Another one bites the dust: one more European politician has been busted for plagiarising their doctoral thesis. This time, embarrassingly, it is Annette Schavan who has been shamed into resigning. It is bad enough that she was the German Education minister; worse, two years ago, she put the boot firmly into the Defence Minister and rising star, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, saying it was 'shameful' when it was found that 90% of his dissertation was pinched from unattributed sources.
Schavan's PhD title: 'Character and Conscience'
Many of my colleagues worry on a daily basis about students copying work and passing it off as their own - and complain bitterly how the internet has made doing so much easier. As it happens, this is not a problem I often experience. There are (regrettably) few scholars working in my field - which means you can spot their work a mile off. Even the most conniving undergraduate or graduate student cannot get away with nicking someone else's work on medieval Greek literature or the archaeology of the Russian steppes.
Guttenberg: PhD thesis not just nicked but boring
But what makes the resignations of all these European politicians really depressing (you can find a rogue's gallery of them here) is how dull the their dissertations were in the first place, how boring the topics, how mundane the work they claimed as their own. If they had run in and pinched exciting and ground-breaking material about really exciting topics, then at least one might just about understand it - after all, claiming credit for other people's ideas is par for the course for the modern politician. As, of course, is risk-taking: high-stakes for high-office.
But I suppose that is the point: so dull and uninspired are the politicians of today that they don't even have the brains to take something good. I know very little about the mindset of the thief; but I've seen enough movies (Ocean's 11 anyone?) to know that if you're going to do it, you might as well think big. How depressing to find out that so many of the current generation of political leaders are little more than second-rate pickpockets. Then again, perhaps to go for the big heist, it helps if you look like George Clooney ?
But I suppose that is the point: so dull and uninspired are the politicians of today that they don't even have the brains to take something good. I know very little about the mindset of the thief; but I've seen enough movies (Ocean's 11 anyone?) to know that if you're going to do it, you might as well think big. How depressing to find out that so many of the current generation of political leaders are little more than second-rate pickpockets. Then again, perhaps to go for the big heist, it helps if you look like George Clooney ?
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