Call it another instance of the barbarism of specialization. That phrase and diagnosis was coined by Jose Ortega y Gasset in another century, but he could already see modernity beginning to undermine the classical ethical standards. No matter how good a professional might be in his technical field, he warned, it would all come to naught if he were culturally narrow and ethically ignorant.
The latest example is provided by Dexter Suggs, the decidedly former superintendent of Little Rock's public schools. And a good one if judged by his solely technical leadership. Unfortunately, it looks as if he plagiarized whole sections of his doctoral thesis, and now his degree's been revoked by Indiana Wesleyan, the university that awarded him his doctorate. Just as it should have been.
Somewhere a young graduate student in education--or some other field--is surely even now tempted to snip and paste his research instead of doing it the honest, old-fashioned way. And maybe he'll get away with it. But whether he does or not, he's failed himself and all those who trusted him. And that is the moral of this story.
Editorial on 09/03/2015