De Borchgrave, director and senior adviser of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), wrote an introduction to a 2007 report (“Force Multiplier for Intelligence”) that has a striking resemblance to a BBC news report published earlier that year.
To their credit, CSIS has taken a stand against plagiarism and promises a review…
[….]In October 2011, CSIS brought on Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany’s former minister of defense and minister of economy, as a “distinguished statesman.”
Guttenberg had become known as the “cut and paste minister” or the “minister of plagiarism” for allegedly plagiarizing much of his 2009 doctoral dissertation at Germany’s University of Bayreuth.
While he never clearly stated that he plagiarized his dissertation, he did ask the university to withdraw his doctor title. The investigating university committee found that “the standards of good scientific practice were obviously grossly abused and it was obvious that plagiarism was involved.”
CSIS president and chief executive John Hamre told Think Tanked at the time that he saw no reason to punish Guttenberg “just because some people wish to chain him to his transgression as part of their political agenda.”
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Zagloba
Blah, academics, what do they know? Nothing new has been thought of since the day of Aristotle anyway.
Gin & Tonic
Holy shit, Arnaud de Borchgrave is still alive?
Brachiator
Kinda sounds like the excuse that the Yahoo CEO tried to use. Didn’t quite work out for him.
EvolutionaryDesign
Just par for the course for the well-connected elite I’m afraid. Consequences for one’s actions are for the little people.
zmulls
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky.
You bastard.
policomic
“Plagiarize, plagiarize / That’s why God made your eyes!”
MikeJ
He did it with his spear and magic helmet!
Spear and magic helmet!
c u n d gulag
So, what’s the line at which one should ‘be chained to a transgression?’
What level of transgression do people need to be chained to?
Jaywalking?
DWAI?
DWI?
Assault?
Beating your spouse?
2nd Degree Murder?
Ok, back to their world:
Copy a sentence?
A paragraph?
A page?
Where is it that the chains need to bind?
Brachiator
@EvolutionaryDesign:
I think that the former CEO of yahoo and a few of their board members, who all got recently tossed on their asses for a little slip of the resume, would disagree with you.
And it wasn’t too long ago that Dominique Strauss-Kahn was a leading contender to become the next French president.
Uncle Cosmo
@zmulls: One man deserves the credit,
One man deserves the blame…
–Oy!
I wonder if de Borchgrave copied his index from old Vladivostok telephone directory–it would seem to be just the sort of thing that CSIS would have had lying around on a coffee table…
It took me many years before I realized that the last two words of the Izvestia review, idiot peshkom, sounded like round condemnation but meant merely “to go on foot”. And until just now to Google the damn thing & discover that the entire quote (Ya idoo kuda sam czar idyot peshkom!) is in fact a Russian equivalent for “going to see a man about a dog,” i.e., a euphemism for “I’m going to the crapper” (“I go where even the Czar must go on foot”). Brilliant.
Uncle Cosmo
@MikeJ: Cue the Valkyries per Elmer Fudd:
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic:
Well, he’s sorta like Dick Cheney. Deal with the devil for extended life, etc.
ericblair
@Brachiator:
I guess you can say that our lords and masters get into trouble for lying about their history a lot more than fucking up their jobs. Probably because pedigree is far more important to their cohort than performance, but I’m speculating.
With Strauss-Kahn, well, rape is kinda pretty bad. Most other deadly sins are A-OK.
reflectionephemeral
“some people wish to chain him to his transgression as part of their political agenda.”
I don’t think I’ve seen a better encapsulation of the zero-accountability attitude of our social betters.
It’s not that I think that, say, Tom Friedman or Bill Keller should suffer some negative consequences as a result of their baseless, amoral, completely wrong punditry in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; it’s that I wish to chain them to their transgressions as part of my political agenda.
smintheus
When I’d just finished my dissertation, I was advised not to contact a continental university to report a creep who had plagiarized my work in his own dissertation. He’d swiped both published stuff and material I’d given a conference paper on. I was told that as a young academic accusing a slightly more established person, I’d damage my own reputation by leveling the charge and seeming too punitive. I took the advice very reluctantly…esp. since my examiners at Oxford initially thought it was I who’d done the plagiarizing (since the other guy’s dissertation was finished the previous year). Anyway, I’ve got less than zero use for plagiarists of any stripe.
TooManyJens
OT, but there’s no open thread, so…
I have a quick question for the lawyers in the house about terminology. I’m writing a blog post about the lawsuit that Notre Dame filed about the contraception mandate. The lawsuit is online here: http://opac.nd.edu/assets/69013/hhs_complaint.pdf
The question I have is about the numbered paragraphs. Are those just referred to as Paragraph 1, 2, etc, or are they called sections, or what?
EconWatcher
@TooManyJens:
Arabic-numbered parts of a complaint are indeed called paragraphs.
