Plagiarism Leads to a Resignation at the New School
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A prominent fine arts professor at the New School University’s Parsons School of Design has resigned in an academic plagiarism scandal.
Roger Shepherd, a faculty member of the Critical Studies department, stepped down at the end of last week after the MIT Press went public with charges of copyright infringement related to a book it published in 1994.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that 19 passages from a book by Meredith Clausen, a professor of architecture history at the University of Washington, appeared without attribution in Mr. Shepherd’s 2002 book, “Structures of Our Time: 31 Buildings That Changed Modern Life.”
Mr. Shepherd lifted Chapter Five from Ms. Clausen’s book, “Pietro Belluschi: Modern American Architect,” almost verbatim, according to the Chronicle. In other questionable passages, wording was modified slightly, but arguments and logic were basically identical.
Mr. Shepherd told the chronicle that all unsold copies of his book – which examines 31 buildings designed by high profile figures like Frank Lloyd Wright – were destroyed by McGraw-Hill. A spokeswoman for the publishing house did not return phone calls yesterday.
On Friday, three days after the chronicle’s article was published, the dean and provost of the New School sent a three-paragraph e-mail to the school’s staff announcing Mr. Shepherd’s immediate resignation.
“We feel that it is appropriate to be frank about the context for Mr. Shepherd’s resignation since the New School is unconditionally committed to honesty in every feature of its academic life,” the e-mail said. “Mr. Shepherd resigned in light of instances of plagiarism” involving his 2002 book.
The school released a similar statement yesterday through a public relations firm, but declined to comment further. That statement said: “We respect and agree with Professor Shepherd’s decision to resign, and we look forward to putting this sad occasion behind us and moving forward.”
Mr. Shepherd could not be reached for comment yesterday. But in a strange admission, he told the chronicle that his publisher, McGraw-Hill, had also received a complaint from Princeton Architectural Press about a lifted passage that appeared in another one of his books. The publisher was quoted saying that material from three of its titles had “appeared without attribution or permission” in “Structures of Our Time.”
Mr. Shepherd attributed the passages to “a variety of reasons,” including pressure after September 11, but said there were no excuses. He also said it “had something to do with one of the research assistants I had hired” and noted that passages of Ms. Clausen’s book “had been put in as rough stuff and meant to be rewritten.”
Ms. Clausen said last night that while she felt compassion for Mr. Shepherd she was “shocked” and “horrified” when she discovered the similarities.
“I think his resignation was the most appropriate thing,” she said. “That kind of behavior is deplorable and to have kept him on would not have been acceptable. He would have been acting as a role model for students.”
Faculty members at the Parsons School of the Design, the largest of the New School’s academic institutions, were stunned that Mr. Shepherd, who has both chaired the department and run the institution’s Paris campus during the course of more than 30 years at the school, was involved in such an incident.
“Everybody is completely shocked,” said chairman of the department of fashion design, Timothy Gunn. “To be perfectly honest, he has been a real powerhouse and leader here.”
Though Mr. Gunn said he didn’t think his colleague had intentionally pilfered from other authors, he said Mr. Shepherd’s actions suggest that he was “asleep at the switch.”
“Talk about condemning,” Mr. Gunn said. “Had it merely been a couple of sentences I could see it being an oversight, but when you realize that it is broad and sweeping, it’s far more shocking.”
The case comes just weeks after Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree Jr. acknowledged including a verbatim six-paragraph passage in his book “All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education.”
Mr. Ogletree, who lifted the passage from a book written by a Yale Law School professor, said in a statement earlier this month that the inclusion of the passage stemmed from an editing error.
In that case, an apology to the Yale professor, Jack Balkin, and an explanation to Harvard seemed to squash the problem. Mr. Ogletree, who represented Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings, has said he will be disciplined, but is not leaving his institution’s faculty.
There have been a rash of high-profile plagiarism cases in the last few years: renowned historians Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Joseph Ellis were all accused of fraud.
Mr. Ambrose, who died in 2002, included passages in his books that resembled already published works. Ms. Kearns Goodwin acknowledged in 2002 settling plagiarism accusations involving her 1987 book, “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.” And Mr. Ellis was suspended from teaching at Mount Holyoke College after lying about serving in Vietnam. In an information age, where a quick Google search returns tons of easy-to-swipe material, enforcing plagiarism among students has taken on a new meaning.
If students are tossed out of school for plagiarizing, academic institutions must hold faculty members to the same standard, Mr. Gunn said.
“I don’t get the Harvard thing,” he said, during a phone interview. “I honestly don’t know how any of us could make the case for academic honesty if we ignore a situation like this and let a faculty member” off.