-
8/11/2019 Professor Emails
1/3
---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Thomas Pfau
Date: Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM
Subject: Millett: Durham North Carolina - Alleged Plagiarism of
Susan Dench
To: [email protected]
The following message has been sent to you via the Maine Senate
web page.
Thomas Pfau wrote:
Subject: Alleged Plagiarism of Susan Dench
Dear Senator Millett:
As a former resident of Maine who is still deeply attached to
the continued well-being of the place and its
people, I am writing to express my strong opposition to the
proposed appointment of Susan Dench to the
Univ. of Maine Board of Trustees. Any reasonably literate reader
will be forced to conclude that Ms.
Dench did indeed plagiarize (with only minor and trivial
adjustments in phrasing) the contents, argument,
and phrasing that she had found in a blogpost from the Free
Republic (posted in 2003). Given the
current, volatile and controversy-laden debate over the future
of public higher education in Maine, one
cannot think of a worse time to appoint as trustee (!) a person
as manifestly lacking in intellectual
accomplishments, credentials, and personal integrity as Ms.
Dench. If there is to be any future
whatsoever for meaningful public higher education in Maine, all
political parties and their representatives
ought to examine their motives when proposing future members for
the Board of Trustees for the UM
system. The creeping politicization of decisions that should
obviously be based on personal integrity and
professional competence will only accelerate the decline of
public institutions, as well as erode what little
trust there still is among the citizens of Maine in their public
institutions and their political representatives.
No doubt, you know that the proposed appointment of MS. Dench is
indefensible on the merits of it. I
hope you will have the political courage to act accordingly.
Sincerely,
Thomas
Thomas Pfau
Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English
Professor German
Faculty Member - Duke Divinity School
-
8/11/2019 Professor Emails
2/3
---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Perry, Curtis
Date: Sun, Sep 28, 2014 at 8:17 PM
Subject: Dench case
To: "[email protected]" ,
"[email protected]"
Resending--had your email typed incorrectly in the original
attempt.
-----
Dear Senators Alfond and Millett,
A colleague of mine has recently brought to my attention the
controversy surrounding Susan Dench's
column in the Bangor Daily News and Professor Jane Kuenz's
testimony accusing her of plagiarism. I
have read the original Free Republic piece, Ms. Dench's initial
use of it with attribution on her blog, and
the column in question in the Bangor paper. Since the column
clearly makes unattributed use of
another's writing and--equally importantly--misleads its
readership by pretending to represent its author's
original research and expertise, I can say definitively that the
column is plagiarized. In any university
setting this would be unacceptable, and at my current university
such a violation of academic integrity on
the part of a student would result in failure and possibly in
further sanctions.
I am a professor of English at the University of Illinois, where
I have also served as Head of the English
Department. I have been teaching English at universities for
more than 20 years, and have also served
on faculty committees for adjudicating student discipline issues
including plagiarism cases. This is not a
difficult judgment call, I have to say.
I should say, too, that this case is important to me because I
care about academic integrity, but alsobecause I come from a Maine
family and care about the public educational system in your
state.
Respectfully,
Curtis Perry
Professor of English and Classics
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
-
8/11/2019 Professor Emails
3/3
From:"Markley, Robert"
Date:September 27, 2014 at 12:15:51 PM EDT
To:"[email protected]"
Cc:"[email protected]"
Subject:Susan Dench plagiarism
Dear Senators Alfond and Millett:
I am one of many faculty members at universities and colleges
across the country who have been altered
to the testimony by Professor Jane Kuenz that Susan Dench
plagiarized at least one of her columns in
the Bangor Daily News. Having reviewed the evidence submitted to
the Senate Committee on Education
and Cultural Affairs, I can assure you--with absolute
certainty--that this is a case of flat-out plagiarism. I
have been a university professor for more than thirty years, and
I have dealt with far more cases of
plagiarism than I care to remember. There is no question in my
mind that Susan Dench deserves an "F"
for plagiarism. And you can quote me on that.
Respectfully,
Robert Markley
W.D. and Sara E. Trowbridge Professor
Editor, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation
Department of English
608 S. Wright Street
University of Illinois
Urbana, IL 61801