TooManyJens
@EconWatcher: Thanks!
EvolutionaryDesign
@Brachiator: Fair enough. I guess I meant to say that it is surprising when actions do have consequences. Speaking in absolutes gets me in trouble frequently.
Villago Delenda Est
@EvolutionaryDesign:
“Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”
EvolutionaryDesign
@Villago Delenda Est: Ha! Indeed. I have a long way to go in my Jedi training yet!
JGabriel
__
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EvolutionaryDesign:
That’s not always true, you absolutist!
ETA: Damn, Villago Delenda Est got there first. And with a better comeback to boot.
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Davis X. Machina
Arnaud De Borchgrave…Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg
Never trust someone schlepping an article — du, zu, von, de, doesn’t matter.
schrodinger's cat
OT: Obama’s Bain attacks must be working, since Bobo has a sad and is whining about them in his column this morning.
Brachiator
@ericblair:
The yahoo CEO got kicked out on his ass for doing a lousy job. The resume thing was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Best Buy founder Richard M. Schulze had to step down because of misconduct allegations (and admissions of wrongdoing) that, again, underscored other leadership problems.
HP has gone through a number of CEO changes, all because of failures to get the job done (and in a couple of cases, a little misconduct on the side).
Yeah, the elites get a lot of cover, but they ain’t invulnerable.
DSK was never tried or convicted of rape. But the revelations of his sexual brutishness put an end to his career in France, even though early on some wanted to suggest that he had been set up.
And how ’bout presidential contender John Edwards? No matter the outcome of his case, he has been rightfully excoriated by public opinion.
@EvolutionaryDesign:
Yeah, I know where you are coming from. There are plenty of examples of elites getting away with outrageous stuff, so that sometimes it’s easy to miss the frequent situations where people get their asses handed to them.
Schlemizel
Great to see so many here are familiar with the work of the great Lobachevsky 8-{D
Tom Lehrer was wasted in mathematics!
Amir Khalid
@Davis X. Machina:
Those are prepositions. Well, du is a contraction of a preposition, de, and a definite article, le. The plagiarist zu Guttenberg’s full name, Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, has two prepositions and a conjunction; his title is Baron “of and to” Guttenberg.
As I understand, there’s usually some aristocratic connection behind names with prepositions. Per Wikipedia, Karl Theodor Yadda Yadda Yadda is a descendant of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. But that surely doesn’t mean they’re all dicks.
I’m puzzled by this. Arnaud de Borchgrave, of all people, should have had no need to plagiarize anyone. His case seems far more serious than Karl Theodor Yadda Yadda Yadda, because it’s a repeated pattern of conduct rather than a one-off with the doctoral thesis. If the charges hold up against de Borchgrave, I’d expect the CSIS review to recommend his firing.
ericblair
@Brachiator:
The Yahoo CEO, Best Buy founder, and Carly (spit) Fiorina are all from fairly modest backgrounds, so aren’t the connected upper class and are therefore expected to perform. Or more precisely, be blamed if the company fails to perform, which may or may not have anything to do with their own job performance. The Yahoo CEO seemed to have been canned for being overly secretive and rubbing people the wrong way, despite doing what a lot of analysts thought should be done to turn the company around.
Yup, pretty scummy behavior. Also a (D) beside his name, which seems to make a lot of difference.
Yes, the elite can fall from grace. The differences from the rest of us are that unless they actually go to jail, it’s doubtful they’ll be eating beans and rice every night, considering the golden parachutes, trust funds, corporate boards, think tanks, and other sinecures designed to house the well-connected and temporarily inconvenient. You’re only going to really suffer if you get shut out of the social circle, which makes keeping your friends and associates happy far more important than your performance.
Brachiator
@ericblair:
I really think you are splitting hairs here. How many CEOS in America come from the cultural, political or economic elite?
Are you seriously suggesting that any billionaire mogul in America who rose from a modest background is still just regular folks?
The top guys at google are buying private jets and big ass yachts. But they are not part of the new elite?
There is no hereditary upper class in America. Even families that a lot of people think are part of some permanent upper class, say the Kennedys or the Rockefellers, are very recent. We’ve been here before. Most people cannot name the few families that have maintained wealth, power and prestige from the earliest days of the country.
Sorry, facts and history are against you here.
JoyfulA
@ericblair: The Yahoo CEO had been there only a few months, not long enough to be awful. His degree problem was that PayPal and Yahoo promotional materials said he had, several decades ago, graduated from Central Illinois (?, but definitely non-Ivy) with a degree in accounting and computer science, whereas the degree was only accounting, and he failed to correct the error.
It all sounds minor and odd to me, especially since he was almost spirited away from eBay.
Brachiator
@JoyfulA:
This stuff is minor until you do SEC filings about your executives. Then it becomes a material mis statement of fact.
