Strategic my ass

Ah, there's the story originally reported by the NY Times Wednesday that the thesis that Senator John Walsh (D-Mont.) submitted to the Army War College in 2007 to earn his Master of Strategic Studies degree was not, uh, entirely original thought. In fact, about a third of the 14-page paper was plagiarized—entire passages from other sources used without source citation, either unchanged or altered by the odd word here and there.

Oh—and this includes all six of the recommendations Walsh put forth as his very own conclusions at the end of the paper.

So far, in the first couple of days since the Times story, Walsh and his spinpersons have told reporters that filling his master’s thesis (which has helped both his military and political career) with other people's uncredited work was:

"A mistake", and “completely unintentional.”

Not actual plagiarism, although no alternative designation has been put forward.

And if it turns out that it was plagiarism (which I would ordinarily refer to as intellectual theft, except I'm not sure of Walsh's claim to intellect), it was probably the result of PTSD. (What he said was, “I don’t want to blame my mistake on PTSD, but I do want to say it may have been a factor.”)

Oh—also, he was on medication at the time and dealing with the suicide of a friend. There may be more alternative theories coming; look out for the Cigarette-Smoking Man and Twinkies.

(Walsh is an Iraq war veteran, and he was awarded the Bronze Star. He was not actually elected to office by the people of Montana; he was appointed to serve out the term of Max Baucus.)

Well, I have a couple of thoughts about all this. (Oh—like this surprises you?)

1) It’s unclear to me how stealing someone else’s work—in fact, a bunch of someone else’s work—can be “unintentional”. In the Internet age, when you’re not recording your research and your hypotheses on 3x5 notecards before organizing them all into ideas in your paper, highlighting whole sections of online documents, copying and pasting them into your “thesis” is pretty intentional. Especially if the copy-and-paste also includes all the conclusions/recommendations you’re presenting as your own original thought.

2) The “PTSD made me do it” defense seems equally lame. Especially when you’re toggling back and forth between that and trying to pretend it never happened, or if it did it was unintentional. Or the meds—yeah, it was the meds.

3) I’m interested in any academic institution that awards any kind of master’s degree where the thesis requirement can be met in 14 pages. Of course, I guess you don’t run to as many pages when you don’t have any footnotes and your bibliography is three sources. And you’re all tired out from that copy-and-paste drudgery.

4) Not sure I want someone making strategic policy decisions who got there by virtue of a thesis basically stolen from the heads of people who actually did some cogitation on the matter. Not that I know what "Strategic Studies" are, exactly; but strategic thinking involves, you know, thought processes. And the only arena in which I'm seeing Walsh exercise his little grey cells is in obfuscating, denial and excuse-making.

5) It’s curious that the Army War College, which awarded Walsh his degree, didn’t catch the plagiarism. When I was at William & Mary, I took a lecture class from the visiting Big Gun from Rutgers. He advised the undergraduates not to consider plagiarizing, because “if it’s any good, I’ll recognize the source; if it’s not any good you’re not doing yourself any favors.” I hate to keep banging on about this, but this was in the last century. There have been software applications available to professors for at least a decade to screen student papers for passages lifted directly from sources. It’s not that hard to check this stuff out if you’re to any degree conscientious about academic standards. Could they not afford the software? Isn’t there a government discount?

6) If they’re not that rigorous about vetting the provenance of their students’ research, do the degrees issued by the War College come in or affixed to the box of Cracker Jacks?

7) Actually, I'm a little worried about who else might have been awarded degrees from the War College, and then been promoted on the basis of them. And are, you know, now in positions where they can operate dangerous equipment and order men and women into harm's way. Euw.

8) Again, back in the last century, my undergraduate school (one of the Claremont Colleges) had a student honor code, which included upholding honesty and integrity both academically and personally. I’d have thought that a military institution would have some version of that kind of thing that students must acknowledge and adhere to. Was everyone on Walsh’s committee also suffering from PTSD or on medications during his stint at the War College?

Having said all this, I do need to note that a moral compass fixed on cheating, stealing, lying and self-aggrandizement is practically a prerequisite for election to public office these days. So Walsh is probably being high-fived by most of the denizens of the Capitol.