Opinion: Bob Caslen is more than his worst mistake
Opinion by Kathleen
Parker Columnist May 14, 2021
at 6:49 p.m. EDT
It’s well-known by
now that Bob Caslen, the suddenly former president of the University of South
Carolina, resigned this week following a commencement address
that he, well, flubbed pretty badly.
He welcomed the
graduates as the new alumni of the “University of California.” Ouch.
More important, he
plagiarized.
FULL ARTICLE BELOW
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How serious can plagiarism be? We just elected a President
with an extensive history of it. LTG Caslen was just following the example of
his Commander-in-Chief.
Syracuse University Law School had Joe repeat his
whole first-year after initially flunking him out for copying at least five
pages from a published law review article.
In 2008, then-Sen. Biden copied an entire
paragraph from a Time magazine story on then-newly elected President Lee
Myung-Bak of South Korea and used it for a speech, without attribution. Biden
even had the stolen language read into an official congressional resolution in
February 2008.
Biden's problem with copying the work of others is
so widespread that in 2019 the Biden campaign released a climate plan using
exactly the same language as outside left-wing groups, without attribution and
that barely made news.
Maureen Dowd reported Biden's most egregious
offense of plagiarism that happened during a debate at the Iowa State Fair on
23 August 1987 this way: "Biden had been lifting entire lines of his stock
stump speech from Britain’s then-Labor Party leader, Neil Kinnock, who was
campaigning for prime minister across the pond. He [Biden] lifted Mr. Kinnock's
closing speech with phrases, gestures and lyrical Welsh syntax intact for his
own closing speech. Biden didn’t just steal Kinnock’s political rhetoric, he
appropriated his life story, including a coal mining grandfather. This was
worse than it looked: Kinnock’s Welsh grandfather did work in the mines.
Biden’s, although he lived in Pennsylvania coal country, sold cars."
When our Country's
"Plagiarizer-in-Chief" is our President, how can we criticize others like LTG Caslen for just following his example?
Unlike my Commander-in-Chief, I will
confess that I plagiarized most of this comment from various articles published
in several sources, and without attribution.
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Opinion: Bob Caslen is more than his worst mistake
Opinion by Kathleen
Parker Columnist May 14, 2021
at 6:49 p.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bob-caslen-south-carolina-commencement-resignation/2021/05/14/bc5ecc1e-b4d5-11eb-a980-a60af976ed44_story.html?commentID=52ea8abb-3f60-4b63-a549-0f5dc97d7e50
It’s well-known by now that Bob Caslen, the suddenly former president
of the University of South Carolina, resigned this week following a
commencement address that he, well, flubbed pretty badly.
He welcomed the graduates as the new alumni of the “University of
California.” Ouch.
More important, he plagiarized.
When someone within stage-whispering distance reminded Caslen where he
was, he quickly corrected himself, saying “Carolina,” but not “South Carolina.”
Then, with an embarrassed chuckle, he said to the audience of
graduates, “I owe you push-ups.”
Caslen, you see, is a push-up kind of guy, a career military man who
regularly invited students to join him at the gym, where he put himself — and
those who showed up — through a grueling workout.
His plagiarism consisted of two paragraphs he borrowed without
attribution from another commencement address by, of all people, retired Adm.
William H. McRaven, possibly the best-known military man in the United States,
who planned the takedown of Osama bin Laden. Caslen was deeply apologetic,
saying he added the words at the last minute and “failed to cite” him.
It’s not the worst crime in the world — but it is certainly less than
ideal if you happen to be the president of a university where academic rules
apply. Among those rules: Do not crib from another’s work without credit.
Caslen’s resignation, after almost two years as president, was an
unfortunate end to a job he probably never should have been offered — or
accepted.
A retired U.S. Army general and former superintendent of the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point, Caslen’s candidacy was met with protests by
students who objected to his suggestion, in a stream-of-consciousness talk,
that sexual assault and binge drinking go hand-in-hand. Caslen failed to put a
period at the end of one sentence before beginning another, making it sound
like he was blaming victims.
Caslen wasn’t a first choice for the University of South Carolina’s
board of trustees, either. He was approved after a nudge from Republican Gov.
Henry McMaster, who is also a board member. That bit of pressure earned the
school an inquiry from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
Commission on Colleges.
