hopes have been dashed.
While listening zu Guttenberg's resignation speech on Tuesday, I had to think back to my student days at Oberlin, and how, whenever we had exams or assignments, we had to write and sign the following statement:
“I affirm that I have adhered to the Honor Code in this assignment.”2
Oberlin's honor code is unique as, rather than being controlled by the school's faculty and staff, it is upheld by a Student Honor Committee. “The SHC (Student Honor Committee) promotes an Honor System where students form part of the Oberlin College community of scholars,” the committee's charter explains. “As peers, the SHC allows for the student body to be accountable to each other based on the principles of academic integrity.” 3
That means, if you were caught cheating, then you had to face a committee made up of your peers, who had the right to determine your fate- a rather frightening thought, if you really think about it.
I wonder whether this basic idea of “personal responsibility,” entrusted to students as both a right and privilege, is something we need to reconsider in the digital age. It's disturbing to read how “54% of students admitted to plagiarizing from the Internet” (Education Week) and how, in a finding from Donald L. McCabe's report Faculty Responses to Academic Dishonesty 55% of America's teachers "would not be willing to devote any real effort to documenting suspected incidents of student cheating". 4
Perhaps, through the Web's wealth of 'free information', many who study these days simply forget what an “honor code” within the context of the Internet really means and therefore don't understand the consequences of such actions.
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Discovering that Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg had plagiarzed his dissertation was a matter of pure coincidence. Professor Andreas Fischer-Lescano of the University of Bremen had wanted to use zu Guttenberg's text for a seminar about constitutional law. Dismayed by the argumentation zu Guttenberg had used, Professor Fischer-Lescano performed a Google search on one of the sections and was surprised to find that it was directly taken from a newspaper article. “I was speechless at first and didn't want to believe my eyes.”5 When he found even more examples, he decided to contact the Süddeutsche Zeitung in order to make his findings public.
The public announcement came on February 16th, with the Süddeutsche Zeitung publishing excerpts from his thesis next to the original sources. Zu Guttenberg remained adamant that he had done nothing wrong. Looking directly into television cameras the next day, he made the following statement:
“My dissertation, which I wrote entirely by myself, is no plagiarism and I fully refute the accusation. It is approxiamtely seven years old, and was carefully written while serving my official duties and obligations as a father, and it most unquestionably contains mistakes, mistakes that I am extremely unhappy about. To the best of my knowledge, I never attempted to hide or fail to acknowledge authors, and if someone feels hurt by this, or by the incorrect use or citation of their words through footnotes, 1,300 on 475 pages, then I am truly sorry. The upcoming review of these mistakes and decision will be made by the University of Bayreuth, and of course will actively help them in order to determine just how broad the errors in the research, and I repeat research, could be. And I would gladly, until the results of this review are shown, temporarily, and I repeat temporarily renounce my (doctor) title, but only until then. Afterward, I will take up this title again.”6
“I was astonished, simply astonished,” explained Professor Barbara Zehnpfennig, whose article was one of many zu Guttenberg had used. “I was astonished that he abused all rules of research and it is astonishing that he presented himself that he presented himself so directly and decently, as well as astonished that he reacted politically so poorly as he shut himself off from his opponents.”7
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Could it be that the “Honor Code”, noble as it is, has simply died? We would like to see the case of individuals such as zu Guttenberg as “exceptions to the rule”, but I feel that this scandal only underlines how plagiarism is more common than we wish to admit it. Worse, it seems that the general public simply doesn't care. In a survey conducted by the German television station ARD, over 72% percent of Germans feel that zu Guttenberg should should stay on as defense minister, and many toned down the allegations with comments such as “everyone cheats now and then.”8
Perhaps, but here we are not talking about a mere cheat sheet hidden away for some exam. Zu Guttenberg's dissertation is a 393 page document where, on 324 of those pages, a total of 891 passages and text fragments have been found to contain material taken from over 120 sources.9 And those sources are not minor. When the scandal broke two weeks ago, the Süddeutsche Zeitung published excerpts from zu Guttenberg's dissertation, allowing the reader to make a direct side-by-side comparison of the sections in question against their possible sources. According to the newspaper, the former defense minister 'borrowed' large sections from articles appearing in leading German language newspapers including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Neue Zuricher Zeitung, as well as from lectures that had been given at the Lichtenstein Institute of Research and Teaching and the Humboldt University in Berlin.10
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The scandal raises several questions in my mind. First, why did it take so long to discover such an egregious case of plagiarism? Second, what was Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg thinking of when he was writing his dissertation? Did he really believe that he could fool his university? And third, what was the University of Bayreuth thinking when they awarded his dissertation with the distinction “summa cum laude,” or the highest honor? Were their heads screwed on right?