That is degree was non-Ivy is irrelevant. That he lied about the computer science degree in interviews made it more than a “several decades old mistake.”
And as I noted, dumping this guy, and the board of directors, was part of a larger battle by one yahoo’s biggest shareholders, who felt that the company’s leadership and the board was failing to solve the company’s problems.
He was critcal of this guy, even though he had not been there a long time, because he was continuing the same old loser strategy.
PIGL
@Brachiator:
Just because most people cannot name them, or that don’t go back to the Carolingians, does not mean that they are not important, and not heriditary.
Steve
@Brachiator: I don’t think misstating the CEO’s major in an SEC filing is a “material” misstatement.
ericblair
@Brachiator:
So unless the elite came over on the Mayflower and have been farting through silk ever since, there’s no hereditary upper class in this country? And there’s no difference between a first-generation elite, and second-, third-, and higher-generation elite that have had a support system from birth? You know that mobility between income quartiles in this country is relatively low, don’t you?
One big impediment to total dominance of hereditary elite is the estate tax, which has been under obvious and serious assault in the last few decades. Looks like most of the elite really want to make sure the money stays in the family.
If you’re looking for where the wealthy kids go, high-profile CEOs of publicly traded companies aren’t the place to find them. Try privately-held corporations, generations of politicians, and our inbred media for starters.
Brachiator
@PIGL: RE: Most people cannot name the few families that have maintained wealth, power and prestige from the earliest days of the country.
Actually, the plain fact is that they are not hereditary. Not here. Not even as much in the UK, where the aristocracy has been “refreshed” by ennobling people from the mercantile class, who were disdained in an earlier age.
In the US, old prominent families survive on their reputations among a small group long after they have lost all real power and influence. As I noted, families like the Rockefellers and the Kennedys are very recent, as are the Fords and others. In California, one of the most powerful families, the Chandlers, only dates from the 1880s, and are already waning, a short run for a family that used to issue marching orders to Dick Nixon.
Warren Buffet, the google gang, the family of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, are among the wealthiest Americans, yet don’t hail from “old money.”
When ever Forbes comes out with their richest list (or even the UK equivalent, the Times Richest List), it is interesting to note how few old families are there. Of course, at lot of these people make as much mischief as they can during whatever time they have power, but that still does not mean that there are significant numbers of old family money running things.
As an aside, it is interesting to note that a lot of the Silicon Valley moguls have no interest in mingling with or marrying into US old money families.
@Steve:
Still, it was one of the cards used to oust the yahoo CEO.
Brachiator
@Steve:
From the AP story:
Scott Thompson’s reign as Yahoo’s CEO is in jeopardy after just four months on the job because he allowed an inaccuracy about his academic credentials to recur for years.
A major Yahoo shareholder who exposed the fabrication is now leading the charge to oust Thompson for unethical conduct. In a letter Friday, activist hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb demanded that the board of the struggling Internet company fire Thompson by noon EDT Monday or face possible legal action.
“CEO’s have been terminated for less at other companies,” wrote Loeb, who controls a 5.8 percent stake in Yahoo through his hedge fund, Third Point LLC.
Yahoo reiterated Friday that “the board is reviewing this matter and, upon completion of its review, will make an appropriate disclosure to shareholders.”
Thompson’s troubles revolve around an exaggeration about his education at Stonehill College, a small Catholic school near Boston where he was graduated in 1979.
Since announcing Thompson’s hiring in January, Yahoo had included two bachelor’s degrees — one for accounting and the other for computer science — on the executive’s biography. The dual degrees appeared on Yahoo’s own website and in an April 27 legal document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
After being confronted Thursday by Loeb, Yahoo confirmed that Thompson received only an accounting degree from Stonehill. Yahoo has since removed all references to Thompson’s education from his bio on its website. The company hadn’t amended its SEC filing with the inaccuracy as of late Friday.
It’s unclear whether the inaccuracy about the computer science originated with Thompson or someone else at Yahoo.
But Thompson’s bio with dual degrees periodically cropped up before he joined Yahoo. He was listed with a computer degree on a website touting his appearance at the Web 2.0 technology conference in 2010 while he was running eBay Inc.’s PayPal payment service. The computer science degree also has appeared in Thompson’s bio in connection with his 2008 appointment to a Silicon Valley startup, Zuora.
EBay listed only Thompson’s accounting degree in its SEC filings while he was working at PayPal.
Even if Thompson didn’t personally write his biography, he almost certainly reviewed the information at some point and should be held accountable for the distortion, said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
ericblair
@Brachiator:
“Hereditary” means “having title or possession through inheritance”. It doesn’t have to be formal peerage and class system, and unless you’re proposing a 100% estate tax and banning any admissions policy with the word “legacy” in it we’re going to have hereditary advantage; it’s a question of how much and whether we do anything to actively control it.
