Two Cases of Plagiarism by Politicians

The following piece was written by my former student and friend Mike Lamm. Mike is a reporter for the Decatur Daily Democrat. _________________________ In the summer of 1987, a young, brash Delaware senator by the name of Joe Biden was attempting to become the youngest American since John F. Kennedy to become president of the…

Commodifying “Content”

Four recent incidents have made me aware again of one of those itches it seems impossible to scratch, the valuation of “content” as a product rather than as the culmination of a process. Scholarship, today, becomes simply the thing for sale. The first of these was the resignation of Jonah Lehrer from The New Yorker. The second…