Columnist Max McCoy writes about the case of Wichita State University President Richard Muma, who acknowledged issues with his doctoral dissertation of 20 years ago. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)
If one of my students had plagiarized the way Richard Muma did in his doctoral dissertation, I would have flunked them.
Because words — and the ideas they convey — matter.
As I used to explain to hundreds of students in my mass communication class — where a research paper of no less than 12 pages was a requirement to pass — original research is the heart of scholarship. Plagiarism, intentional or not, is stealing the work of others. The word itself comes from the Latin plagarius, meaning kidnapper.
In case you missed it, the plagiarism scandal erupted Oct. 7, when the Kansas Reflector’s Tim Carpenter reported on problems with Muma’s dissertation , written years ago as a major part of the requirements for a doctorate in education. Muma, the president of Wichita State University since 2021, had used passages from more than 20 authors without proper attribution in his slim, 88-page dissertation on managerial roles in healthcare administrators. Go here for the Reflector’s side-by-side comparison of some offending passages.