Question one can probably answered by explaining that software programs used to detect plagiarism are still in their infant stages and are still not as effective as the trained human eye. According to a PowerPoint presentation by Professor Deborah Weber-Wulff of the Hochschule für Technik und Writschaft in Berlin titled Plagiarism Detection Software 2010- A Magic Bullet or a Waste of Time?, most of programs on the market today fail to detect material taken from books (including those listed in Google Books), from translations, as well as from material that has been re-worked. Moreover, many programs are quite cumbersome to use.
The answer to question two is anyone's call. I still can't figure out why this man, who was born with a not just a silver, but a golden spoon in his mouth, was so stupid in his ways. Some go so far as to argue that he didn't even really need the title in the first place.
Contemplating the answer to question three is bothering me the most. A “summa cum laude” for a grossly plagiarized dissertation simply doesn't wash, and only shows the failings of the University of Bayreuth. I know that zu Guttenberg's dissertation was probably only read by a handful of professors, but I would hope that the reviewers would have known the field well enough to have recognized at least one or two of the 891 lifted passages (especially when one is talking about entire sections rather than mere sentences). It is, in my opinion, simply embarrassing for the faculty and staff at the university.
Now that the scandal is out in the open, the University of Bayreuth has been quick to retract zu Guttenberg's degree and is currently investigating the case for purposes of “self-control”. I ask myself whether the university will just go so far as to reexamine how it reviews doctoral dissertations. Could it be that the law faculty, eager to award a baron the title of doctor so as to bolster its own reputation, was careless in reviewing his dissertation, perhaps going so far as to turn a blind eye to the passages in question? Perhaps. Soon after the Süddeutsche Zeitung questioned zu Guttenberg's dissertation, the Berlin Tagesspiegel reported how Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg donated 750,000 Euros to the Universität Bayreuth to sponsor a new position for the law and research faculty. 11 Could it be that this was the real reason for his “summa cum laude”?
Ironically, zu Guttenberg's personal homepage was once nothing but rhetoric about his call to ”responsibility,” or “Verantwortung verpflichtet”. Now with those words erased from his website, all one is left with is a shell of a man with a perfect smile. “I have reached the limits of my powers,” zu Guttenberg explained when announcing his resignation during a press conference on Tuesday. 12
1Merkel unterstützt guttenberg nach doktor-verzicht. (2011). Welt Online, Retrieved from http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article12614474/Merkel-unterstuetzt-Guttenberg-nach-Doktor-Verzicht.html
2Csci 150 honor code. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cs.oberlin.edu/~asharp/cs150/honour.html
3Oberlin college- student's rights and responsibilities. (2008). Retrieved from http://new.oberlin.edu/students/policies/11-Policies-Honor.pdf
4Stricherz, M. (2001). Many teachers ignore cheating, survey finds. Education Week, 20(34), Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2001/05/09/34cheat.h20.html
5Der mann, der alles ins rollen brachte. (2011, March 2). Sächsische Zeitung, Retrieved from http://www.sz-online.de/nachrichten/artikel.asp?id=2701621
6In sachen titel-verteidigung: zu guttenberg erklärt sich. (2011, February 18). Spiegel Online Video, Retrieved from http://www.spiegel.de/video/video-1110187.html
7Guttenberg vorwurf: plagiat - prof. barbara zehnpfennig interview . (2011). [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRMn00eqpbo
8Ard-umfrage: guttenberg beliebter als vor der plagiatsaffäre / 72 prozent der deutschen wünschen sich, dass er im amt bleibt. (2011). WDR.de, Retrieved from http://www.wdr.de/unternehmen/presselounge/pressemitteilungen/2011/02/20110223_hart_aber_fair.phtml
9Guttenplag wiki. (2011). Retrieved from http://de.guttenplag.wikia.com/wiki/Statistik#Statistik
10Denkler, T., & Kruse, B. (2011). Die grenzen der methode guttenberg. Süddeutsche Zeitung, Retrieved from http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/plagiatsvorwurf-die-grenzen-der-methode-guttenberg-1.1061020
11750.000 euro für die uni bayreuth. (2011). Der Tagesspeigel, Retrieved from http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/750-000-euro-fuer-die-uni-bayreuth/3879402.html
12Rücktritt von karl-theodor zu guttenberg . (2011). [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsLMLfbSPxs
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