Actually, Bill Gates got a hell of a leg up based on his parents. His mother was pretty well connected through her own parents, and on the national board of United Way. She put a word in the IBM chairman’s ear (a fellow board member) about a certain Micro-Soft company to develop the IBM PC operating system, and the rest is history.
jayackroyd
Don’t mind me. I’m just heading to the park to poison some fucking pigeons.
RSA
@smintheus:
One of my now-graduated Ph.D. students was in a similar situation. I dealt with it myself, as his advisor: sending email to the other student’s advisor, then (when I didn’t get a response) escalating to their university’s Judicial Affairs office. A response quickly came after that, with an apology from the other student and a promise to revise the dissertation (however that might work, I don’t know). I dropped it at that point.
It bothers me today even to remember all that.
Jim Pharo
Thanks for the Tom Lehrer reference. Heart cockles warmed.
Brachiator
@ericblair:
You’re still splitting hairs.
When Edith Wharton was writing about the old Dutch elite, who were still socially prominent in New York, the plain fact is that these people had far less economic power and had long been displaced by generations of immigrants.
Similarly, you might be a member of the old 400 or whatever they call the prominent California WASP families. It’s not going to get you invited to one of Zuckerberg’s parties, or (more important) onto the board of google or Facebook.
Three generations of prominence in the upper middle class. This is far from old money.
Steve Jobs was illegitmate and adopted.
Steve Wozniak’s parents were immigrants of no great social pedigree.
Sergey Brin’s parent’s were a professor and a research scientist. His wife’s parents were an educator and a professor.
Larry Page’s parents were professors.
Mark Zuckerberg is the son of a psychiatrist and a dentist.
Steve Ballmer’s father was a manager at Ford, upper middle class, but not old money.
All these people obviously got a leg up. But we are not talking about great hereditary wealth or even a consistent background of coming from socially prominent families or access to the ruling powers in American society.
Steve
@Brachiator: I’m totally missing your point, I guess. Do you think the AP story helps establish that it is a material misstatement? I believe if you tried to put that allegation in a securities fraud complaint, you’d be laughed out of court.
Brachiator
@Steve:
I have no idea what “being laughed out of court” means in this context. The plain fact is that the misstatement and the issue of the erroneonous SEC filing was used as part of the strategy to oust the guy.
You may think it unimportant.
The guy is still out of a job.
So, what is your point?
bjacques
In the end, Al Capone got done for tax evasion. That works for me. I’m not one to leave money on the table.
ericblair
@Brachiator:
Eh? I’m not the one arguing that since a dozen tech CEOs don’t come from upper class families that have been here for the life of the Republic, hereditary privilege doesn’t exist in America.
Who your parents are affects your opportunities in life. If your parents are rich and well-connected, and want to help you, you’ve got a big advantage over everyone else. You can fuck it up, of course, and many people do after a few generations of wealth and privilege. You can have immense success in spite of not having the “right” parents, but you’re in a lot of competition and you’ve got to be the right person in the right time at the right place. Is this at all controversial?
So fine, some people are going to have it easier than others. Is this a problem? Maybe, and the founding fathers seemed to think so, having a lot of first-hand knowledge of legally-entrenched class and nobility. Shouldn’t we consider government controls, such as inheritance and income taxes, a civil service system, and anti-discrimination legislation, that try to ensure that hereditary advantage doesn’t completely shut out the lower 99% of society from success?
Joey Giraud
Props on the Lehrer reference.
I have a friend in Minsk….
Chet
Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to recall that for nearly five decades wingnuts and racists of various stripes have called MLK Jr.’s doctorate into question over this very type of thing, haven’t they?
Steve
@Brachiator: My point is that it was not a material misstatement of fact under the securities laws, and that your claim that this would have been a “minor” issue but for the company’s SEC filings is implausible. I think you’re slinging around a legal term without really appreciating what it means.
The notion that the SEC would ever take action against a company because of an inaccuracy of this type in the CEO’s biography, or that a private securities fraud plaintiff would ever be able to claim it was a “material” misstatement of fact under the federal securities laws, is flat-out silly. The fact that a news story mentioned that the biography was printed in the company’s SEC filings, among other places, does not support your argument that it was a material misstatement of fact.
smintheus
@RSA: Good for you for stepping up. It is pretty disgusting to have to deal with plagiarism, especially at that level. Sadly, my own adviser was dying of cancer when I was defending my dissertation so I could not bother him with it. He had already had to deal with the creep once a few years before, when the guy traveled to Oxford to complain to my adviser that I had cut off correspondence with him (due to his intellectually dishonest behavior). He actually expected my adviser to force me to resume corresponding and helping him with his research! We had a good laugh over this.
Funniest bit was that my adviser had previously written one of the most devastating book reviews ever…about this guy’s published MA thesis.