[Vision2020] Response to Daily News article on Wilson and Plagiarism

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

Below you will find my response to the article on Wilson and Plagiarism in 
the Daily News on August 6.  My response to Wilson's blogg will come later.

I now have over 40 signatures on my petition, which will be posted on the 
Not on the Palouse website.  Any Palouse academic who wants to add his or 
her name to list, should contact me ASAP.

To the Editor:

Two Daily News reporters spent two hours interviewing me last Thursday and 
none of my comments appeared in the story on Doug Wilson's alleged 
plagiarism (August 6).

At least your reporter could have informed the community about the two 
texts available at BookPeople or the suspected passages posted at 
www.tomandrodna.com/ notonthepalouse/Plagiarism.htm. Your readers should 
also consider the following:

* Professor R. T. MacKenzie gives his Christian brother a pass on his 
"citation" problems, but I would have had to fail any student who did the 
same thing.
* Students at Wilson's New St. Andrews College "must avoid plagiarism, 
misrepresentation, misappropriation of the work of others" or face 
"disciplinary action . . . including dismissal from the College." Does this 
policy apply to the college's Senior Fellow in Philosophy?
* Students who plagiarize do not get a second chance, but Wilson is 
planning a second edition of an essay that cannot be made acceptable 
without changing its thesis and referring to reputable sources.
* For example, will Wilson and his co-author Steve Wilkins keep the 
sentence "There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with 
such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world"(p. 24)?
* Wilson should have known that Wilkins was accused of plagiarism back in 
1992 by a history student in his own congregation.
* Wilson and Wilkins appear to have stolen passages from W. R. Fogel's and 
S. L. Engerman's "Time on the Cross."  Fogel has informed me that he is 
referring the matter to his publisher W. W. Norton.
* Professor Engerman has said that "it certainly appears [my] work was 
misused."  How does he prevent Wilson from misusing it again in his second 
edition?  I would strongly suggest a restraining order against the 
publication of a second edition.
* Wilson has pulled the slavery booklet from his shelves but it is still 
being sold on the neo-Confederate League of the South website, where 
Wilkins is still listed as senior adviser to the Board of Directors.

In a letter to this paper on May 23, 2003 Dean Roy Atwood misrepresented 
the accreditation status of New St. Andrews; for tax purposes Christ Church 
misrepresented the use of its downtown properties; and Wilson has 
misrepresented the work of other scholars.  Do we see a pattern here?

Nick Gier, Moscow

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