Southern Illinois University president Glenn Poshard's statement on plagiarism charges against members of the SIU administration:

Recently, claims of impropriety regarding plagiarism have been charged against me, Dr. Wendler, and Dr. Vandegrift by a group called the "Alumni and Faculty Against Corruption at SIU." These charges are taken very seriously as SIU holds ethics and integrity in research, as well as intellectual honesty, among the highest values of our system.

The accusations involve a comparison of my actions and the actions of the Chancellors, to one individual, Christopher Dussold. Dr. Dussold filed a lawsuit against SIU, as well as other faculty members, after he was terminated from his position as a tenure-track faculty member for admittedly submitting the work of another professor (a two-page Statement of Teaching Philosophy) as his own during his mid-tenure review. The review committee realized that the statement was a "near perfect copy" of another's work. An immediate inquiry was conducted to determine if the copied submission was intentional. When subsequently questioned by the Dean and the Chair, Dr. Dussold admitted that he had copied the statement. The University dismissed Dr. Dussold for violating the University's academic integrity and ethical standards during the tenure review process. Dr. Dussold has explained his side of the story to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The University will present its side in a court of law.

I am a proud graduate of Southern Illinois University where I received my doctorate in the Administration of Higher Education and studied under some of the finest scholars in America. There were several courses in which the issue of plagiarism was discussed. I believe the definition of plagiarism which most nearly represented the views of my professors is as follows: Plagiarism is the deliberate intent to take personal or professional credit for the original or creative thought, action, or product of another person in order to gain benefit for oneself. While I realize there is much discussion about what actually constitutes plagiarism, and perhaps this should be debated even more strenuously, I can only share my own personal understanding of this issue.

When I examine the committee's judgment of plagiarism with respect to Dr. Dussold's attempt to gain tenure and promotion as opposed to his judgment against me and the Chancellors in our unintentional use of the remarks of others on welcoming addresses or speeches, none of which benefited us in any way, I utterly fail to see any equivalency. I would challenge anyone to examine in the most common sense and rational way the actions of Dr. Dussold in comparison to myself and the Chancellors, applying the criteria of deliberate intent to take credit for others' work to benefit oneself and judge for oneself the validity of these charges.

Many times when people cannot admit their own mistakes they seek to place blame on others by making it appear that all indiscretions are of the same magnitude. Put the actions of Dr. Dussold side-by-side with the actions of Dr. Wendler and Dr. Vandegrift. Who was deliberate in their intent to receive personal gain from another's work? In Dr. Vandegrift's case, are we really to believe that a few welcoming remarks at a Martin Luther King Day function, which were unknowingly used previously by others, are equivalent in weight to a two-page Statement of Teaching Philosophy intentionally copied from another professor's work in order to pass a mid-tenure review? In Dr. Wendler's case, are we really to believe that referencing a mythological story that is hundreds of years old in a university address and not crediting the author who used it most recently in his own book is the same as a deliberate intent to deceive for purposes of personal gain?

Neither Chancellor's actions were intentional and neither had anything to personally gain by their remarks. And most importantly they apologized even for the unintentional mistakes they made. To my knowledge, Dr. Dussold has never apologized for the intentional acts he took to further himself in the academic community. Which person's actions really constitutes intellectual dishonesty?

Further, how egregious was my own mistake of which I am being accused? When I became President of SIU in January of this year, I faced a multitude of jobs, all of which had to be addressed immediately, including a legislative session for which I had no time to prepare. The content of the welcoming letter on the President's Office website wasn't on my priority list. It was essentially the same letter that had been used by two previous presidents. We could not leave Dr. Walker's picture and name on the letter, so we replaced them with my own. This was done on several standard documents used by the President's Office for years as a matter of initiating change of administrations. There was no attempt to deceive or to take credit for someone else's work to benefit myself. These letters and documents are university property and have been in the public domain for years, but for whatever mistake I made in not personalizing the welcoming letter, I apologize.

If my letter sounds severe in its tone, I do not mean it to be, but I cannot sit idly by and watch the name and credibility of good people being ruined by a vindictive motive on the part of someone else. This is not right. Dr. Wendler and Dr. Vandegrift are fine people and excellent administrators. Both have made substantial progress in moving their respective universities forward for which they deserve great credit. Surely, as professionals concerned with the intellectual development of young people, we must be able to discuss the difference between pure and impure motive if we are to help our students survive in a world of ambiguity.

I encourage everyone to abstain from the practice of personal destruction and allow this discussion to be debated in a more appropriate forum and in a more distinguished manner.