Goeglein Still Plagiarizing, Beck ’04 Weighs In

TDR alumnus Stefan Beck ’04 weighs in at Pajamas Media on the plagiarism scandal involving Timothy Goeglein and Jeffrey Hart:

These words, along with several subsequent paragraphs, were cut from a 1998 Dartmouth Review essay by Professor Emeritus Jeffrey Hart. As a former editor of The Dartmouth Review and an admirer of Prof. Hart, I was disappointed by his reaction to Goeglein’s apology: “I told him I was flattered he’d used it. It doesn’t damage him in my estimation at all. I’m glad he spread the word.” He told the Review that it should “take a bow” for publishing material good enough to get noticed. (Now imagine your Merc’s been stolen, and a cop is patting you on the back for having owned such a desirable automobile.)

[. . .]

I doubt that Prof. Hart was aware, when he made his comments, of the extent of the cutting and pasting. According to Nancy Nall, Goeglein lifted lengthy passages from such distinguished writers as Eric Ormsby, Jonathan Yardley, and, believe it or not, the Pope. (The opening line of Goeglein’s tribute to William F. Buckley Jr., “Friendship, at its best, is a foretaste of heaven,” was taken, I just now determined, from Aelred of Rievaulx, the patron saint of bladder-stone sufferers. You can’t make this stuff up.) I don’t believe that Prof. Hart would have granted Goeglein the same indulgence had he known the truth. He’d have seen that, to borrow from Ms. Nall, Goeglein “is a man who simply thought he’d found the perfect place to satisfy his need to be an intellectual — a paper hardly anyone reads.”

Read the whole thing here.